In 2019 I wrote a very short (290-word) science fiction story entitled Wood For The Trees where I tried to emulate the Japanese works I admire. Few words, rapid delivery, make the key elements disappear into gaps for the reader to discover.

No, I had the Aboriginal characters in the book to make a point about something, to make my psychopath stand out, to let a non-Australian reader peek into an ugly little secret we've tried to keep over here. But to make sure the book's representative? Hardly. Can any novel honestly be representative?

Economics may be a dismal science, but I've come to the nasty realisation that science fiction writing could very well be the dismal art.