Book contents
- The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel
- The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The Global Invention of the Australian Novel
- 2 Colonial Adventure Novels
- 3 Beyond Britain and the Book
- 4 Transnational Optics
- 5 The Novel in the Late Colonial Period
- 6 Love Is Not Enough
- 7 The Australian Crime Novel, 1830–1950
- 8 The Novel Nation
- 9 Selling Australian Stories to the World
- 10 Women Writers and the Emerging Urban Novel, 1930–1952
- 11 The National Trilogy and Mining
- 12 Nation and Environment in the Twentieth-Century Novel
- 13 Henry Handel Richardson, Christina Stead and the Transnational Fiction of Provincial Development
- 14 The Mid-Century Australian Novel and the End of World History
- 15 Race, Romance and Anxiety
- 16 Whiteness, Aboriginality and Representation in the Twentieth-Century Australian Novel
- 17 When the Twain Meet
- 18 From Bunyip to Boom
- 19 Unsettling Archive
- 20 The Novel at Arms
- 21 ‘Our Least-Known Best Seller’
- 22 Writing, Women and the Australian Novel
- 23 White Lies
- 24 The Economics of the Literary Novel
- 25 Mabo, History, Sovereignty
- 26 Indigenous Futurism
- 27 The Regional Novel in Australia
- 28 Children’s and Young Adult Literature
- 29 Grunge, Nation and Literary Generations
- 30 The Making of the Asian Australian Novel
- 31 Screening the Australian Novel, 1971–2020
- 32 Australian Fantasy, Crime and Romance Fiction in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
- 33 Uncertain Futures
- 34 A (Sovereign) Body of Work
- 35 The Novel Road to the Global South
- 36 The Fortunes of the Miles Franklin
- 37 The Arab Australian Novel
- 38 Riddling the Nation
- 39 Migrant Writing and the Invention of Australia
- Selective Bibliography: Studies of the Australian Novel, 2000–2021
- Index
26 - Indigenous Futurism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 June 2023
- The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel
- The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The Global Invention of the Australian Novel
- 2 Colonial Adventure Novels
- 3 Beyond Britain and the Book
- 4 Transnational Optics
- 5 The Novel in the Late Colonial Period
- 6 Love Is Not Enough
- 7 The Australian Crime Novel, 1830–1950
- 8 The Novel Nation
- 9 Selling Australian Stories to the World
- 10 Women Writers and the Emerging Urban Novel, 1930–1952
- 11 The National Trilogy and Mining
- 12 Nation and Environment in the Twentieth-Century Novel
- 13 Henry Handel Richardson, Christina Stead and the Transnational Fiction of Provincial Development
- 14 The Mid-Century Australian Novel and the End of World History
- 15 Race, Romance and Anxiety
- 16 Whiteness, Aboriginality and Representation in the Twentieth-Century Australian Novel
- 17 When the Twain Meet
- 18 From Bunyip to Boom
- 19 Unsettling Archive
- 20 The Novel at Arms
- 21 ‘Our Least-Known Best Seller’
- 22 Writing, Women and the Australian Novel
- 23 White Lies
- 24 The Economics of the Literary Novel
- 25 Mabo, History, Sovereignty
- 26 Indigenous Futurism
- 27 The Regional Novel in Australia
- 28 Children’s and Young Adult Literature
- 29 Grunge, Nation and Literary Generations
- 30 The Making of the Asian Australian Novel
- 31 Screening the Australian Novel, 1971–2020
- 32 Australian Fantasy, Crime and Romance Fiction in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
- 33 Uncertain Futures
- 34 A (Sovereign) Body of Work
- 35 The Novel Road to the Global South
- 36 The Fortunes of the Miles Franklin
- 37 The Arab Australian Novel
- 38 Riddling the Nation
- 39 Migrant Writing and the Invention of Australia
- Selective Bibliography: Studies of the Australian Novel, 2000–2021
- Index
Summary
This chapter starts by locating Indigenous Australian science fiction, increasingly described as ‘Indigenous futurism’, within the broader framework of Australian sf and Indigenous Australian literature. Indigenous sf has had to contend with reader expectations of Indigenous writing, largely regarded by publishers, booksellers and critics as a niche market, thereby consigned within a very narrow box. Compounding this is the belief that some sf is frivolous, and thus inadequate to address Indigenous affairs. The following section traces the naissance of Indigenous sf in the writing of Sam Watson, Eric Willmot and Archie Weller. The aim is to demonstrate how these works revised mainstream sf by ‘Indigenising’ its tropes, and how the reception of these works has been changing from the 1990s onwards. The third section focuses on twenty-first-century Indigenous sf with Indigenous women authors taking over the global Indigenous sf literary scene. These women authors question traditional paradigms by fusing Indigenous systems of knowledge with the latest scientific thought. This discussion is exemplified by Alexis Wright’s, Claire G. Coleman’s and Ambelin Kwaymullina’s works. The final section demonstrates that Indigenous novelistic futurism has also been augmented by recent developments in Indigenous sci-fi television series and graphic novels.
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- The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel , pp. 437 - 453Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023