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Frontiers of Science, an Australian science newspaper comic strip that was published in the Sydney Morning Herald every weekday from September 1961 until 1979, retains the record of being the longest-running newspaper science comic strip in the world. It was syndicated internationally to over 200 newspapers, and was translated into 14 languages. Its educational aspirations, its ‘omnipotent’ (read white, English-speaking) perspective, and its existence at the edge of comics and on the border between science fact and science fiction offer an invaluable record of the ways that science was imagined and popularized (in Australia and in several other countries) in the second half of the 20th century. In this piece we argue that Frontiers of Science bears witness to the intimate relations between the popularization of science and the broader political and social contexts of science, and that Frontiers of Science demonstrates the specificity of Australia and its place in the world during the 1960s and 1970s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Science fiction is popular in Australia. Yet very little science fiction is published in Australia. This essay establishes and examines the paradoxical truth of these two statements. Australian interest in science fiction is shown by reviewing local bookshops, authors, literary events and fan culture. The lack of Australian-published science fiction is shown by examining accounts of local publishing, sampling what is stocked in bookshops and surveying the output of publishing houses. The reasons for this lack are literary snobbishness, the success of the related genre of fantasy, and the importation of foreign-published science fiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

George Turner (1916-1997) was one of the most important science fiction writers Australia has produced, but before he published his first sf novel he had established his notoriety as one of the most acerbic of genre critics. This essay looks at Turner's genre criticism and detects within it signs of an antagonist relationship with sf. He had been an award-winning mainstream novelist, and his criticism often comes down to attacking science fiction for not being sufficiently mainstream. Starting with his attack on Alfred Bester's 1953 novel "The Demolished Man," and demonstrating that Turner exaggerated the affront his attack provoked, the essay goes on to examine his problems with any suggestion of the fantastic in relation to sf as well as his sharp exchanges with Stanislaw Lem and Lucius Shepard, both of which hinged on Turner's attempt to see the genre as if it were based on exactly the same principles and ideas as mainstream literature. Finally, the essay looks briefly at how these attitudes impinged upon the sf novels Turner would subsequently write. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the status of science fiction in Australia from 1948 to 1952. During WWII the Australian government stopped the importation of all non-essential items which began to starve all the printers and writers of that time. They lobbied various ministers to stop the printing of offensive material so that writers would have the paper necessary to report on the current facts at hand. At the end of the war when paper rations were lifted many great writers such as Gordon Clive Bleeck began to emerge. It was at this time that creative writing began again which in 1952 eventually lead to the start of Science Fiction in Australian literature.

Science fiction in colonial societies such as Australia can function as what Mary Louise Pratt calls an "art of the contact zone"—an imaginative space within which groups define themselves and negotiate their cultural differences. Australian sf falls into three periods with regard to its treatment of Aboriginal characters and traditions. In the first, from the 1890s to at least the 1960s, native characters are treated as subhuman and Aboriginal beliefs and traditions compare unfavorably with European-derived science and social organization. The second period overlaps the first, but a new perspective becomes dominant in the 1970s; the emphasis is on positive qualities of Aboriginal culture and on common ground between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. After the 1970s, increased awareness of political injustice and fears of impinging on Aboriginal experience and intellectual property cause most European-Australians to avoid the topic altogether. In the same period, however, non-white writers begin to explore the possibilities of using science-fictional discourse to redefine their own history, identity, and traditions. Novels such as Sam Watson's "The Kaidatcha Sung" and Archie Weller's "Land of the Golden Cloud" open the genre up to new voices and points of view. These novels may be read as commentaries upon, and responses to, earlier sf. Some of this new fiction benefits from being read as part of a crosscultural dialogue, most notably Terry Dowling's series of stories about a high-tech, Aboriginal-controlled, re-mythologized future Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]