NON- FICTION

Lotus Blue by Cat Sparks

CAT SPARKS LIVES and breathes literary sci-fi. During an earlier incarnation as fiction editor for Cosmos she always showed a talent for the smart, savvy modern expression of the genre. Lotus Blue shows she has a talent for writing it, too.

Set in an environmentally degraded postapocalyptic future that could become common enough across the planet the way we are going, her debut novel is unmistakably Australian.

The desert’s encroachment on what habitable land remains, and the bandits that rule the wasteland of the interior, echo the “otherness” with which Australian writers have often viewed the outback, even in the good times. And these are definitely not those.

The landscape Sparks describes has a Mad Maxmeets-dune feel, with a bit of Tatooine thrown into its dysfunctional, desolate towns (weaponised lantana as a sort of biological razor wire is an inspired touch).

But the setting is a backdrop for a wonderfully inventive story centred around Star and her sister Nene, nomadic orphans travelling in a caravan through the treacherous desert where the pair face many terrors, including the Templars – genetically and mechanically enhanced human/cyborg troops – and the Tankers – war machines running amok on corrupted programs.

But there is a much greater danger lying in the desert – Lotus Blue, an ancient and malevolent machine, now awakening. It will stop at nothing to carry out its mission.

And then there are the sisters’ own malevolent family secrets …

It’s a great read, but it is also a fine first literary attempt which calls to mind the world of J.G. Ballard – the dystopian modernity and the somewhat pessimistic take on humanity’s inherent failings.

Whether read as a rollocking, fast-paced entertainment or as a clever and well-observed comment on the human condition as it might be under even more bleak conditions in the future,

Lotus Blue works well on both levels.