Incredible Speculative Fiction: Read Our Review of This All Come Back Now, Edited by Mykaela Saunders

The first-ever anthology of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander speculative fiction – written, curated, edited and designed by blackfellas, for blackfellas and about blackfellas. In these stories, ‘this all come back’: all those things that have been taken from us, that we collectively mourn the loss of, or attempt to recover and revive, as well as those that we thought we’d gotten rid of, that are always returning to haunt and hound us.

Some writers summon ancestral spirits from the past, while others look straight down the barrel of potential futures, which always end up curving back around to hold us from behind. Dazzling, imaginative and unsettling, This All Come Back Now centres and celebrates communities and culture. It’s a love letter to kin and country, to memory and future-thinking.

Editor Mykaela Saunders is a Koori and Lebanese writer, who has been widely published and, impressively, won the Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, the National Indigenous Story Award, the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Indigenous Poetry Prize, the Grace Marion Wilson Emerging Writers Prize for Nonfiction and the University of Sydney’s Sister Alison Bush Graduate Medal for Indigenous research.

With This All Come Back Now, Saunders compiles the world’s first anthology of blackfella speculative fiction, with twenty-two astonishing stories by new, emerging and established First Nations writers.

Generally, speculative fiction is defined as the fantasy, science-fiction and horror genres, although more broadly incorporates any fiction with supernatural, fantastical, or futuristic elements. It allows writers to push boundaries and ask difficult questions, which is particularly pertinent for First Nation writers.

In ‘Overture’, Saunders explains that while Indigenous spec fiction is being written, it’s not being published where one would expect – that is, by speculative fiction publishers. In fact, all the stories in this anthology have been previously published by mainstream publishers, and many of the authors have won awards.

Contributors here include Evelyn Araluen, Karen Wyld, Lisa Fuller, Jasmin McGaughey, Samuel William Watson, John Morrissey, Ellen van Neerven, Jack Latimore and more. Alexis Wright has won both the Miles Franklin Award (for Carpentaria) and the Stella Prize (for Tracker). Pakana Tasmanian writer Adam Thompson’s first book Born Into This was shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards, and embraced by Better Reading readers. ‘Your Own Aborigine’, one of my favourite stories from his debut is here.

This All Come Back Now is a powerhouse of First Nations stories. As Saunders writes, “Short story anthologies are like mixtapes… a way for you to sample new worlds, a mishmash of styles gathered together that speak to similar themes, and an opportunity to find exciting writers you might not have otherwise come across.” This is all that, and so much more.

Buy a copy of This All Come Back Now.