Dandenong Ranges Literary Festival

What if…?  Works of speculative fiction offer a window into worlds both strange and familiar. Instead of imitating normal life, it explores alternate worlds, hypothetical futures, or altered rules of nature. The genre includes science fiction, fantasy, dystopian and utopian fiction, alternate history and magical realism. It is  hugely popular, especially at the moment, which makes you wonder: what in our current world is pushing writers and readers toward imagined futures and alternate realities?

Dr Rose Michael, herself a multi-published literary speculative fiction novelist, leads an expert panel to consider the importance of asking "What if...?" She says: "I’m super looking forward to what is sure to be an insightful and intriguing conversation about what these authors think speculative fiction is (or could be. I think today, particularly, the affordances of the genre are particularly pertinent and timely as we face climate catastrophe and the rise of AI."

Hosted by the 2026 Dandenong Ranges Literary Festival, this speculative fiction panel consists of bestselling authors Garth Nix, the talented Karen Comer, and Jane Rawson.

Garth Nix has had more than seven million copies of his books sold around the world, which have appeared on multiple international bestseller lists and been translated into 42 languages. In 2025, he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for "services to literature".

Karen Comer is the author of award-winning young adult verse novel Grace Notes (2023) and middle-grade verse novel Sunshine on Vinegar Street (2023). Her latest book is Once Upon Tomorrow (April 2026), a YA verse novel on the future, libraries, climate change, fairytales and family.

Jane Rawson is the author of Human/Nature: On life in a wild world (2025), A history of dreams (2022), From the wreck (2017) and A wrong turn at the Office of Unmade Lists (2013), just to name a few. She is the Managing Editor at Island magazine and co-edited Breathing space, a collection of reflections and projections on nature in Tasmania.

Rose Michael is the author of The Asking Game (2007) and The Art of Navigation (2017). She has published speculative fiction in Island, Griffith Review and Best Australian Stories, and experiments towards her latest novel, Else (September 2025), appeared in Meanjin and Science Write Now, as well as international journals Antipodes and Speculative Nonfiction.

Panelist Jane Rawson has this to say:

"There is no genre (including literary fiction) that I love reading more than speculative fiction. This is the realm of ideas, of imagination and - most importantly for me - of politics. This is where the big thinking happens, where writers ask, 'what if society worked this way instead of that way', 'what if we had to genuinely contend with the way we treat other creatures', 'what if we had to live with the consequences of our actions'? Speculative fiction is the genre that can permanently shift the way you understand the world. And there is honestly no greater thrill than reading a book that splits your brain open and lets in a great big new idea."