AustLit

'Set in the near future, Ghost Species depicts a frighteningly familiar world. Seasons come early and stay late, to the deep confusion of plants and animals. There are constant forest fires and relentless extinctions. Far from being the stuff of dystopian fantasy, these are the conditions in which we now live our lives. Last summer, choking on smoke under orange-grey skies, many of us in eastern Australia experienced every day the feeling described here, that ‘something is deeply awry’. James Bradley has been one of our country’s most outspoken and prolific commentators on the climate crisis, and his warnings about the environmental devastation that is already locked into the future have started to bite in ways that can no longer be ignored. Now, with coronavirus so quickly following the bushfires, we recognise even more clearly the state of constant, underlying dread portrayed in this novel, with its ‘sense of hastening, a dislocation deep in the fabric of things’.' (Introduction)