Volume 36 Nº 1 - March 2000

Different worldviews in Australian children's science fiction, 1940-1980

John Foster

In a paper she delivered on the topic of children's science fiction at a conference in Sydney in 1972, Lilith Norman concluded:

I don't know if I have given you an insight into SF for the younger reader. The paddock is so bare, just a scraggly tussock here and there, that I feel I have been padding to fill out the time allotted. (Norman 1972: 116)

Had she been discussing only Australian children's science fiction, the paddock would have seemed positively drought-stricken because, in her paper, Norman did not mention one local title...

John Foster is director of the Centre for Children's Literature at the University of South Australia and has co-written three books on aspects of the topic.