John Birmingham

Centuries after they were defeated and exiled to dark space, The Sturm have returned. The Sturm, an empire of species purists, have come back from the farthest reaches of Dark Space to wage a war against what they call mutants and borgs: any human being with genetic or neural engineering. In a sneak attack on the galaxy-spinning networks, they overwhelmed...

In A Time For War: Australia as a Military Power, John Birmingham ponders the Australian way of war. After East Timor and Bali, a combination of primal fear and primal ambition has transformed attitudes to our region, to security, and to war as an instrument of politics. Australian defence policy has become more assertive, and our armed forces are being...

John Birmingham is a master of good writing and funny lines. He has written a thousand stories, some true, some not so much. These are the best ones and they're so good, and so funny, there has been no barrel-scraping involved. Really, Stranger Thingies could have been much longer. The pieces contained within these pages run the gamut from the...

In the second Quarterly Essay, John Birmingham takes apart the folly of twenty-five years of Australian policy on East Timor. How did Gough Whitlam and Richard Woolcott in 1975 saddle this country with a policy that was bound to lead to the intervention of 1999? Why were shrewder voices ignored and why did we persist with an unworkable model? Where...

An electrifying, epic history of the city of Sydney as you have never seen her before. To peer deeply into this ghost city, the one lying beneath the surface, is to understand that Sydney has a soul and that it is a very dark place indeed. Beneath the shining harbour, amid the towers of global greed and deep inside the...

With their advanced tech rendered null by the Sturm's attack, humanity face certain annihilation. Their only hope lies with a few brave souls who survived the initial onslaught – these five heroes might be humanity's only hope. Centuries after they were defeated and exiled to Dark Space, the Sturm have returned. The Sturm, an empire of species purists, have returned...

Beauty is good, but coin is better. You can't eat artistic integrity. It tastes like sawdust. This gonzo guide is a lesson in the practicalities of writing: how to be productive, professional and maybe one day even pay the rent. Topics covered include 'How to slay writer's block', 'What the hell is workflow?', 'How to write 10,000 words in a...

The Shattered Skies by John Birmingham Centuries after they were defeated and exiled to dark space, The Sturm have returned. The Sturm, an empire of species purists, have returned from the farthest reaches of Dark Space to wage a war against what they call mutants and borgs: any human being with genetic or neural engineering. In a sneak attack on...

With a ruthless sect of humanity intent on wiping out their species, five intrepid heroes must think like their enemies in this epic sci-fi adventure. They thought the Sturm were dead. They were wrong. Centuries after their defeat, the enemy has returned with an overwhelming attack on the fringes of human space. On the brink of annihilation, humankind's only hope...