AustLit

'Unpredictability is one of humankind’s most treasured traits. We believe unpredictability to be the lifeblood of hope, the core of belief, the substance of our psyches, the unfulfilled potential that exists in each one of us. We therefore celebrate unpredictability as predictably as we seek it out. We want unpredictability to be a personal and communal trait that always measures us favourably against machines and against nature. Elements of the predictable (the cyclical, the quantifiable, the repetitive and the habitual) simply make machines and wild nature inhuman. To be human, alternatively, is to be unpredictable. It is in unpredictability that human love is thought to dwell, and in unpredictability where it thrives. The extraordinary strength of a love, the resilience of a love, the emerging love, born where it could not be expected to be found, the love between polar opposites, the love not unsettled by onerous circumstance, the love that overcomes distance or challenges time, the love that is uniquely, individually, idiosyncratically expressed. Our attraction to each of these is evidence of our belief in the importance and power of human unpredictability.' (Introduction)