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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'One morning, the residents of a coastal small town wake to discover the sea has disappeared, leaving them 'landlocked'. However, the narrator has been seeing visions of this cataclysm for years. Is she a prophet? Does she have a disorder that skews her perception of time (the 'Dyschronia' of the title). Or is she just a liar?
'Mills' novel takes contemporary issues of resource depletion and climate change and welds them to one young woman's migraine-inducing nightmares. Her narrator's prevision anticipates a world where entire communities are left to fend for themselves: economically drained, socially fractured, trapped between a hardscrabble past and an uncertain future.' (Publication summary)
Notes
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Epigraph: Tell the emperor that my hall has fallen to the ground. Phoibos no longer has his house, nor his mantic bay, nor his prophetic spring; the water has dried up. -The Phthia's last oracle at Delphi, 362 AD.
Affiliation Notes
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Preppers and Survivalism in the AustLit Database
This work has been affiliated with the Preppers and Survivalism project due to its relationship to either prepping or prepper-inflected survivalism more generally, and contains one or more of the following:
1. A strong belief in some imminent threat
2. Taking active steps to prepare for that perceived threat- A range of activities not necessarily associated with ‘prepping’ take on new significance, when they are undertaken with the express purpose of preparing for and/or surviving perceived threats, e.g., gardening, abseiling.
- The plausibility of the threat, and the relative “reasonable-ness” of the response, don’t affect this definition. E.g., if someone is worried about climate change and climate disasters, and they respond by moving from a riverbank location in Cairns, or to a highland region of New Zealand, this makes them a prepper. If someone else is worried about brainwashing rays from outer space, and they respond by making a tinfoil hat, that makes them a prepper.
3. A character or characters (or text) who self-identify as a ‘prepper’, or some synonymous/modified term: ‘financial preppers’, ‘weekend preppers’, ‘fitness preppers’, etc.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Also large print.
- Also dyslexic edition
Works about this Work
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Settler Belonging in Crisis : Non-Indigenous Australian Literary Climate Fiction and the Challenge of “The New”
2023
single work
criticism
— Appears in: ISLE : Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment , Winter vol. 30 no. 4 2023; (p. 952–971) -
Seeking Greener Pages : An Analysis of Reader Response to Australian Eco- Crime Fiction
2023
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Humanities Review , May no. 71 2023; 'IN THEIR WORK ON HOW NARRATIVE MAY HELP AUDIENCES THINK DIFFERENTLY ABOUT other species, Wojciech Malecki et al. refer to the ‘narrative turn’ within academia and its proliferation of research that addresses how ‘moral intuitions often yield to narrative persuasion’ (2). In other words, many scholars are currently asking whether narratives can persuade readers to reflect on and perhaps reconsider their own moral beliefs. The research presented in this paper follows a similar trajectory in its discussion of the results and possible implications of a reader response study that investigated how Australian readers respond to works of Australian eco-crime fiction that portray non-humans and global ecological issues such as climate change in a local Australian context. Resonant with ‘narrative persuasion’—the idea amongst social scientists that ‘a narrative is a catalyst for perspective change’ (Hamby et al. 114)—we consider the capacity of such texts to possibly engage readers with the plight of non-humans in Australia under the impacts of climate change.' (Introduction) -
Dystopia Creep
2022
single work
essay
— Appears in: Meanjin , September vol. 81 no. 3 2022; (p. 38-46) 'The Centre for National Resilience was an uncanny place. Rows of beige-grey dongas with small shared verandahs faced each other, a concrete strip and a bit of gravel between them. The rows were separated into sections, and the sections were separated by chainlink fencing, numbered and lettered with laminated signs. We were placed in H block. You have to laugh.' (Introduction) -
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At Home with Jennifer Mills
Astrid Edwards
(interviewer),
2021
23448370
2021
single work
podcast
interview
'Jennifer Mills is the author of the novels The Airways, Dyschronia, Gone and The Diamond Anchor, as well as a collection of short stories, The Rest Is Weight. In 2019 Dyschronia was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, Australia’s most prestigious prize for literary fiction, the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature, and the Aurealis Awards for science fiction.' (Production introduction)
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What I’m Reading
2020
single work
column
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2020;
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Civilisation Faces Tacit Test of Time
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 27 January 2018; (p. 19)
— Review of Dyschronia 2018 single work novel'Sam Warren wakes one morning to discover that her mother, Ivy, has broken into her house. It’s been years since Sam last saw her. Longer still since her mother walked out, 'saying she needed time, as if time wasn’t everywhere, seeping into every crevice'.' (Introduction)
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[Review] Dyschronia
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: Aurealis , no. 109 2018;
— Review of Dyschronia 2018 single work novel -
Of Jennifer Mills, Dyschronia
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: Long Paddock , vol. 77 no. 3 2018;
— Review of Dyschronia 2018 single work novel'Reading this book transported me to the days when I read fiction before studying it, under tables at school, in the library, on the porch smoking cigarettes while my parents were sleeping, wondering how surreal yet possible all these fictional worlds seemed. I thought about this moment in my life while reading Dyschronia (2018) simply because devoting one’s life to learning how to write inevitably jeopardises the sense of mystery that one initially found alluring.' (Introduction)
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Remembering the Future
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: TEXT : Journal of Writing and Writing Courses , October vol. 22 no. 2 2018;
— Review of Dyschronia 2018 single work novel'If the literary technique of ‘defamiliarisation’ is the usual means through which writers jolt people into seeing the world anew, how does a dystopian novelist shock us into seeing the environmental extremities of today, when ‘extremes’ are increasingly the norm? Furthermore, how can such a writer hope to contribute something original to our long tradition of dystopian fiction, and its rapidly growing sub-genre of ‘Cli-Fi’[1]? Jennifer Mills has taken on these challenges with her new novel, Dyschronia. This striking title refers to the novel’s structural and thematic preoccupation with temporal disorder, while cleverly alluding to both the novel’s genre and to the feeling of ‘dysphoria’ experienced by its protagonist, Sam (66) – that deep sense of ‘unease’ which provokes, and should be provoked by, dystopian stories.' (Introduction)
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Coatal Recall
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: The Adelaide Review , September no. 475 2019; (p. 10)
— Review of Dyschronia 2018 single work novel 'In her Miles Franklin Literary Award shortlisted novel Dyschronia, author Jennifer Mills explores the tension between ecological and industrial transformation in a fictional, but recognisably South Australian, coastal town.' (Introduction) -
Jennifer Mills : Dyschronia
2018
single work
column
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 27 January - 2 February 2018;'In our era of climate change, prophecies about our future are commonplace. Scientists are our key prophets nowadays – though they are often repudiated or betrayed, like the religious prophets of old – but writers also increasingly offer their prognostications. Dyschronia, the third novel by the Australian writer Jennifer Mills, is another contribution to the future-oriented genre of cli-fi or climate-change fiction. Future gazing is also thematised by Mills’ novel.' (Introduction)
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'A Crack in Its Earth'
2018
single work
essay
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , March no. 399 2018; (p. 38)'Recent years have seen the literary novel begin to mutate, its boundaries and subject matter evolving in new and sometimes surprising directions as it attempts to accommodate the increasing weirdness of the world we inhabit.' (Introduction)
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Layers of Now : Jennifer Mills’ Dyschronia
2018
single work
essay
— Appears in: Kill Your Darlings [Online] , February 2018;'A looping, surrealist vision of a small town wracked by climate change lays bare our collective myopia about the future.'
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Jennifer Mills
Astrid Edwards
(interviewer),
2018
14753561
2018
single work
interview
podcast
'In this interview, Jennifer discusses her writing process, reflects on her different approaches to fiction and non-fiction, and offers advice to emerging writers who are pitching to literary journals.' (Introduction)
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Climate Change Was so Last Year : Writers’ Festivals and the Great Derangement
2018
single work
essay
— Appears in: Overland [Online] , September 2018;'Every other day, it seems, a new controversy erupts around the programming decisions of one or another of Australia’s ever-proliferating literary festivals. If the object of outrage is not an unrepresentative panel discussion, it’s a politically contentious keynote, or else a disastrous clash between ill-suited speakers. Whatever the specifics, the regularity with which such brouhahas flare up speaks to our anxieties about what purpose literary festivals serve.' (Introduction)
Awards
- 2020 shortlisted Festival Awards for Literature (SA) Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature South Australian Literary Awards — Award for Fiction
- 2019 shortlisted Miles Franklin Literary Award
- 2018 shortlisted Aurealis Awards for Excellence in Australian Speculative Fiction — Science Fiction Division — Novel