Born in Melbourne in 1944, Damien Broderick attended Monash University where he co-edited the student newspaper Lot's Wife. He holds a PhD from Deakin University in the comparative semiotics of science and literature, with particular attention to science fiction. He had a brief career in journalism before becoming a full-time writer, mainly of science fiction. Broderick's strong Catholic upbringing and his hunger for SF were the two major influences in his early life that propelled him into a career as a fiction writer. He has become one of the leading writers of Australian SF, which can stand for science fiction or Broderick's preferred term, speculative fiction. His work has been widely anthologised in Australian and overseas publications.

Among Broderick's many published works are the novels Sorcerer's World (1970), The Dreaming Dragons (1980), The Judas Mandala (1982), Transmitters (1984), The Dark Between the Stars (1991) and The Book of Revelation (1999). His novels depend on complex plots involving several forms of time travel and parallel or altered realities. The Dreaming Dragons was runner-up in the worldwide John W Campbell Memorial Prize for science fiction. The White Abacus (1997) is a futuristic version of Shakespeare's Hamlet. He has collaborated with Rory Barnes, a colleague from Monash student days, on several publications including Valencies (1983) and Zones (1997).

His non-fiction includes The Architecture of Babel (1994), which gives his view of post-structuralist literary and cultural theory, finding it to be in tension with the philosophy of scientific realism. A stronger critique of this theory can be found in Theory and Its Discontents (1997). He has also written The Spike : Accelerating into the Unimaginable Future (1997), a closely argued exposition about how our lives are being changed by rapidly advancing technologies and The Last Mortal Generation (1999).

Broderick, who has been awarded many fellowships and writing grants has been described as 'the enfant terrible' of Australian SF, taking the genre to the boundaries of its imaginative potential.

Broderick has lived in San Antonio, Texas.

Writer and journalist Erle Cox was best-known for his 1925 novel, Out of the Silence, which has been described as 'a classic work of science fiction. Set in rural Australia, it tells the story of a young vigneron who discovers, buried beneath his land, a huge sphere containing the culture and technology of a past civilization. Cox began to write the book about 1916 but had shaped the idea for it earlier - "pacing up and down the St Kilda sands". At first he was unable to find a publisher but in 1919 the Argus printed the story in weekly instalments between 19 April and 25 October'. Heralding 'its appearance in Melbourne in book form', the Australasian declared: '"No more successful serial story has been published in Australia"'.

For over twenty years, he worked extensively as a film critic, primarily for the Argus and the Australasian. When he died in 1950, his obituary in the Argus noted that 'For 32 years he was a leading figure in Melbourne journalism, and for 17 of those years he wrote, in a style he made his own, pungent criticisms of motion pictures for The Argus and The Australasian.'

Sources:

Australian Dictionary of Biography entry for Erle Cox.

'Death of "The Chiel",' The Argus, 21 November 1950, p.6.

Name under which Striped Holes was originally broadcast on Australian radio, according to contemporary newspaper radio guides.

Born in England, G.K. Saunders graduated from New Zealand's University of Canterbury, before going to work with radio station 3ZD Christchurch.

In 1939, Saunders and his wife emigrated to Australia, where he was introduced to ABC Federal Controller of Productions Frank Clewlow. Clewlow was, at that time, recruiting staff for the ABC's Argonauts Club and the companion program, Children's Session. Begun in Melbourne in 1933, the Argonauts Club ran on ABC radio in Melbourne until 1934, when its creator, Nina Murdoch, moved to Adelaide. It was revived in 1941 as a segment of the nationally broadcast (excluding Western Australia) Children's Session (which would be re-named Children's Hour in 1954, and run under that name until 1972).

Saunders wrote scripts regularly for the Children's Session and for the Macquarie Radio Network's Lux Radio Theatre, until he was recruited into the CSIRO with Australia's entry into World War II. He continued to write scripts during the war years, but in far smaller quantities.

After the war, he was able to concentrate on radio scripts again, including a succession of science-fiction serials for the Children's Hour in the 1950s. The names of these serials are difficult to locate, but his output certainly included 1953's The Moon Flower, which science-fiction writer Bruce Gillespie decribes as follows:

'A radio serial begins. It is called The Moon Flower, and is written by G. K. Saunders. In that serial, a group of what sound like fairly ordinary people take off in a rocket and travel to the moon. After much exploring, they find, at the very bottom of the deepest cave on the Moon, one tiny flower. We know now that that is unlikely; but in 1952 scientists still thought there might be some form of life on the Moon.

It is hard to describe the impact that that serial had on me. For a start, it was presented as being based on 'real science'. The serial was often slowed down for little lectures on travelling in free fall in space, or the extreme temperatures on the Moon, and stuff like that. It was all new to me. And then it offered at its end that thrill of discovering a tiny piece of life on the Moon - in an era when few people expected humans to travel in space until the year 2000'. ('The Pleasures of Reading Science Fiction').

Of Saunders's other serials, Gillespie only says:

'I could find almost nothing in print that gave me the same thrill except for further G. K. Saunders serials on the ABC during the 1950s. In one of them, its main characters make the first trip to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, and there find a planet filled with people much like ourselves - who have never invented music. I've never met this idea in any other SF story. Again I felt the thrill of coming across ideas that nobody around me would ever have considered - that the world, our civilisation, might be entirely different from the way we expect it to be. ('The Pleasures of Reading Science Fiction)'.

There is also some suggestion that Saunders's successful television serial The Stranger began as a radio serial on the Children's Hour.

In 1957, Saunders and his wife moved to England, where he worked as a television script-writer for the BBC. He continued to write for the ABC, however, including the 400-episode serial The Nomads, about a family travelling around Europe by caravan. Successful as the program was, politician Sir Wilfred Kent Hughes openly derided it (in a speech to the Ballarat Young Liberals) as Communist propaganda.

Little is known of the extent of Saunders' writing for the BBC, though he is credited with the radio plays 'A Touch of the Sun' (1962), 'Blood Test' (1965), 'The Nightwatchman' (1965), and 'The Man for the Job' (1972) (see 'Lost Radio Plays'). It is unclear whether or not these are speculative fiction.

He also wrote the television serials The Stranger (1964-1966) and Wandjina! (1966) for the ABC.

Further Reference

'From Mickey Mouse Directly to Drug-taking: The Wreck of the ABC's Argonauts Club'. Interview with John Appleton, former producer of the Argonauts Club and former Director of Children's Programming, ABC. MidstLifeCrisis (http://midstlifecrisis.blogspot.com.au/2010/08/from-mickey-mouse-directly-to-drugs.html). (Sighted: 10/10/2012)

Gillespie, Bruce. 'The Pleasures of Reading Science Fiction'. Originally given as a talk to the Spaced Out meeting, Sat. 15 Feb. 2003. Spaced Out (http://spacedoutinc.org/DU-15/PleasuresOfReadingSF.html). (Sighted: 10/10/2012)

'G.K. Saunders'. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_K_Saunders). (Sighted: 10/10/2012)

'Lost Radio Plays'. Radio Plays and Radio Drama (http://www.suttonelms.org.uk/RADIO1.HTML). (Sighted: 10/10/2012)

Max Afford was born in Adelaide in 1906. He began his career as a journalist, but in the following decades he would go on to write some of the most popular radio and stage plays in Australia. Full of clever schemes and witty dialogue, Afford’s detective stories were extremely popular. He also wrote dramas with political overtones, which ranged from examinations of Australian life after the Second World War to the founding of his home town, Adelaide. In 1938 he married teacher, actor, and costume designer, Thelma Thomas, who later designed costumes for some of his stage plays.

Max Afford worked as a reporter and feature writer at the Adelaide News and Mail from 1929-1934. In 1935 he joined Radio 5DN as a producer and continuity manager. In the early days of his radio career, when Afford was writing thrillers for Adelaide broadcaster 5CL at the rate of at least two a month (c.1934), his works were sometimes only listed in radio guides as 'a radio thriller by Max Afford', with no title or other distinguishing information.

In 1936 his play William Light - the Founder won the South Australian Centenary Drama Competition. The same year saw him move to Sydney (leaving Adelaide on 27 September 1936, according to the Adelaide News of 18 September 1936), where he worked for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for five years before becoming a freelance and prolific writer of fiction and radio plays, gaining enormous popularity as a serial writer. Hagen's Circus (1941), for example, ran for 800 episodes.

In 1939 the Canberra Times reported that Afford was ‘probably the only Australian radio playwright to have sold a serial to the B.B.C.’ His plays sold to the B.B.C. were reported to include Fly By Night, Labours of Hercules, Oh, Whistle When You're Happy, The Four Specialists, and For Fear of Little Men. The same article claims that in South Africa Afford reportedly sold Mr. Allchurch Comes to Stay (this title has not been traced anywhere outside this article), Merry-Go-Round, and Two Hundred Thousand Witnesses. Cairo also reportedly bought some of these plays, and Polskie Radio, in Poland, is said to have asked for The Four Specialists, which was also sold to Canada, where he sold For Fear of Little Men ('Australian Radio Plays: Success of A.B.C. Playwrights Abroad', Canberra Times, 14 August 1939, p.2.).

None of these productions have been traced so far, though his Queer Affair at Kettering was produced twice by the BBC in the 1940s. Afford's stage play Lady in Danger, was the first Australian play produced on Broadway (1945), although it was not well received there.

Afford’s success as a radio play writer has been attributed to his mastery of radio drama techniques as well as to his exciting plots and realistic characterisation. As well as the plays he also published six detective novels. Their central character, the detective Jeffery Blackburn, also featured in a number of his radio plays.

A chain smoker, Afford died of cancer at the age of 48.

Sources: 

"AUSTRALIAN RADIO PLAYS" The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 - 1995) 14 August 1939: 2. Web. 30 Jan 2018 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2509535>.

"PERSONAL PARAGRAPHS" News (Adelaide, SA : 1923 - 1954) 18 September 1936: 5. Web. 30 Jan 2018 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article132026897>.

Additional Sources:

Max Afford's Playwright's Award

Australian Dictionary of Biography - Max Afford

Project Gutenberg - The Vanishing Trick (contains a brief biography)

Linda Neil is a Brisbane writer, musician, and script writer. She has taught Creative Writing at The University of Queensland.

Neil is the author of two memoirs: Learning to Breathe (2009) and All is Given (2016). She has also written highly awarded radio documentaries, including The Asylum Seekers (2004: shortlisted for the United Nations Association of Australia Media Peace Awards), The Sound of Blue (2008: awarded a Bronze Medal at the New York Festival), and The Long Walk of Brother Benedict (2011: awarded a Gold medal at the New York Festival and nominated for best documentary script at the 2011 AWGIEs).

'Born In Melbourne In 1900, Mr. Peters was educated at preparatory schools, Melbourne Grammar School, and finally under private tuition. He became a teacher of physics and chemistry on the staff of the Berwick Grammar School and has specialised in child psychology. Leaving school for journalism, he held a post on the staff of the "Evening Sun" and also contributed articles to the "Age." the "Herald," and other newspapers. From 1925 to 1928 he turned his attention to other forms of literature and wrote a number of short stories which were published in English and Australian journals. He then Joined C. Alston Pearl and others in the production of a magazine of "highbrow" matter called "Stream." in 1929, through the influence of the Federal Controller of Drama for the Commission (Mr. F. Clewlow), he resumed play writing, and since then has had a number of his works produced.'

Source:

'Radio Drama Week', The Mercury, 11 May 1938, p.14.

New Zealand-born Jennifer Compton first came to Australia in the early 1970s after studying drama and working as an actress and stage manager; she settled permanently in Australia in 1983. Compton attended the Playwrights' Studio at the National Institute of Dramatic Art after her arrival in Sydney. During her year there she wrote her award-winning play Crossfire. In addition to her stage plays Compton has written plays for ABC Radio and for NZBC and has written episodes for the ABC Television series Certain Women.

Compton is also a prize-winning and much-published poet. In 1996 she was the first poet to win a New South Wales Writers' Fellowship. The Fellowship enabled her to complete her collection Speaking with Voices.

Compton has lived for an extended period at Wingello, in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. In 2006 she was the writer-in-residence at the B. R. Whiting Library in Rome.