Playing Nice Was Getting Me Nowhere

The short story is one of the most challenging forms to craft well – balancing creativity with restraint, densely packed world-building with trusting the reader and leaving space for the story to expand outward after reading. Alexander Cothren, an award-winning short-story author and creative writing lecturer, achieves that delicate balance, with 16 short stories each featuring bold concepts wrapped around a kernel of intimate human emotion – a blend of dystopian social eco-horror with echoes of Ray Bradbury and Black Mirror. Creating characters that stay with you after reading a novel is no mean feat, but in as few as four pages? A craftsperson is at work.

Whether through the form of traditional first-person narratives, records of a government inquiry, a collection of newspaper headlines or an academic journal article, Cothren deftly builds possible futures that seem just a stone’s throw from our own. The variety of lengths, too, makes it an enjoyable read – each piece is exactly as long as it needs to be.

Stand-out stories include ‘Day Gaming Trade Report’, an electronic gaming room plagued by uncanny happenings and the protesting widow of a late VIP; ‘Let’s Talk Trojan Bee’, reporting on the sudden arrival of unexpected bees, who save a devastated agricultural industry and inspire a right-wing conspiracy; an interview with Mark Tavern in ‘Quantum Custody Officer’; and the titular ‘Playing Nice Was Getting Me Nowhere’, a qualitative study reporting on an unnamed university whose staff keep suddenly and mysteriously dying. Reckoning with immigration, housing, domestic violence, gambling, education, the climate crisis, workplace politics, class, the media, virtual reality and internet forums, Cothren balances wit with empathy, and curiosity with caution, uniquely presented in a predominantly Australian context.