Endeavour: Reimagining History as Speculative Fiction for Young Adults

Abstract

<p>Endeavour is a two-part creative practice PhD project: a creative artefact in the form of a speculative fiction novel for a young adult audience and an exegesis that explore the question ‘How can contemporary understandings of the past be used to shape a YA speculative fiction that reframes Australia’s history?’ Working with the story of how Australia was first settled by European colonisers, this creative practice PhD project engages with the premise that there is value in reflecting on contemporary understandings of history and using them to think about the future.</p> <p>In the novel Endeavour, illness, deprivation and a lack of education have left Australia with an excess of orphaned, abandoned juvenile delinquents, more than they can house in the country’s traditional jails. The protagonist, Lela, who works as a PeaceKeeper for the Australian Central Government, finds herself involved in the government’s next plan, to ship the convicts off-world to a new planet, a moon of Venus named Gondwana, to begin an Australian penal colony, run in tandem by the Government and the Polytarian Church, a powerful multi-faith organisation that controls both education and healthcare. The planet is deemed habitable but proves to be barely so and the land is inhabited not only by carnivorous primeval beasts, but by a humanoid race who have no desire to share their planet. As the story progresses, Lela is forced to consider her role and to go along with the government’s plans, or to turn revolutionary. The story is a reimagining of modern Australia’s origin story, looking through the eyes of a teenage girl who wants neither the role of convict or coloniser, but something more.</p> <p>Building on the novel, the exegesis elucidates several questions: 1) What is the value of reimagining the past in futuristic or fantastical settings? 2) What can be learned from other contributions to this field? 3) What does the decision to write for a young adult audience change about the ways in which a speculative reimagining might be written? 4) Can an original speculative story about Australia’s colonisation be created for a young adult audience that fulfils the expectations of the previous questions?</p>