In a near-future Australia, Maggie Garewal knows that her moment has arrived. Working on policy with a newly installed government, she is desperate to use what leverage she has to secure real change: a redistributive program to help millions, stricken jobless by automation, into a purposeful life.
But progress never comes easily, especially in an augmented reality that blends truth, illusion and misdirection. Navigating manipulative politicians, public shaming, religious fundamentalists and foreign powers, Maggie is confronted with impossible decisions about the kind of future she wants for herself and her society.
Daringly speculative and yet all too recognisable, Here Are My Demands is a story about fighting on in the face of resistance, and the unprecedented hazards of a world our children have already started to inhabit.
Praise for Here Are My Demands
'If spec-econ isn’t a genre already, it just got invented. I thoroughly enjoyed this adventure in democracy, technology and political possibility. Roff's clever, imaginative mix of satire and serious ideas dreams big – and unlike the current field, it doesn’t disappoint.' - Jennifer Mills
'Ingenious, compelling and terrifically fun, Andrew Roff's vision of our political future is more than just believable – it seems almost destined.' - Ben Walter
'This is the real deal: smart, wildly imaginative speculative fiction that you'll read in one sitting and then think about for weeks.' - Jeff Sparrow
'Andrew Roff's Here Are My Demands is a thoughtful and well-realised Australian science fiction with political thriller elements. Its characters inhabit a not-too-distant future with inspired and sometimes uncomfortably realistic settings and scenarios. We zone in on a young, flawed and empathetic political player, Maggie, and through her Roff explores ideas of ego, privilege, discontent, ambition, and necessary threads of hope and (post)humanity.' - Angela Meyer
'Has there ever been a more timely book? As the attack on the human worker escalates and we watch our political systems falter under the influence of unchecked wealth – I beg you to read Here Are My Demands. Who thought an exploration of universal basic income could be so thrilling? This book is an excellent and urgent example of the way speculative fiction makes it possible to see current events clearly and imagine a different future.' - Pip Adam
Price range: $19.95 through $34.95
Andrew Roff's short fiction has appeared in Meanjin, Overland, Griffith Review and Going Down Swinging, among other outlets. He was the winner of the 2020 Peter Carey Short Story Award and the 2018 Margaret River Press Short Story Competition, as well as having been shortlisted and commended in many other short story prizes. In 2016, his first novel was shortlisted for the Wakefield Press Unpublished Manuscript Award at Adelaide Writers Week.