It might have been worse had the imports of American pulp magazines not been restricted during World War II, forcing local writers into the field.
[1] Early (pre-Second World War) Australian science fiction was often what today one could consider racist and xenophobic, fueled by contemporary worries about invasion and foreigners (see White Australia policy).
This decision was prompted by the moral majority, who claimed comics and other 'objectionable' material were undermining societal mores, and an importation crisis due to World War II.
Japanese submarines were attacking Sydney, and Spitfires and Zeroes were fighting it out above Australia's northern coasts and towns.
Imported science fiction was an unthinkable luxury in Australia under these circumstances, yet thanks to government inertia the embargo was not lifted until thirteen years after the war ended, in 1958.
John Baxter edited a number of early collections of Australian science fiction for Angus and Robertson publishers.
In the 1970s Van Ikin established the important critical journal Science Fiction co-edited by Terry Dowling.
Ikin has edited a number of seminal anthologies including Glass Reptile Breakout, Australian Science Fiction and Mortal Fire (the latter with Terry Dowling).
[9] Another Australian, Peter Nicholls, was awarded a Hugo in 1980[10] and shared one with John Clute in 1994[11] (for a revised version) of a similar critical review of the world's sf, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
The Guardian reports that: "Peek and Davidson join a host of names who readers of speculative fiction all over the English-reading world will recognise: Garth Nix, Trudi Canavan, Margo Lanagan, Sara Douglass, Damien Broderick, Cecila Dart-Thornton, Greg Egan, Alison Goodman, Sean McMullen, Glenda Larke, Sean Williams and Justine Larbalestier.