"[2] He has been Guest of Honour at several Australian science fiction conventions (including Syncon 87 and Swancon 15) and regularly tutors workshops on fantasy writing at venues including the New South Wales Writers' Centre, University of Sydney Centre for Continuing Education,[3] the Powerhouse Museum, the University of Canberra's Centre for Creative Writing, the Perth Writer's Festival and the University of Western Australia Perth International Arts Festival [1]- (for example, "Marvellous Journeys: Science Fiction & Fantasy Writing" and "Worlds and Futures That Work: What you need and what to avoid").

He was also highly influenced by the Surrealist painters, particularly Salvador Dalí, Paul Delvaux, Max Ernst and Giorgio de Chirico.

Dowling's earliest published stories were "Illusion of Motion" and "Oriental on the Murder Express", both published in Enigma, the magazine of SUSFA, the Sydney University SF Society, and "Shade of Encounter" in the second issue of Science Fiction: A Review of Speculative Literature, on which Dowling became assistant editor and short-notice book-reviewer and eventually co-editor (with Van Ikin).

[7] Some of Dowling's reviews and critical pieces which first appeared in Science Fiction magazine in the 1980s have seen reprint, including "Catharsis Among the Byzantines: Delany's Driftglass" (1982) and the long essay "The Lever of life: Cordwainer Smith as Ethical Pragmatist" (1982).

[8] Dowling began to publish short stories prolifically in the 1980s and was soon recognised as one of Australia's most talented science fiction writers, winning the Ditmar Award multiple times.

The 'Rynosseros Cycle' would not conclude until publication of the fourth volume in 2007, but stands amongst Dowling's most important work – a major conceptual series achievement in Australian science fiction.

In this future Australia, high technology and mysticism co-exist, and piracy and an intricate social order breed a new kind of hero.

Ab'O Princes use satellites to spy on tribal conflicts, and graceful wind-propelled sand-ships roll across the deserts, giving [the series] its symbol of freedom and inquiry.

[11] David McKie has written: "Thematically, the work of Terry Dowling...extends the cyberspace of neuromancers Pat Cadigan, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling to an imaginative future Australia where the human/technology interface fuses Koori psychic technology with communication satellites in a sparse landscape populated by organicised artificial intelligences.

"[12] Brian Attebery offers another critical standpoint: "Dowling's Rynosseros (1990) and subsequent collections marked a greater maturation of science fictional explorations of Aboriginal culture.Focusing on the adventures of a non-Aboriginal, or 'National' hero operating within this cultural sphere, Dowling's Tom Tyson stories offer sophisticated narrative techniques, memorable images, and troubling themes.

Rynosseros adapts the SF tradition of Cordwainer Smith and Jack Vance - characterised by distant futures; radically altered humanity; technological effects that resemble magic; and exuberant, even baroque language - to the Australian scene.

Against the backdrop of Australia's wide, arid interior, Dowling places great sand-ships, talking belltrees, shapeshifters, cyborgs, and visionaries, while overhead, tribal satellites guard against encroachments from the remnants of white population along the coast.

An extra apostrophe and capital letter did not provide, for many readers, sufficient estrangement of an all-too-familiar term....As Dowling's series has developed, he has worked very hard to create an alternative vision of racial and tribal identities, to provide a genuinely new concept to go with the estranged term, but it is not an easy task for an outsider to imagine a new form of selfhood for a group that has been so strongly Othered.

[2] Dowling was awarded a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Western Australia in 2006 for his mystery/dark fantasy/horror novel, Clowns at Midnight, and accompanying dissertation The Interactive Landscape: New Modes of Narrative in Science Fiction, in which he examined the computer adventure game as an important new area of storytelling.

[17] Dowling holds the distinction of having more stories than any other single writer selected for the anthology series Year's Best Horror and Fantasy (edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling during its twenty-year run from 1988 to 2008.

[6] Chapbooks As well as appearances in The Year's Best Science Fiction, The Year's Best SF, The Mammoth Book of Best New SF, The Year's Best Fantasy, The Best New Horror, all five volumes of Exotic Gothic, and The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror (a record eight times; he is the only author to have had two stories in the 2002 volume, one chosen by each editor), his work has appeared in such major anthologies as Centaurus: The Best of Australian Science Fiction, The Best Australian Science Fiction Writing, The Dark, Dreaming Down Under, Gathering the Bones and The Oxford Book of Australian Ghost Stories and in such diverse publications as the prestigious SciFiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Interzone, Oceans of the Mind, Ténèbres, Ikarie, Japan's SF and Russia's Game.

In The Year's Best Science Fiction 21 (reprinting Dowling's story "Flashmen"), twelve-time Hugo Award-winning US editor Gardner Dozois called him: "One of the best-known and most celebrated of Australian writers in any genre”, while in the Year's Best Fantasy 4 (reprinting "One Thing About the Night”), editors David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer described him as a "master craftsman" and "one of the best prose stylists in science fiction and fantasy.” Dowling has also been called "Australia's finest writer of horror" by Locus magazine, and "Australia's premier writer of dark fantasy" by All Hallows (February 2004).

"For the US edition of Rynosseros (1993), multi-award-winning US Grand Master Harlan Ellison said of Terry: "Here is Jack Vance, Cordwainer Smith, and Tiptree/Sheldon come again, reborn in one wonderful talent.

If you lament the chicanery and boredom of so much of today's shopworn sf, then like those of us who've been reading his award-winning stories for a few years now, you'll purr and growl with delight at your great discovery of the remarkable, brilliant Terry Dowling.

[5] Dowling also won the 1983 William Atheling Jr. Award for Criticism for his essay: "Kirth Gersen: The Other Demon Prince”, Science Fiction: A Review of Speculative Literature, Vol 4, No 2, June 1982.