Sometime in the future Australia shuts itself off from the world. The geopolitical landscape looks very different. The eastern states have morphed into the Federal Republic of East Australia. Its anagram, FREA, might sound like ‘free’, but this would be ironic: the country’s central government is a culture-repressing kleptocracy.
Julian Ferryman is a bass player in the Acceptables (the band name does what it says on the box: the band play music ‘allowed’ by the government). He’s just returned from South America having experienced a new synthetic drug, nicknamed ‘F’. Users experience visions of the future. The band have a new album, written while Julian was away. His best friend, Ash, is now partnered with Oriana, Julian’s ex, and his new songs’ contentious lyrics point an angry finger at the government. The band must somehow navigate the government’s retribution.
Meanwhile, in Japan, the narrative follows friends Yumi and Ren. (This, for me, was the strongest and most well-written narrative thread.) Their lives diverge before reconnecting when Yumi is an oncologist and Ren has end-stage cancer. Yumi supplies F to Ren with surprising results: she glimpses her life after death, where ‘heaven’ is a shopping mall. The two strands eventually merge (conveniently and unconvincingly). Oriana has an endless supply of F, and Julian seems to be a super-responder, seeing far into the future with disturbing accuracy. Oriana uses Julian’s visions in her resistance to government oppression.
While ‘F’ does stand for ‘future’, it also neatly represents both Julian’s surname and ‘foreshadowing’, allowing Prosser to continually hook the reader. The premise surrounding glitches in time is wonderful and Prosser’s writing shows glimpses of brilliance in this sprawling (but sometimes unwieldy) narrative.
Reviewed by Bob Moore
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jordan Prosser is a writer, director, and performer from Naarm/Melbourne.
His films have screened at festivals across Australia and the world. In 2018, his feature screenplay for Hungry Man won the prestigious Shore Scripts international screenwriting prize. In 2019 he served as script editor and story consultant on the VicScreen/Stan development fund project, Bulldog’s Alley, and his feature screenplay Cherry took out 1st place in the Horror/Thriller category of the Slamdance Screenplay Competition. He co-wrote the screenplay for Justin Dix’s Blood Vessel, starring Nathan Philips and Alyssa Sutherland, released worldwide and acquired by Shudder in 2020.
In 2022, Jordan was one of nine writers selected for Impact Australia, an intensive eight-week screenwriting incubator run by Imagine Entertainment. That same year, he won the Peter Carey Short Story Award, was published in Meanjin literary journal, and had his debut novel, Big Time published in 2024.
As an actor, Jordan has appeared in Jonathan M Schiff’s The Elephant Princess, as a voice actor in Happy Feet 2, in the short films Shoplifting, Northkids and Body Movie, and in Alice Foulcher and Gregory Erdstein’s 2017 festival favourite That’s Not Me. He toured Australia as part of the company of the West End comedy hit, The Play That Goes Wrong, and rejoined the team for the 2018/2019 international tour of Peter Pan Goes Wrong. In 2020 he appeared in Hannah Camilleri’s web series Little Shits.
Jordan attended the Victorian College of the Arts School of Film & Television, completing his Bachelor’s degree in 2009, and his Honours year in 2012. He is represented by Writ Large Management in Los Angeles.
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