The Baroness is from a collection of twelve stories, with the working title of Everyone on Mars: stories from the Red Shift. In these stories set in the near future, despite all obstacles humanity has colonised Mars, largely for its minerals as foreseen by previous generations of writers, such as the great Philip K. Dick. The collection is an imagining of the impact — psychological, interpersonal, existential — of our colonisation.

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Detective fiction is hardly a traditional subject for poetry, yet there is clearly a perennial fascination with crime and crime solving. The Detective’s Chair exploits the conceit that the 32 detectives presented here do most of their reflecting, cogitating, puzzling, meditating and nutting-out in the embrace of a favourite chair.

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In the light of the sad news of John Tranter’s death on 21 April 2023, I have resurrected the full text of the interview I conducted with him in 1990 on one of his visits to Tasmania – probably for one of the wonderful writers festivals organised by what was then the Tasmanian Writers Union. At the time, he was staying as the TWU’s guest in their Writers Cottage in Battery Point, with its sunny views of Salamanca and the docks beyond. 

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