{"product_id":"a-man-returned-by-damien-broderick","title":"'A Man Returned' by Damien Broderick","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"11\" data-end=\"623\"\u003eFirst edition paperback. For the sci-fi collector in your life, this is quite special.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem data-start=\"11\" data-end=\"27\"\u003eA Man Returned\u003c\/em\u003e gathers early short fiction by \u003cspan class=\"hover:entity-accent entity-underline inline cursor-pointer align-baseline\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"whitespace-normal\"\u003eDamien Broderick\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e, written at a moment when Australian sci-fi was still figuring out its own voice—somewhere between imported pulp sensibilities and something more speculative, philosophical, and locally inflected.\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"11\" data-end=\"623\"\u003eThe stories move across space, time, and altered states of consciousness: astronauts unmoored from certainty, bodies behaving unpredictably, reality slipping at the edges. There’s a recurring sense of cognitive dislocation—characters encountering not just the unknown, but the limits of their own frameworks for understanding it. The ideas are very much of that mid-century “what if reality breaks?” lineage, but the tone is what sticks. The slightly uneasy, occasionally surreal, and introspective lilt is striking compared to other in this genre of the time. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"625\" data-end=\"1057\"\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"hover:entity-accent entity-underline inline cursor-pointer align-baseline\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"whitespace-normal\"\u003eNow, Damien Broderick\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e isn’t just a random pulp writer—he’s one of the more intellectually inclined figures in Australian science fiction. Later in his career he moved into criticism, futurism, and pretty dense theoretical work around consciousness, AI, and speculative thought.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"625\" data-end=\"1057\"\u003eIn these stories can feel Broderick testing the boundary between hard sci-fi and something closer to psychological or existential fiction—less about gadgets, more about perception under pressure.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44194105196627,"sku":null,"price":38.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Untitleddesign-2026-03-17T180336.126.png?v=1773731054","url":"https:\/\/bowerbooks.com\/products\/a-man-returned-by-damien-broderick","provider":"bower books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}