Strange Attractor

Overview

Think about the desert.

It is everything that we are not. Immense. Dry. Unyielding. On a geological timescale, the fate of our planet has been caught up in a tug-of-war between the deserts and the oceans since the lava first cooled.

Yet, for the corporate world the desert is the source of life; black gold, yellowcake, and a whole ton of dead wood. Why else would a sane person stake a claim in those alien lands?

In Strange Attractor, Sue Smith, writer of Bastard Boys and Brides of Christ, focuses in on the remnants of a construction party pinned down in Western Australia's Pilbara region after a destructive cylcone. While they wait for civilisation to return, the workers do their best to ignore the dusty boredom of the desert.

Which is just doable, until the night another storm arrives.

Image: Olivia Martin-McGuire