A conspiracy theory about bees divides a nation.

A haunted pokie machine seeks revenge.

A ‘smart’ home becomes a little too clever.

In Playing Nice Was Getting Me Nowhere, Cothren explores the ethos of the end times, testing the limits of technology, humanity and modern media. His predictions are incisive, shocking and terribly plausible, tracing our contemporary obsessions to their logical – and often dire – conclusions.

Yet amid the horror are moments of hope and resistance, and possibly even a path to redemption – or at least instructions on finding a good place to hide when it all comes crashing down. Cothren’s multi-award-winning short stories will stop you doomscrolling and keep you guessing.

Alex Cothren is a lecturer in creative writing at Flinders University. He has won the Carmel Bird, William van Dyke, Griffith Review Emerging Voices and Peter Carey awards for short fiction. He has had writing published in Meanjin, Island, Overland, Griffith Review and Australian Book Review. He was born in the Pacific Northwest, but now lives on beautiful Kaurna Yerta with his wife Maria and son Julio.

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