Maxine McArthur is an internationally published speculative fiction author. Her first book, TIME FUTURE, won the 1999 George Turner Award for best unpublished sf/fantasy manuscript. This book and the sequel, TIME PAST, have been described by Melbourne Age reviewer Lucy Sussex as "feminist space opera". Her third book, LESS THAN HUMAN, won the 2004 Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel and has been nominated for a Ditmar Award. LESS THAN HUMAN is a thriller set in near-future Japan, featuring the adventures of a gaijin robotics engineer and a Japanese detective as they clash with a cult that uses computers to escape the Wheel of Suffering.

Maxine has written a number of short stories and articles, appeared at the Brisbane and Tasmanian Writers Festivals, was a Board member of the ACT Writers Centre in 2004, and is a member of the Writers on the Rise novel critiquing group. She was a Special Guest at Conflux II convention in 2005. In 2002 Maxine received an Asialink Literature Residency to Japan, where she spent time researching her present project-a fantasy set in medieval Japan. She also received an ArtsACT grant in 2003 to write a children's fantasy.

Maxine lived in Japan for 16 years from 1980 to 1996 before settling in Canberra, which gave her an interesting perspective on the '80s and a major culture shock upon returning to Australia. She began writing science fiction partly because early conditioning in the genre made it unlikely she would have written anything else, and partly because nobody was writing what she wanted to read: a realistic female protagonist in a whodunnit-type narrative with a space opera background. She works as a research assistant at the Australian National University, Canberra.

Her main hobbies are horseriding and watching the chooks dig up what's left of the garden.

Date	Caption
August 2002	That's me!