RISE & SHINE

Each morning, the last humans start their day with graphic footage from the front. This is what sustains them — literally.

In a world where eight billion souls have perished, the survivors huddle together apart, perpetually at war, in the city-states of Rise and Shine. Yet this war, far from representing their doom, is their means of survival. For their leaders have found the key to life when crops, livestock, and the very future have been blighted — a key that turns on each citizen being moved by human suffering. The question is, with memories still bright of all the friends they've lost, all the experience they'll never know, will compassion be enough? Or must they succumb to, or even embrace, darker desires?

Patrick Allington is a writer and editor. His fiction includes the novel Figurehead, which was longlisted for Australia's pre-eminent literary prize, the Miles Franklin. His short stories have been published in Meanjin, Griffith Review, The Big Issue, and elsewhere, and his nonfiction and criticism have also appeared widely. Patrick is a former commissioning editor of the University of Adelaide Press, and is currently a lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Flinders University.