An Astronaut’s Life is the first book by Australian editor, radio and TV producer and author, Sonja Dechain. It is a collection of nine short stories of varying length. Some are very short (10-20 pages) and might benefit from expanding; others are of perfect length (Charles Darwin’s Revenge, The Architect). Dechain touches on a range of topics: cyberbullying, asylum seeker boat people, Tour de France, mental illness and bird flu; and uses some interesting settings: the graveyard of a serial killer’s victims, a futuristic animal theme park, a birdless beach, a hospital labour ward, and a school perimeter fence.

While there are some laugh-out-loud moments, Dechain’s stories will also have the reader thinking: about the experience of being in a coma, the pervasiveness of electronic media, the extinction of whole species, floral tributes to victims and the rising level of the oceans. Some stories will leave the reader a bit bemused; others are frighteningly realistic and quite possibly prescient; all are written in dazzling prose. Full of originality and intelligence, this is a remarkable debut.