I’ll start with The End, a small bar on Vulture Street in the West End that used to be a video store.

After spending many wonderful hours there with my band, the Filberts, it was obvious to me that this would also appear in my lyrics.

While Venus burns is my sixth self-published novel, but only the second to be set in Queensland. Much of the story takes place in Brisbane. West End is the home of my protagonist, a sex worker named Mia Cassidy:

“When Mia opens her eyes, it’s dark outside. The restaurants along Boundary Street are full, but she finds she can’t remember what night it is. Friday? Saturday? A speeder in a blue Subaru slowly drives past her and they briefly look into each other’s eyes. He’s not interested in her; she’s not his particular type of trouble.”

West End is one of my favourite parts of Brisbane. Diverse, vibrant, fun and still gritty despite gentrification and urban regeneration.

Here, the past wrestles with the future, just as the city struggles with the Olympic Games in 2032. Do we stick with the old places we know, or do we build something big and bold for a better future?

Everyone wants a better future. But the opposite is also lurking in our minds – the possibility that life as we know it could come to an abrupt end if we don’t confront all these existential threats. The shadow of a dark future is best seen when you realize that it threatens the places we know.

As I drive past the beachfront mansions of Mermaid Beach and Currumbin on the Gold Coast, I can’t help but imagine what will happen to them as sea levels rise. Will the entire Glitter Strip – our monument to greed and consumerism – be swallowed up by the rising tide of future history?

I address this question in my post-apocalyptic debut novel Empty, in which the West Antarctic Ice Shelf collapses, causing a global tsunami and a sea level rise of five meters. Bye, paradise. Goodbye, River City.

I began my journalistic career at The Courier Post The mid-1980s, the last days of institutional corruption. I’m sure that moral decay and social entropy still cling to my soul today. I feel it in my dreams. It shapes the tone of my work for ABC News.

It becomes Mia Cassidy’s true nightmare. While Venus burns is a prequel to the catastrophic world of EmptyThe world is as we know it, but a dark, growing threat looms. It is the eve of disaster.

It is a slowly budding love story at the end of the world.

ABC presenter and friend Kelly Higgins-Devine sums it up by saying: “I took her hometown of Brisbane and made it the centre of the science fiction universe.”

Which brings me back to The End. Of all the bars in the West End, Mia has to visit this one:

“The End is full as always. She waves to the owner, but he is busy and doesn’t see her. She walks past the tables along the walls to a DJ who is begging the girls to get up and dance. Two other women are waiting for the bathroom in the dark near the back door. Mia squeezes past. She tries to explain that she wants to go to the backyard.

“But when she steps out, the courtyard has disappeared. There is only a large retaining wall that, as far as she knows, wasn’t there before. The door to the bar slams behind her. Immediately the night becomes quiet. No cars, no music – and no people. But when she turns around, the back door has disappeared. The whole building has disappeared. She is somewhere else entirely.”

More precisely, at a different time and place. The end is actually just the beginning.

While Venus burns ($24.99) is available from Avid Reader, West End, or from amazon.com.au ($25.99).

Matt Eaton is a radio newsreader and digital reporter at ABC Brisbane. He began his journalism career at The Courier Post He then worked in the news department of Triple J from 1995 to 2001. He has self-published six science fiction novels and two novellas.

The Filberts play at The End bar in the West End on September 1st.

mattjeaton.com