We were in a car, and the movement may have been particularly fast, or it might not have been, but those motifs remain, as in most memories, separate from finer feelings or the consequence of detail. As is only natural for that kind of brilliant day, we thought of that thing called ‘the beach’ and we were moving with the inevitability of numbers getting crunched.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is a book that has remained an enigma since it was first published in a heavily censored form in 1947. Not only was it censored, but its publication was delayed due to wartime paper shortages, and one of the early uncensored manuscripts was lost between Adelaide and Melbourne.

This issue goes to print shortly after the fiftieth anniversary of the victory of the Whitlam government, a moment in Australian history that increasingly resembles a fragment from another political reality. But then, there’s an extent to which progress always does; there’s a moment to which radical positive change first manifests itself, to paraphrase Jameson, like a utopian spark cast by a passing comet.