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1964 tells the story of a city lost in a world of relentless change. The year 1964 was one of transition from the certainty of the 1950s to the doubt and disruption of the modern world.



A young journalist leaves the security of school and discovers an unfamiliar workplace and an escalating series of confronting experiences. As he begins university, he struggles to relate his studies to the everyday events that he encounters. As he seeks to find a place in this new world, he is torn between reporting local stories or following others who have sought grander achievements.

While he seeks knowledge through his reporting and academic studies of philosophy and politics, it’s through lived experiences that the young journalist discovers different notions of truth. He learns the way language determines meaning and knowledge by shaping our perceptions, and he is confronted by the meaning of truth – do we construct our own truth or does one immutable truth exist? When confronted by these competing realities, along with uncertainty, doubt and incremental failure, he soon faces life changing decisions that lead to unanticipated and sudden catastrophe.

As his world starts slowly collapsing; as the city of his youth is to be obliterated; and as he is sent to fight in a South-East Asian war, he soon becomes part of the pivotal events that he once reported on.


1964 is a story of our inability to anticipate the future, of how we have arrived at where we are today, and of what we lost on the way.

Artificial Intelligence, AI, Philosophy, Politics, Science

About The Author

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Michael Buxton is an Emeritus Professor at RMIT University. He is one of Australia’s most well-known academics in urban and regional affairs and appears regularly in Australian media. He has published extensively, co-authoring twenty books or monographs and over eighty articles in various forms. He has worked in senior positions in government, politics and academic institutions.

His debut novel titled, '1964' invites readers to look back from an unforeseen future to a lost and largely forgotten world swept away by fundamental change but which set the conditions for the challenges confronting the modern world.


'1964' is available in stores and online now.

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