Lawrence Patchett’s first novel The Burning River is a work of fictional futurology set in a version of New Zealand where a plastic miner who survives by alliances and trade is swept into a perilous inland journey with new companions. In Carl Shuker’s novel A Mistake, a gifted female surgeon at Wellington Hospital must make her way in a male-dominated world. Fergus Barrowman explores the allegiances and codes these characters must navigate to survive, and the different types of world-building that have gone into each of these novels.