Playing Nice Was Getting Me Nowhere

by Alex Cothren

A riotous collection of ethical fever dreams from an internationally recognised master of the short form, Alex Cothren’s Playing Nice Was Getting Me Nowhere is a book for anyone struggling to tell the difference between the news and satire.
A conspiracy theory about bees divides a nation.
A haunted pokie machine seeks revenge.
A ‘smart’ home becomes a little too clever.
In Playing Nice Was Getting Me Nowhere, Cothren explores the ethos of the end times, testing the limits of technology, humanity and modern media. His predictions are incisive, shocking and terribly plausible, tracing our contemporary obsessions to their logical – and often dire – conclusions.
Yet amid the horror are moments of hope and resistance, and possibly even a path to redemption – or at least instructions on finding a good place to hide when it all comes crashing down. Cothren’s multi-award-winning short stories will stop you doomscrolling and keep you guessing.

Genres: Science Fiction

240 pages, Paperback

Published July 29, 2025

About the author

Alex Cothren is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at Flinders University. A previous winner of both the Carmel Bird and Peter Carey awards for short fiction, his work has been published in Meanjin, Island, Overland online, The Conversation and Australian Book Review. In 2018, he co-edited Westerly’s South Australia Special Issue.

Reviews

[BOof]

My ideal parodist charms with a spirited voice and funny representations, before gradually revealing the seriousness behind their burlesques. What separates the satirist from the comedian is the texture of the laughter invoked, found not in just punchlines and observational digs, but in the equally amusing and horrifying lens through the world is portrayed.

Australian writer Alex Cothren’s short-story collection Playing Nice Was Getting Me Nowhere arises from the American satirical tradition, whose most visible practitioners are George Saunders and Thomas Pynchon. Like Cothren, these writers combine jaunty, sparkling surfaces with a darkly ironic commentary. They render injustice and suffering through cartoonish exaggerations and flights of fancy. And although the satirist wields the grotesque and the unreal, these distortions have the strange effect of making their critique more acutely felt.

Full review published in Sydney Morning Herald: https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/...

[agnė · Rating 5 out of 5]

holy shit, every story was like a punch to the face (affectionate) yet funny in a depressing late stage capitalism kind of way. i don’t remember the last time a short story collection actually affected me this much, and there wasn’t a single one i didn’t enjoy i was gooped and gagged the entire time

[Emma Richardson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was apprehensive going into this as I’ve never tackled satire before and wasn’t sure if it was a genre for me, but if other satire books are as brilliant as this then I’ll be diving in for sure.
Each story is so different from the last that it’s easy to forget they are in the same collection. Sometimes in short story collections I need to put it down and read something else for a while because the authors voice begins to get repetitive, but that was absolutely not the case here.

Each story felt fresh and exciting with total shifts in tone and voice, I was thoroughly engaged from beginning to end.

[P H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cothren understands the socio-political climates of the U.S. and Australia so well that it’s frightening. Satire is supposed to hold up a mirror to the world — reading these short stories is like walking through a room of funhouse mirrors, everything appearing wacky and distorted, only to realise there is no funhouse or distortion at all and our world actually is that ridiculous.

[Kate Downey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, I was bored and I liked the title. Suddenly, I wasn’t bored…
I had a lot of fun. I also had the collywobbles. Cothren’s stories of dystopic imagining are frighteningly close to the bone and—ugh—‘relatable’ with drone delivery blips, murderous university non-tenured lecturers, casino quotas derailed by ghost-induced inundations. While these are stories of isolation, of systems designed to make us aliens to each other, a fierce humanity burns through. Moments of clarity and seeing through the mirage of capitalism reverse the nihilistic direction of the narratives and made me both dread what Tech Bros might attempt to impose in our future and still hope—a little desperately—that we could find some meaning or even peace in pinning down our ‘human’ truth.
I cackled a lot.
Brilliant!

[Greg Foyster · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely hilarious. The stories roll along at a cracking pace, one brilliant idea after another. I loved the little vignettes of 'Australians at work' in jobs that portend a bleak future: the refugee football league talent scout, the bleached coral restoration artist. Other stories are heartfelt and tender, before delivering a savage twist. One of the best collections of satirical/surreal stories I've read, Australian or international. Worth the price of admission for the 'koala repopulation scheme' alone. More please!

[Paquita · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant collection of satirical, alternative-reality short stories. For me it’s a cross between Black Mirror type stories (Netflix) and my most recently read (non-horror) Stephen King short stories. Really enjoyed this crazy series of wild and varied stories that make you think, smirk, fear the future, and ultimately appreciate unique intellect.

[Ruth Gilbert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Totally brilliant. If you don't like satire, and you don't like short stories, you'll be converted. You'll also be moved, amused and a bit freaked out. And you'll never see the game of hide and seek in quite the same way again. A triumph!

[Tilly Alford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love a good dramatic reveal… Chose to read this book of short stories to remind me how to read again, hopefully I can read more than one book this year.