<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Tomorrow, When the War Began (published in 1994 by Pan Australia) begins a series of books by Australian writer John Marsden. The narrator is Ellie, one of a tight-knit group of friends that has gone on a small camping trip in the Australian bush. But while the teenagers were busy building bonfires and telling ghost stories in a hidden canyon, their country has been invaded. They return to find their world overturned, their homes empty and their families incarcerated by the invaders.

The story proceeds at a rapid pace, as Ellie, Homer, Robyn, Corrie, Fiona, Lee, and Kevin determine to fight back guerrilla-fashion. They have no adults to guide or rescue them. They survive by stealing, on the run, picking up what they need to know about explosives and other techniques along the way. Their struggles are not whitewashed. They kill people. They find some small comfort in sexual involvements. They are brave enough to risk and even sacrifice their own lives. They are injured; they are caught.

The "Tomorrow" series continues, in order, with The Dead of Night; The Third Day; The Frost (published as A Killing Frost in the United States); Darkness Be My Friend; Burning for Revenge; and The Night Is for Hunting. The concluding volume, The Other Side of Dawn, brings the perilous adventures to a close while acknowledging that the heroes' emotional recovery may be long in coming. In 2004, Pan Australia published While I Live, the first book in a follow-up series titled "The Ellie Chronicles." After While I Live, Ellie's adventures continued in Incurable and Circle of Flight.