Damien Francis Broderick (born 22 April 1944) is an Australian science fiction[1] and popular science writer and editor of some 74 books.[2] His science fiction novel The Dreaming Dragons (1980) introduced the trope of the generation time machine,[3] his The Judas Mandala (1982) contains the first appearance of the term "virtual reality" in science fiction,[4] and his 1997 popular science book The Spike was the first to investigate the technological singularity in detail.[5]