 Dowling, though, did not help matters when he chose the term 'Ab'O' to name his futuristic tribes.The shortened form of Aborigine, though not the most offensive racial epithet available, has been used derisively, more often than not.An extra apostrophe and capital letter did not provide, for many readers, sufficient estrangement of an all-too-familiar term...As Dowling's series has developed, he has worked very hard to create an alternative vision of racial and tribal identities, to provide a genuinely new concept to go with the estranged term, but it is not an easy task for an outsider to imagine a new form of selfhood for a group that has been so strongly Othered."