Aurealis #49

By Michael Pryor (Editor)

This issue of the Australian magazine of fantasy, science fiction and horror, edited by Michael Pryor, features Sean McMullen, a doyen of Australian SF, and his hard-hitting ‘The First Boat'. In addition to the usual news and reviews, rising star Jason Fischer makes a splash with his slashingly good ‘Rolling for Fetch’ and Crisetta MacLeod probes the world of epublishing with Greig Beck.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chimaera Publications
• Release date: Apr 2, 2012
• ISBN: 9781922031037

Book preview

AUREALIS #49

Australian Fantasy & Science Fiction

Edited by Michael Pryor, Dirk Strasser and Carissa Thorp

Published by Chimaera Publications at Smashwords

Copyright of this compilation Chimaera Publications 2012

Copyright on each story remains with the contributor.

EPUB version ISBN 978-1-922031-03-7

ISSN 2200-307X (electronic)

CHIMAERA PUBLICATIONS

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the authors, editors and artists.

Hard copy back issues of Aurealis can be obtained from the Aurealis website:

www.aurealis.com.au

Contents

From the Cloud – Michael Pryor

The First Boat – Sean McMullen

Rolling For Fetch – Jason Fischer

E-publishing: An Hour with Greig Beck – Crisetta MacLeod

Reviews

Carissa's Weblog – Carissa Thorp

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Credits

From the Cloud

Michael Pryor

Recently, I've been thinking about the importance of science fiction stories for young people, and not just because I'm the sort of guy who spends time pondering such profound and weighty topics, but because I wonder what sort of reading our next generation will be doing.

Reading science fiction was vital for me as a teenager. It probably helped that for at least part of the time I was growing up the future looked as if it were just around the corner. I mean, we'd just been to the moon! Not just once, but a couple of times! Next stop, Mars, sure thing! Space stations for holidays! FTL, no sweat!

That aside, the multiple futures presented to me by the SF writers I was reading helped spark my curiosity, made me want to know more, made me fascinated by the possibilities that lay ahead instead of afraid of them. Sure, I read my share of disasters and dystopias, but the sense of boundless amazingness never failed. And I don't just mean flying cars and jet-packs—I mean the feeling that if we were clever and careful, the future was going to be mind-bogglingly extraordinary.

I want young people to feel that too, and that's why I tell them to read SF. SF that takes them elsewhere and elsewhen. SF that is full of wild, lunatic speculation, but also SF that's full of careful, rational extrapolation. SF that questions, SF that probes, SF that celebrates. SF in all its glorious, manifold varieties that makes you grip the book so hard your fingers ache and you go: 'Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.'

The best way to prepare for the future, after all, is to imagine it.

Back to Contents

The First Boat

Sean McMullen

I'm thirteen. All my life I've typed when I've had to write anything, but now the screens are blank and the keyboards are dead. Writing with a pencil and paper is a pain. Make a mistake and you can only cross it out. Cut and paste means scissors and glue. More than two pages and my hand hurts. Still, I have to get used to it. I've got to write about what happened, set the record straight about Dad before the memories fade.

* * *

We used to think Dad was such a dingle. Now I realise that it's the rest of us who were the dingles. I was at school when it all stopped. Well, when the electricity stopped, but that might as well be everything. All electrical things burned out, and just about everything had wires and a computer in it.

We lived in Perth. Mum was a nurse. Melissa was not even in pre-school. I was in Year Eight, doing Asian languages, mainly Chinese and Indonesian. I'm good at languages, and Mum had ideas about me going to China after I left school and making lots of money. Dad was the business continuity manager for a bank, so he knew all about what to do in disasters. His work was preparing the bank for really big disasters, and he knew all the different types: earthquakes, cyclones, floods, war, terrorism… and EMP attacks.

Electromagnetic pulse weapons are just nuclear bombs that are set off a couple of thousand miles up, in space. The explosion generates huge currents in conductors down on the surface of the Earth. Electrical wires pick up the energy like a radio picks up programs from a station. With EMP weapons, the currents are so strong that they burn out electrical things.

Computers, televisions, medical machines, mobile phones, transformers on power poles, the electronics in cars, you name it, if it could carry a current it got fried. Like I said, I was at school when the EMP hit. We didn't notice anything dramatic, no explosion or big dramas. Everything that used electricity just shut down. The teachers didn't know what to do with us, so they eventually sent us home. I had to walk three kilometres. No buses.

Because the ignitions of most cars were fried,