Aurealis Duo: Transalienation

By Dirk Strasser

We asked some of Australia's top fantasy and science fiction authors to select two of their stories tied together by a single theme and to write an introduction on how they had explored that theme — to give some insight into their writing and how they see the big issues. We also paired the writers with Australia's top SF artists, so that each publication also showcases the illustrator. Then we released the publications in pairs. The result is the Aurealis Duos series.

In these two moving stories, where the term 'transalien' was first born, Dirk Strasser asks the question, if science can help a transsexual become the gender they know themselves to be, what would happen in the future if humans could become the alien they truly believe they are?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chimaera Publications
• Release date: Mar 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9781922031228

Dirk Strasser

Dirk Strasser has written over 30 books for major publishers in Australia and has been editing magazines and anthologies since 1990. He has won multiple Australian Publisher Association Awards and a Ditmar for Best Professional Achievement, and has been short-listed for the Aurealis and Ditmar Awards a number of times. His speculative fiction novels – including Zenith and Equinox – were originally published by Pan Macmillan in Australia and Heyne Verlag in Germany. His science fiction story “The Doppelgänger Effect” appeared in the World Fantasy Award-winning anthology Dreaming Down-Under. Several stories have appeared in “Best of” anthologies and lists in Australia and the USA, including regular appearances in the Gardner Dozois’ Year’s Best Science Fiction Honorable Mentions. His short fiction has been translated into a number of languages, and his most recent publications are “The Jesus Particle” in Cosmos magazine and “Stories of the Sand” in Realms of Fantasy. His articles have appeared in most of Australia’s major newspapers. He founded the Aurealis Awards and has co-published Aurealis magazine for over 20 years.

Book preview

AUREALIS DUO: TRANSALIENATION

Dirk Strasser

Artwork by Andrew Saltmarsh

Published by Chimaera Publications at Smashwords

Copyright of this compilation Chimaera Publications 2013

Copyright on each story remains with the contributor.

EPUB version ISBN 978-1-922031-22-8

CHIMAERA PUBLICATIONS

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Contents

About Aurealis Duos

Transalienation – Dirk Strasser

Waiting for the Rain – Dirk Strasser

Primal – Dirk Strasser

About Dirk Strasser

About Andrew Saltmarsh

Credits

About Aurealis Duos

We asked some of Australia's top fantasy and science fiction authors to select two of their stories tied together by a single theme and to write an introduction on how they had explored that theme—to give some insight into their writing and how they see the big issues. We also paired the writers with Australia's top SF artists, so that each publication also showcases the illustrator. The result is the Aurealis Duos series.

Back to Contents

Transalienation

Dirk Strasser

The idea behind transalienation came to me a number of years ago when reading an article on transsexuals. As everyone knows, a transsexual is a person who identifies with the opposite sex, whose sex at birth conflicts with the gender they truly believe they are. Transexuals seek to function, to various degrees, as members of the opposite sex. In modern times, they often seek medical means of achieving physical alterations so that their bodies match how they see themselves.

It got me thinking. Science was playing a crucial role in this process. What was motivating the desire for physical change? This change wasn't always an option historically. And it isn't an option to every transsexual even now. What did transsexuals do before the sophisticated surgery and hormone therapy became available? What was the role of medical science in this process?

I then took the sort of thought-leap that science fiction writers often do. I asked the question, what would happen if a human identified with a different sentient species, an alien race? What if a person came to believe that their physical humanity conflicted with the alien they truly believed themselves to be?