Aurealis #78

By Michael Pryor (Editor)

Now in its 25th year, Aurealis keeps up its tradition of bringing you the finest in Fantasy and Science Fiction. Issue #78 has the bracing neo-noir 'Enfolded', from J Michael Melican and the punchy 'Discarded Pieces' from David Coleman. Terry Wood brings us visions of the future in the first part of his History of the Flying Car, and, as always, Aurealis brings you the best in reviews. Aurealis, when only the best will do.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chimaera Publications
• Release date: Mar 11, 2015
• ISBN: 9781922031341

Book preview

AUREALIS #78

Australian Fantasy & Science Fiction

Edited by Michael Pryor

Published by Chimaera Publications at Smashwords

Copyright of this compilation Chimaera Publications 2015

Copyright on each story remains with the contributor.

EPUB version ISBN 978-1-922031-34-1

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

Discarded Pieces—David Coleman

Enfolded—J Michael Melican

Preparation: the Key to Effective eBook Marketing—Shane M Brown

Secret History of Australia—Wally Grogan—‘King of the Legumes’—Researched by Michael Pryor

The Future History of the Flying Car—Part One—Terry Wood

Reviews

Next Issue

Credits

From the Cloud

Michael Pryor

Hard SF can be a hard sell. Of all the multifarious and diverse aspects of Science Fiction, Hard Science Fiction is the one most likely to get non-readers recoiling in horror. It’s the SF sub-genre most parodied, most vilified and most misunderstood.

Which is a shame because, as with most things, the best of it is superb. Hard SF discusses, foregrounds and takes seriously an aspect of modern life that is shamefully neglected in literary fiction: science and technology. If these feature in literary fiction today, it’s superficially or with, at best, a jaundiced eye.

Let’s foolishly venture a definition: Hard SF is the branch of Science Fiction where accurate representations or extrapolations of science and technology are vital to the story. It has many overlaps with Space Opera and other SF sub-genres, but fuzziness like that is part of the glory of genre definitions.

If you like to write Hard SF we’d love to see it. But before you do, it behoves you to read and study those who’ve done it before, and done it well. Here are some suggestions.

Ringworld—Larry Niven (1970)

One of the great Hard SF adventures; this rattling good yarn takes the notion of the alien artefact and runs with it, imagining an artificially constructed world that rings a sun. The world is nearly two million kilometres wide and has a diameter roughly that of Earth’s orbit around our sun. It’s a jaw-dropping conceit, and it’s just the backdrop for a shipwreck story of monumental proportions. Great fun.

Red Mars—Kim Stanley Robinson (1993)

The first of a trilogy, this book is a rigorous examination of exploration, where humanity is opening up Mars for colonisation. The technical, engineering challenges are foregrounded, but the ecological and the political are by no means ignored. Absorbing and ultimately moving.

Permutation City—Greg Egan (1994)

Australia’s own Greg Egan . It doesn’t get much harder than this, with quantum ontology, artificial intelligence and simulated reality just part of this onslaught of cutting edge concepts. It’s philosophical, abstract and dense. Tasty stuff.

Revelation Space—Alastair Reynolds (2000)

Space, with all of its unlimited possibilities. Lots of nanotechnology, human modification, and heavy spaceship engineering doesn’t overpower the character exploration and interaction, which is sharp and profound in this far future world.

Up Against It—MJ Locke (2011)

More nanotech in a society in our asteroid belt. The everyday difficulties of living in such a hostile environment are presented with verve and panache, with a rogue artificial intelligence thrown in for good measure. This is extrapolation of the best kind. It’s careful but creative with its prognostications and never forgets the importance of a strong narrative.

Inspired? We hope so. Now, get out there and write some tough, convincing Hard SF!

Back to Contents

Discarded Pieces

David Coleman

Amidst a twisting field of rapidly freezing wreckage, she floated, miraculously unharmed. She looked around carefully, just her eyes moving within the slowly cartwheeling exoskeleton, worried that even a head movement might attract attention of the very worst kind.

Hers was definitely a past-tense ship. An ex-ship, cast apart into larger and smaller chunks of rubble and dust spinning in a kilometres-wide debris field of mutual attraction and repulsion. She knew that she too had been pulled into the oort cloud of wreckage, already forming around a large piece of what might have been the engine core.

All up, it was not a good place to be, drifting in just a life suit with jagged pieces of metal moving erratically around her, in a nowhere spot of hard vacuum. Then there was the Tesla Attack Cruiser still prowling about for survivors.

But it was better than being dead.

She did not know, probably would never know, why the Tesla vessel had attacked. Hers was, had been, a cargo freighter, on a routine mission, with no special purpose. And then the Cruiser was on them, disembowelling and eviscerating the ship like so much tissue paper.

It was this ex-ship, this never-to-be-put-back-together jigsaw of advanced technology that had saved her in its