Aurealis #79

By Stephen Higgins (Editor)

Now in its 25th year, Aurealis continues to provide new speculative fiction, reviews and much more. This issue features stories by Melanie Rees and Lachlan Huddy, as well as Part 2 of Terry Wood's 'History of the Flying Car', and a new instalment of the Secret History of Australia.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chimaera Publications
• Release date: Apr 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9781922031358

Book preview

AUREALIS #79

Australian Fantasy & Science Fiction

Edited by Stephen Higgins

Published by Chimaera Publications at Smashwords

Copyright of this compilation Chimaera Publications 2015

Copyright on each story remains with the contributor.

EPUB version ISBN 978-1-922031-35-8

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—Stephen Higgins

The Monster Under My Bed—Melanie Rees

The Whore and the Healer—Lachlan Huddy

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

Interview: Shane Abbess—Chris Large

Reviews

Secret History of Australia—Alonzo Mirabilis—Researched by Michael Pryor

Next Issue

Credits

From the Cloud

Stephen Higgins

I have been reading a lot of digitally published material lately. I was one of those people who bemoaned the advent of ebooks and the supposed death of ‘proper’ books but I am now comfortable with it. I do mourn the loss of so many brick and mortar bookshops however, and I am not too happy about the pretty shabby state of the speculative fiction sections in the bookshops we have left, but generally I am pretty happy. I think it is because I am now able to access a much broader range of product very quickly, but, it has also meant that I don’t get that thrill of discovering a new release by an author that I did not know about. As with the music industry, the digital age has meant that you get to know everything that is about to be released months before the release date. So I guess we do get the anticipation for longer. However, where once a new cd or book spent ages in charts, being talked about and dissected, now it seems to have a very short life. I am not talking about shelf life of course as the digital age has meant that everything is available for purchase for a lot longer, its just that it isn’t necessarily in the public eye as much.

I read recently in Benchmarks Concluded: F&SF ‘Books’ Columns 1987-1993, a collection of reviews written by Algis Budrys, published by Ansible Editions, and he points out that if a story is published, it ‘dwells in a great many memories, and thus has a good statistical chance of becoming embodied in the culture’s permanent library.’ Of course it also gets embedded in a culture’s collective memory and becomes a part of the vast amount of information being accrued online. I suppose my point is that whilst it is fantastic that more and more material is being published, it can get lost among the mass of information… You can’t see the wood for the ones and zeroes if you like.

Anyway, it is good to be able to add stories to the collective whole via the publication of Aurealis. If you would like to see what these stories are actually adding to, you can get a sample by looking at any of the now considerable backlist of Aurealis. The hard copies are running out but you will always be able to get the digital copies.

Back to Contents

The Monster Under My Bed

Melanie Rees

The monster under my bed has yellow eyes, just like mine. Although I shouldn’t say monster, he hates it when I call him that. He says he’s an alien from Andromeda. I don’t know where that is but it sounds very far away—even further than going to grandma’s country farmhouse. He also hates it when I call him a he, but all cool monsters are boys. My best friend, Pablo, agrees. He said he has a monster too, but I’m sure he’s just imagining his. Mine is real. Mine is unique.

My monster is a noisy little beast. Mummy doesn’t believe me though. She says the scratching I hear under the bed is just a rat scurrying around in the basement and the squeaking noise is just the floorboards settling. But I’ve seen him.

The first time I saw him, I was crouching over my blue sick bucket next to my bedside dresser. Bright googly yellow eyes gazed at me from that dark place under the bed where even light fears to go.

‘Are you sick too?’ I asked.

The yellow eyes slunk further away.

I nudged my red fire engine, which was lying on the floor. The little red lights blazed on top as it