Aurealis #92

By Michael Pryor (Editor)

Aurealis #92 features Peter Cooper’s lyrical and poignant ‘The Hush Before Dawn’, LB Spiller’s gripping and tech-savvy ‘Taggant 31’ and Bentley A Reese’s chilling ‘Corpse Eater’. Our top quality non-fiction rollout continues with ‘Early Australian Fantasy: Norman Lindsay’s The Magic Pudding’ from Gillian Polack and Lachlan Walter weighs in with his penetrating examination of the sequel phenomenon in ‘Don’t Believe the Hype’. With our regular reviews and explorations of the Secret History of Australia, Aurealis continues to be the gold standard.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chimaera Publications
• Release date: Jul 7, 2016
• ISBN: 9781922031488

Book preview

AUREALIS #92

Australian Fantasy & Science Fiction

Edited by Michael Pryor

Published by Chimaera Publications at Smashwords

Copyright of this compilation Chimaera Publications 2016

Copyright on each story remains with the contributor.

EPUB version ISBN 978-1-922031-48-8

ISSN 2200-307X (electronic)

CHIMAERA PUBLICATIONS

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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Hard copy back issues of Aurealis can be obtained from the Aurealis website: www.aurealis.com.au

Contents

From the Cloud—Michael Pryor

The Hush Before Dawn—Peter Cooper

Taggant 31—L B Spillers

Corpse Eater—Bentley A Reese

Early Australian Fantasy: Norman Lindsay’s The Magic Pudding—Gillian Polack

Don’t Believe the Hype—Lachlan Walter

Secret History of Australia—Dendy Jumpup—Researched by Stephen Higgins

Reviews

Next Issue

Credits

From the Cloud

Michael Pryor

Lionel Shriver’s new book The Mandibles was released in May. You remember Lionel Shriver—she was the one who wrote We Need to Talk about Kevin. With the success of Kevin, her subsequent book was always going to be launched with a splash, and so it has been. The Mandibles has had lots of media coverage, plenty of reviews and some clever publicity all around the place. But what we’ve noticed is in the info and blurb that HarperCollins has been distributing. The novel is set in 2029 and apparently documents all sorts of bills that will be besetting America. The promo text ends with this paragraph: ‘This is not science fiction. This is a frightening, fascinating, scabrously funny glimpse into the decline that may await the United States all too soon, from the pen of perhaps the most consistently perceptive and topical author of our times.’

Now this is bunkum. The Mandibles is very clearly science fiction of a heartily traditional sort. It takes some trends and extrapolates them into the not too distant future. A classic science fiction approach and classic science fiction methodology. Not terribly original, maybe—how many times has ‘a frightening, fascinating, scabrously funny glimpse into the decline that may await the United States all too soon’ been done?—but solid science fiction stuff in any case.

Then why is HarperCollins at such pains to distance The Mandibles from being tagged as SF? Surely it’s not snobbery, the fear that labelling such a work as science fiction will automatically belittle the book in the eyes of the public? And, if not in the eyes of the public, then in the eyes of the literati?

Yes, rhetorical questions, all of them for we know that’s exactly what’s going on in the minds of the HarperCollins bods. It’s the same impulse that gets every mainstream writer who happens to stray into genre territory quickly disavowing any genre tag, and don’t they do it frantically? We’ve seen it for years, decades and if we thought that the situation was getting any better The Mandibles just serves to dispel that. Margaret Atwood, anyone?

We used to get mad. Now we’re just resigned.

All the best from the cloud.

Michael Pryor

Back to Contents

The Hush Before Dawn

Peter Cooper

I woke beneath a sky filled with unfamiliar stars. For an age I stared up at them, fumbling for the scattered fragments of my consciousness, desperate to draw them together and settle my thoughts. Why was it so dark here? This wasn’t the darkness of midnight or a moonless night. The blackness between the stars was like ink.

I sat up. It felt strange, somehow mechanical, as if invisible cables tugged at my torso. The grass of my backyard was gone, replaced by brown cracked earth. The trees had withered to spindly ghosts, their branches sagging, their bark cracked and weathered like ancient skin. All looked dead and devastated. No lights shone from my neighbours’ houses, just blank walls and silent windows and roofs that seemed to gleam with a strange light, as if ice covered them. Yet it never snowed here.

‘Hello.’

A woman stood behind me, smiling. She was short and blond and somehow familiar, though I couldn’t place her. I was surprised I could see her so clearly, without any light other than the gleaming morass of stars in the jet sky above.

‘Your name is John.’

Not a question. Surely I must know this person, but I still couldn’t remember who she was.

‘It is.’ My voice sounded odd in my own ears, distant and strained, as if I hadn’t spoken in eons. ‘I’m sorry, I recognise you but I can’t remember where from.’

She laughed. ‘Let’s just say you’re seeing me out of context. You may remember in a little while, but for the moment it’s not important. Call me Gloria.’

I tore my eyes from her to the house that sat a few metres away, dark and cold. Still I grasped for the strands of memory, like someone trying to gather scattered papers on a windy day. And still they refused to come together.

Gloria must have read my thoughts. ‘Do you remember anything?’

‘Nothing. Is this a dream?’

I expected a laugh, but she looked at me earnestly. ‘This is no dream. This is very real, though it may take some time for you to understand it. Shall we sit a while?’

She led me by the hand to the little garden setting near the pergola. Its wood was black and cracked, as if it’d spent a thousand years beneath the sea. But it held my weight when I sat down, and was comfortable enough.

Gloria rested her chin in her hands. ‘Tell me John, what’s the last thing you remember?’

I was about to say I remembered nothing when it all came flooding back.

* * *

‘The stars are moving.’

I shook my head and squeezed detergent into the sink. This conversation wasn’t going to end well, I just knew it.

‘You think I’m talking out of my arse, don’t you?’ Dad persisted.

‘The stars move all the time, Dad. Some guy called Galileo worked it out first. Something about the Earth rotating around the sun.’

‘That’s not what I mean and you know it. I’m saying the stars are moving in ways they shouldn’t, and never do. They’re shifting.’

I dumped the plates into the sink with too much force, getting hot soapy water down my shirt as a reward. ‘And who says this, Dad. You?’ The question was sharp and brittle on my tongue.

Dad and I had hardly spoken in three years, since the day his reckless stupidity had torn my life apart. I still couldn’t believe I’d opened my door to him tonight. Maybe it was because he’d seemed so desperate. Or maybe, if I cared to admit it, I needed to hear what he had to say.

‘It’s not