Aurealis #96

By Dirk Strasser (Editor)

This issue of Aurealis features Patrick Doerksen’s ‘Extracts from a Life of Science Fiction’, a poetic meditation on the nature of science fiction and humanity, S G Larner’s ‘Searching for Cidalisa’ which explores a near future society of implanted memories and rogue databases, and Annika Howells’ eerie and lyrical ‘Obsidian River’ that will live with you long after you’ve finished reading. Dirk Strasser looks at the phenomenon of the Superstar Effect in publishing in his From the Cloud Editorial. In ‘Ice Queens and Snow Maidens’, Sarah Fallon explores the vilification of women and winter in folk and fairy tales, while Claire Fitzpatrick’s examines mutations and metamorphosis, graphic violations of the human body in ‘Body Horror and the Horror Aesthetic’. The Secret History of Australia reveals the life of Felicity Paraparap, Australia’s only internationally accredited politician hunter. We review Gemina, the second book of The Illuminae Files by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff, Swarm the second Zeroes book by Scott Westerfeld, Margo Lanagan, and Deborah Biancotti, Garth Nix’s latest Old Kingdom book, Goldenhand, and recent releases by China Miéville, Juliet Marillier, Ian Irvine and Alex Scarrow. And in case you’re running out of good books to read, the Aurealis Reviewers present their Aurealis Recommended Reading for 2016.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chimaera Publications
• Release date: Nov 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9781922031525

Dirk Strasser (Editor)

Dirk Strasser has written over 30 books for major publishers in Australia and has been editing magazines and anthologies since 1990. He won a Ditmar for Best Professional Achievement and has been short-listed for the Aurealis and Ditmar Awards a number of times. His fantasy novels – including Zenith and Equinox – were originally published by Pan Macmillan in Australia and Heyne Verlag in Germany. His children’s horror/fantasy novel, Graffiti, was published by Scholastic. His short fiction has been translated into a number of languages, and his most recent publications are “The Jesus Particle” in Cosmos magazine, “Stories of the Sand” in Realms of Fantasy and “The Vigilant” in Fantasy magazine. He founded the Aurealis Awards and has co-published Aurealis magazine for over 20 years.

Book preview

AUREALIS #96

Australian Fantasy & Science Fiction

Edited by Dirk Strasser

Published by Chimaera Publications at Smashwords

Copyright of this compilation Chimaera Publications 2016

Copyright on each story remains with the contributor.

EPUB version ISBN 978-1-922031-52-5

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—Dirk Strasser

Obsidian River— Annika Howells

Searching for Cidalisa—S G Larner

Extracts from a Life of Science Fiction—Patrick Doerksen

Body Horror and the Horror Aesthetic—Claire Fitzpatrick

Ice Queens and Snow Maidens—Sarah Fallon

Secret History of Australia—Felicity Paraparap—Researched by Michael Pryor

Aurealis Recommended Reading 2016

Reviews

Next Issue

Credits

From the Cloud

Dirk Strasser

In April 2013, a crime novel called The Cuckoo’s Calling by first-time author Robert Galbraith was published. It had done the rounds and been rejected by at least one publisher, and its initial print run was around 1500. In the first few months, it sold around 450 copies, and despite some reasonably favourable reviews, was at risk of being remaindered. It was revealed mid-June that the author was, in fact, Harry Potter author, J K Rowling, who a few years earlier had been declared the world’s richest self-made woman with a net worth of a billion dollars. What happened next illuminates much about how the publishing industry and the world in general works.

The book immediately became the best-selling novel on Amazon, and reviews ranged from positive to glowing. USA Today wrote "The Cuckoo's Calling shows that all great fiction… has its own kind of magic." It won the 2013 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for best Mystery/Thriller. In 2014 it was announced that the novel and its sequels would be adapted as a television series for BBC One. A second book in the series, The Silkworm was published in 2014 and a third, Career of Evil, followed in 2015. In October 2016, it was announced that HBO has come on-board as the US partner for the BBC One series.

Nobel Prize Award-winning science fiction author, Doris Lessing, once undertook an experiment that confirmed her worst fears that publishers and reviewers are influenced by the name attached to the work to the detriment of the work itself. To highlight the difficulties faced by unknown writers, she submitted a manuscript, The Diary of a Good Neighbour, under the name Jane Somers.

Her novel The Golden Notebook had sold almost a million copies in hardback and won the Prix Medicis Foreign Award, and her series The Children of Violence also sold almost one million books. The Diary of a Good Neighbour, however, sold around 1500 copies in the UK and 3000 in the US, and had almost no reviews—until it was revealed that the author was actually Doris Lessing.

So, what’s going on here? Why the massive disparity in terms of success between well-known names and unknown names, even when it’s the same person? This phenomenon—where being perceived to be the best at something, even slightly, triggers huge advantages—is called the Superstar Effect. The term was first coined by Sherwin Rosen in the American Economics Review, where he explained the mathematics behind the reason why superstars like J K Rowling reap so many more rewards than peers who are, if anything, only slightly less talented. It applies equally to CEOs, sports people and popstars as it does to writers.

Remember, though, that unless we’re talking about something as clear cut as a 100 metre sprint, the concept of best is fraught with subjectivity. Aren’t superstars really the result of a mixture of natural talent, perseverance, and chance? Winning a literary award, for example, can make an enormous difference to a writer’s career, and the win/lose format of these awards can make the difference between superstar and also-ran come down to a hair’s breadth.

Maybe some of you are a lot closer to superstardom than you think.

All the best from the cloud.

Dirk Strasser

www.dirkstrasser.com

Back to Contents

Obsidian River

Annika Howells

An endless road unfurls before me, a ribbon of black bitumen and white lines. Beyond the headlights of my car there is pure, suffocating darkness. Even the sky appears empty, starless, shrouded in a blanket of cloud. The gentle hum of the engine is my sole companion as I travel down this infinite highway, this ceaseless stretch of nothing, hoping to find an ending.

Every now and then, I check my rear-view mirror. There’s a burning house behind me, at the end of the road. It glows and pulsates with the fire dancing in its heart and it belches noxious smoke into the sky. I can hear the roar and the crackle of the fire as it licks those walls clean. The house is always there, no matter how many corners I take, no matter how many miles I drive. I suppose that should frighten me, but it doesn’t. Not anymore.

I used to know fear more intimately than anything. It squatted inside me, a heavy, toxic tumour growing in my chest, choking me from the inside. But I pulled my ribs apart and tore that fear out when I drove away. I feel lighter without it, but also emptier. After being consumed by it for so long, being free of fear is a feeling as alien to me as breathing underwater.

A hitchhiker stands by the side of the road—a tall man in jeans and a leather jacket. He sticks his thumb out as I pass. I have no intention of stopping for him. There’s no need for company where I’m headed. And yet, my foot creeps across to the brake and I turn the wheel slightly. It happens so slowly, so subtly, that I don’t even realise I’ve stopped until he’s tapping at the passenger side window.

As I wind the window down he leans in and asks, ‘Where are you headed?’

‘Obsidian River.’

He whistles. ‘You’ve got a ways to go.’

In the past I would have been afraid of picking up strangers on the highway. A girl is supposed to be afraid of those sorts of things, right? Well, fear has no hold over me anymore. Besides, I still have that knife in my pocket, if he tries anything.

‘Do you want a ride, or not?’ I ask.

The door opens and he slumps into the passenger seat. He looks like he hasn’t showered or shaved in days, and as far as I can tell he doesn’t have any belongings on him. How long has he been out there, waiting for someone to drive past? It’s too dark