Aurealis #97

By Michael Pryor (Editor)

Aurealis #97 features the must read ‘The Year Ahead in Australian SF/Fantasy Publishing’, Catherine Moller’s unsettling ‘Hot Blood and Iron Teeth’, Melanie Rees’ genre-bending ‘Elementability’ and Jamie Brindle’s quirky ‘The New Life’. Our non-fiction is stellar, with Gillian Polack’s exploration of the work and impact of Cherry Wilder, while Daniel Thompson gets our science pulse racing with his analysis of Relativistic Projectiles. Of course, we also have reviews, the cult success of Secret Histories, and some of the best Fantasy/SF illustrations you’ll ever see. Aurealis – too good to miss.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chimaera Publications
• Release date: Feb 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781922031532

Book preview

AUREALIS #97

Australian Fantasy & Science Fiction

Edited by Michael Pryor

Published by Chimaera Publications at Smashwords

Copyright of this compilation Chimaera Publications 2017

Copyright on each story remains with the contributor.

EPUB version ISBN 978-1-922031-53-2

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

Hot Blood and Iron Teeth—Catherine Moller

Elementability—Melanie Rees

The New Life—Jamie Brindle

The Year Ahead in Australian Speculative Fiction 2017—Deanne Seldon-Collins

Cherry Wilder and the Story of Australian Speculative Fiction—Gillian Polack

Why the Relativistic Projectile Will Always Get Through—Daniel Thompson

Secret History of Australia—The ‘Cruel Nancy’ Hysteria—Researched by Michael Pryor

Reviews

Next Issue

Credits

From the Cloud

Michael Pryor

Fantasy and Science Fiction are the best.

They’re the best for a number of reasons. For a start, Fantasy and Science Fiction are the most challenging forms of writing to undertake. Fantasy/SF writers have to do everything that other writers do, like have convincing, multi-dimensional characters and engaging, lucid prose PLUS incorporate all the imaginative elements that are the hallmark of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Then they have to deal with the consequences of this, making sure they don’t fall foul of inconsistencies because of the scenario they set up at the beginning of their story. Fantasy and Science Fiction writers simply juggle more balls at the one time than other writers.

Also, Fantasy and Science Fiction writers are the best because they get to deal with profundities.

Fantasy and SF are the Literature of the Profound. Writers who spend their times documenting the trials of everyday life don’t have the opportunity to grapple with the philosophical questions that have intrigued us all since the dawn of time. Who are we? What are we? Where did we come from? What makes us what we are? These fundamentals about our existence are meat and drink to Fantasy and SF writers as we imagine other worlds where Normal Rules Do Not Apply. Situations like this give us ample room to explore what it means to be human or the basis of moral choice or place of aesthetics in our society.

Time to pluck an example. We can’t imagine a mainstream novelist producing a work that examines the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis of the interaction between language, culture and cognitive abilities, but that’s just what Jack Vance did in his 1958 novel The Languages of Pao by positing ruthless overlords who created a global experiment to test how imposition of languages could shape various societies into ultimate warriors, consummate merchants or brilliant scientists. Not only did Vance explore this fascinating possibility, but he embedded this speculation in a rattling good yarn.

One example, decidedly non-random, but the point is that Fantasy and Science Fiction don’t just allow exploring such matters, they actually enable this exploration. This is because one of the strengths of these related genres is their limitlessness. Nothing is out of bounds for a Fantasy or SF writer to speculate about. In fact, any hint of boundaries prompts Fantasy and SF writers to wonder what lies on the other side. They imagine. They create.

Everything is grist for the mill, and that’s another reason Fantasy and Science Fiction writers are the best.

It helps, of course, that Fantasy and SF writers have the best readers in the world. That isn’t blatant sucking-up, either, even though it might sound like it. Whenever Fantasy or SF readers open a new book, they know that that they have to be on their toes, that they have to do some work. In this book, things will be different—and they have to read carefully to understand the world, the society, the magic system or the political milieu that the writer has created. Fantasy and SF readers are ready for this, and they rise to the challenge.

This of course, is the reason why one hears, so often, from non-genre readers who say about Fantasy and Science Fiction: ‘I couldn’t get into this.’ This is because they’ve become weak and flabby, unable to work even a little bit hard. Their reading antenna have been dulled by years of reading mainstream novels where they just have to look at character, while taking the setting for granted—and not being worried about having to keep up with anything as grubby as an actual plot.

Naturally, we have our tongues in our cheeks here, but the fact remains that just as Fantasy and SF Writers are the best because they had to do more, then Fantasy and SF readers are the best because they have to do more.

Fantasy and Science Fiction are indisputably the best.

All the best from the cloud.

Michael Pryor

Back to Contents

Hot Blood and Iron Teeth

Catherine Moller

Unscheduled track repairs waylaid them at a station they had never seen before. A little country station with a portico and no walls, and grey-green bushland stretched out for miles and miles around it.

The Fyodorovs disembarked to find that the air was much colder than they expected, even for Autumn in New South Wales. The other passengers remained on board to escape the chill, even though the conductor yelled they’d be delayed for an hour or two at least.

The only other person at the station was a wizened, apple-faced woman, missing teeth and hair in equal measure, with thin, knobby fingers and a long nose like a twig. But her eyes were bright and kind, and she wore a huge, ragged fur coat which gave her a lumpish look. She waited.

The Fyodorovs chose to stand at the other edge of the station, where Ivan Fyodorov could smoke. Nadya, twelve and surly, rucked her jacket up around her shoulders as she stood by her father.

‘Mama, I’m cold.’ She preferred to speak in English whenever she could get away with it, though she knew her mother might not understand.

‘How can you be cold, zhena?’ Ivan asked as he cupped his hand around a match. ‘This is a warm spring day back home.’ Nadya hated how her father called it ‘back home,’ as if he hadn’t lived in Australia for fifteen years. He patted her shoulder. ‘It’s bracing.’

Angela, fourteen and spirited, pottered about on the edge of the slab, mindless of the chill. She had hot Russian blood.

‘Nadya,’ she called, ‘look, there’s a billabong down the hill. Want to skim stones?’

‘It’s Norah,’ Nadya pouted but followed Angela down the hill anyway, because anything was more interesting than standing about in her father’s cumulus of tobacco smoke.

The billabong was flat and still and surrounded by scribbly gums. Nadya and Angela hunted for flat pebbles but found that the stones here were too small and sharp. Nadya poked through the reeds with a stick.

‘Playing in the woods?’ said a voice, heavily accented.

The old woman from the station had followed them down to the pond. ‘Don’t mind me. Just resting old bones.’

Fearless Angela shrugged and return to hunting for rocks, but Nadya glanced back up the hill to her parents. Her father seemed consumed by his smoking, but her mother waved cheerily. Nadya beat the reeds of the billabong with her stick, startling a heron she hadn’t noticed.

‘Where are you from?’ Nadya asked the old woman.

Angela hissed. ‘You can’t ask people where they’re from, it’s rude!’

The old woman waved a placating hand. ‘From Russia, all over. Same as you, I think.’

‘Our family is from Kaluga,’ said Angela. ‘But Nadya—Norah, sorry—and me were born in Blacktown.’

Nadya scowled and went back to beating the rushes with her stick. With each whap something new arose from the billabong: a frog, a carpet python, a lizard. A red-faced brolga that whooped as it took to the sky. A flurry of