Aurealis #103

By Stephen Higgins (Editor)

Aurealis is a speculative fiction magazine that has been published continuously for over 25 years. Aurealis is published ten times a year and features new fiction, non fiction, humour and reviews that will appeal to all lovers of Science fiction and Fantasy. Many of the world's foremost speculative writers have been featured within the magazine and it has been recognised as one of the leading magazines in the field. More information about the magazine can be found at www.aurealis.com.au or visit our Facebook page for tons more information, news, views and interesting stuff!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chimaera Publications
• Release date: Aug 11, 2017
• ISBN: 9781922031600

Book preview

AUREALIS #103

Australian Fantasy & Science Fiction

Edited by Stephen Higgins

Published by Chimaera Publications at Smashwords

Copyright of this compilation Chimaera Publications 2017

Copyright on each story remains with the contributor.

EPUB version ISBN 978-1-922031-60-0

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 Kovacs Incident—Mitchell Salmon

The Beast That Laid the Crystal Eggs—J M Melican

‘As Portrayed by John Cusack’—Brian C Baer

Ray Bradbury: His Writings and Legacy—Eugen Bacon

The Rewards of Persistence: An Interview with Leife Shallcross—Chris Large

Secret History of Australia—Inga McCartney—Researched by Stephen Higgins

Reviews

Next Issue

Credits

From the Cloud

Stephen Higgins

Recently, whilst my home town was suffering through record low temperatures, I travelled to the tourist town of Broome. This is in the Kimberly region of West Australia and it enjoys winter temperatures of a reliable 29/30°C. This is my third trip to the region and I’m only bringing it up in the editorial of a speculative fiction magazine because the area around Broome always reminds me of various science fiction works I’ve read. Specifically, these are the ‘Rynosseros’ and ‘Wormwood’ collections from Terry Dowling, and the works of Sean McMullen and others.

The landscape is so different from the (basically) dairy areas where I live in rural Victoria that it simply evokes thoughts of alien landscapes. The red dirt, weird vegetation and ‘unseasonal’ weather all help to give the feeling that you are in a strange place. I mean boab trees alone can trigger this. They’re such fantastic plants, and I mean fantastic in the terms that speculative fiction readers would understand. I succumbed to the temptation to actually place my hands on the swollen trunk of one fine example where we were staying. And one thing led to another and I ended up hugging it. See what I mean? Even just writing about the place makes things go a bit weird. Anyway, while there I went along to an ‘Astro Tour’ conducted by Greg Quicke. Greg is the popular astronomer who appeared recently in the ABC’s stargazing show here in Australia. He’s an entertaining astro-educator and his ‘astro-tours’ held outside of Broome with the aid of a phalanx of telescopes, lasers and hot chocolate are very popular.

The experience led to some lovely ‘sense of wonder’ moments for me. There I was looking at the planets and stars, in an ‘alien’ landscape, with commentary provided by Greg (Space Gandalf) Quicke. Have a look at his website www.astrotours.net for details about his tours and to find out why he’s called Space Gandalf. Interesting man and an interesting place. Those sense of wonder moments are precious to me and are, of course, usually linked to reading genre fiction, but the real-life sense of wonder moments are even more valuable.

It was refreshing that the one experience led to a bit of renewed interest in the works that had been inspired by the area and I have been looking at Terry Dowling’s books again, with a renewed appreciation for the sense of place that Dowling manages to create. Whilst I was getting back into the fiction of Terry Dowling, I was delighted to see that PS Publishing is planning to release the Complete Rynosseros in deluxe hardcover and later paperback editions with tons of added extras. That’s something to look forward to and we will keep our own readers up to speed as we hear more about this important release.

All the best from the cloud.

Stephen Higgins

Back to Contents

The Kovacs Incident

Mitchell Salmon

Travel the world with WorldHost; explore from the comfort of someone else’s skin.

My neck prickled. The website slogan filling my tablet screen didn’t fill me with easy excitement like it was supposed to.

It was another hot day—six in a row over 38 Celsius—and I was dreaming of Europe in winter. I was sitting on the couch with my tablet on my knees. It was synched up to the SmartHub implanted at the base of my skull, and I filled in the extensive WorldHost application process—pages upon pages of forms—at the speed of thought. Will, sitting opposite me with his tablet showing an old textbook, fanned himself half-heartedly with the tablet’s case. He glanced up and saw me looking at him. He smiled. ‘I hope it snows when we’re there,’ he said.

‘I don’t think it’s snowed in Budapest for decades,’ I said.

‘We’ll put some holos up.’

I nodded and looked back at the tablet. ‘What is your purpose of travel?’ I read aloud. ‘Holiday,’ I answered myself, and checked the correct box. The list rolled by banally. I hummed as I filled in details. ‘Are you planning to be sexually active during your travel? God, that’s a bit personal.’

‘I hope the answer’s yes,’ Will said, not looking up from his book.

I smiled and selected ‘Yes, with single (monogamous) travelling companion’ from the list of options. ‘High adrenaline activities?’ I asked. ‘There’s a Liszt concert series running all winter,’ was Will’s response, so I selected ‘no’.

The booking form rolled over to its next page. Host preferences. It asked me to select a sex, and I briefly contemplated selecting male, just for the look on Will’s face, but thought better of it; he always got a bit strange about that stuff. I didn’t think he would see the funny side. So I chose female.

I looked down the list of questions. ‘Jeez, you can get pretty specific,’ I observed. ‘You can even select preferred ethnicity… That’s got to be racist.’

‘Leave it blank,’ Will said, rising to get a beer from the fridge for each of us. ‘I didn’t put in a huge number of preferences. Anyone healthy enough to be a host is going to be fine for me.’

I looked at him, drinking in his unshaven jaw, soft cheeks, and thin hair. ‘I can’t picture kissing someone else,’ I told him.

‘You won’t,’ he replied. ‘You’ll kiss me, just in a different body. Right?’

I nodded. ‘Yeah, I guess.’

* * *

Our host offers arrived within a week. I opened my emails to find on offer from a young woman named Lara. After the WorldHost preamble, Lara introduced herself. ‘I would like to host you for your visit to Budapest,’ she wrote. ‘Please find attached photographs of myself and my apartment, if you wish to stay.’

I opened the photos. Her apartment was small, and she clearly wasn’t