Aurealis #111

By Michael Pryor (Editor)

Aurealis #111 brings you the exotic and gritty ‘Graft Mage’ by William Broom, the doom laden mystery of ‘The Egg and the Cat’ by Miles Hurt and the subtle and haunting ‘Deserted Lies the City’ by S R Dean. Our top non-fiction includes ‘What Is AfroSF?’ by Eugen Bacon and Mikey Pryvt’s in-depth interview with Corey J White. With our stunning artwork and our comprehensive reviews, Aurealis #111 is sort of journal that dreams are made of.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chimaera Publications
• Release date: Jun 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9781922031686

Book preview

AUREALIS #111

Australian Fantasy & Science Fiction

Edited by Michael Pryor

Published by Chimaera Publications at Smashwords

Copyright of this compilation Chimaera Publications 2018

Copyright on each story remains with the contributor

EPUB version ISBN 978-1-922031-68-6 

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

Graft Mage—William Broom

The Egg and the Cat—Miles Hurt

Deserted Lies the City—S R Dean

What is AfroSF?—Eugen Bacon

Fighting for the Future in a new Dark Age: An Interview with Corey J White —Mikey Pryvt

Reviews

Next Issue

Credits

From the Cloud

Michael Pryor

Tolkien’s reputation as perhaps the pre-eminent Fantasy author rests on many things—the epic sweep of his vision, the extraordinary depth of his linguistic invention, the establishing of so many conventions that we take for granted in the genre today. Sometimes, however, we overlook the ingenuity of many of the narrative devices that Tolkien used and perhaps introduced to Fantasy.

As one of the inventors of the classic Secondary World form of Fantasy, which does away with the necessity for characters to traverse from our world into the world of magic and adventure, Tolkien used a host of techniques to create a convincing and immersive Otherworld. Some of these are overt, but some are so subtle that they need some pointing out. And, of course, once pointed out they can be appreciated and imitated, for learning from the masters is always good practice.

In the dark and danger of Moria, Aragorn tries to reassure the party by praising Gandalf’s sense of direction, saying ‘He is surer of finding the way home in a blind night than the cats of Queen Beruthiél.’ No one in the Fellowship turns around and says, ‘Who the what?’ or expresses any puzzlement over Aragorn’s offhand allusion, and this is part of the device which we can call Expanding the Scope.

As soon as Aragorn drops in his reference it’s as if the story has suddenly expanded, becoming one small part of an immense narrative with its own history and antecedents. It actually doesn’t matter who Queen Beruthiél is or who her cats are. The point is that she and her moggies are well enough known to have become proverbial, which is something that takes time. The mention of her and her domestic menagerie immediately telescopes the story backwards, hinting at a huge back story that has occurred before the events in the mines of Moria. Straight away it gives richness and texture to the events, and it hints at layers of history that make the current narrative all the more convincing because it has a context and precursor events, just like reality has. The scope of the story has just expanded, and not just in a trivial way. It has rolled backwards for perhaps centuries, all with one tiny mention of a monarch and her pets.

Nicely done, J R R.

All the best from the cloud.

Michael Pryor

Back to Contents

Graft Mage

William Broom

Hain had been sleeping under his cloak, dreaming of making love to his captain. Now he was woken by the sounds of distant battle starting up again. He had half-expected he would not wake at all—that the enemy would find him while he slept, and death would come this way. But he was still here. He rose quickly and crept down into the grey dawn.

The images of Captain Marmara would not leave his mind. He could almost still feel her in his arms. To drive her away, he repeated his soldier’s mantra over and over. Make me a spear, a blade, a stone. He would have liked to splash his face and wash away the unclean thoughts, but the water out here was grey and caustic to the touch.

He hated that he had dreamt of her. It felt like a betrayal, though of whom exactly he could not say.

Hain peered out through the doorway of the barn where he had slept. The Gama-guddin battlecruiser still hung in the sky above the northern horizon. It had not moved far during the night. Even from such a distance he could see the rippling of its vast synthetic muscles, and the smaller aircraft buzzing around it like flies on the carcass of a steer. Every few minutes it would give another bellow, loud as a thunderclap, followed by a pale flash as it fired its flenser. It looked like the Fifth Infantry was still fighting it from the ground. They would be dying down there. They could slow the battlecruiser’s advance, but nothing more.

Hain was behind the enemy’s forward line, in the dead zone left behind after the flenser had done its work. As far as the eye could see, the land was scraped clean of life. The fields lay thick with the dust of wheat stalks. The trees were bare, bone-white, curled in on themselves as though they could not support their own weight. The buildings had been left untouched by the weapon, but they had offered no protection to their occupants. He had slept in the barn, not the homestead beside it, because he had not wanted to find bodies.

He ate the last of his rations and opened his field map. By his best guess he was about eight miles east of Temple Marr. Either he would reach it today, or he would be caught and killed.

He was already at the top of a hill. The next rise in the land was about half a mile away, an easy distance to cover in a single far-step. He closed his fist around the dirty white sphere embedded in his right palm. It was only a habitual gesture; the engram truly needed nothing but thought to activate it. A sharp tingling ran up his arm as it flared into life.

He reached out and folded space in front of himself, foreshortening the distance to the next hill. He crossed the gap in a single step and immediately hurried to take cover. He knew all too well how vulnerable he was during the moment when he passed through folded space. It had been at that moment, the day before, that the ambush had begun.

Once more the images of the battle came back to him: his squadmate Emmer, screaming on the ground, his legs stretched out like long streamers of paper; the landscape warping and folding back on itself in a tangle of paradoxical geometry; the masked faces of the enemy, flashing like ghosts in a hall of mirrors.

Hain’s squad had been confident, heading home after a successful mission. Baran, the agent they had been sent to extract, was a natural born mage, not just a graft soldier like the rest of them. His aura of calm had made them all feel more secure. Perhaps they had been careless, perhaps just unlucky. Either way, the battle had been decided in a matter of seconds. Baran had not been able to save anyone but himself—and Hain.

‘Take the step,’ he had said. ‘I’ll follow you.’ They had been trapped together in a narrow