Aurealis #119

By Michael Pryor (Editor)

In Aurealis #119, you’ll get the stylish and unnerving ‘Abomination’ by Michelle Birkette, the intense and creepy ‘In the Mountain Valley’ by Gordon Grice, plus the relentless drama of ‘Fracture Line’ by Chris Walker. Our non-fiction includes Kris Ashton’s careful analysis of parental horror in Stephen King’s early fiction, Kristina Grifantini’s look at the legendary women of horror and Amy Lauren’s continuing guide to world-building. And don’t forget our stunning internal art and comprehensive reviews section. Aurealis #119, an issue like no other.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chimaera Publications
• Release date: Apr 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781922031761

Book preview

AUREALIS #119

Edited by Michael Pryor

Published by Chimaera Publications at Smashwords

Copyright of this compilation Chimaera Publications 2019

Copyright on each story remains with the contributor

EPUB version ISBN 978-1-922031-76-1

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—Michael Pryor

In the Mountain Valley—Gordon Grice

Abomination—Michelle Birkette

Fracture Line—Chris Walker

Suffer the Little Children: An Analysis of Parental Horror in Stephen King’s Early Fiction—Kris Ashton

Legendary Women in Horror—KC Grifant

Worldbuilding: The Bad and the Just Plain Ugly—Amy Laurens

Reviews

Next Issue

Credits

From the Cloud

Michael Pryor

Let’s go to one of the basic building blocks of Story, the sentence. Masters of the genre have a way of cranking out a cracking sentence. Here are some of our favourites.

‘On the heights above the river Xzan, at the site of certain ancient ruins, Iucounu the Laughing Magician had built a manse to his private taste: an eccentric structure of steep gables, balconies, sky-walks, cupolas, together with three spiral green glass towers through which the red sunlight shone in twisted glints and peculiar colours.’ Jack Vance, The Eyes of the Overworld

This is the opening of the book and it’s Jack Vance in full baroque mode. Sly, spiky, complex and mannered in an utterly distinctive way. Nice use of the colon, too, for which he gets extra marks.

‘Bright bloomed the morning, and debts were settled beneath it.’ Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light

Almost the opposite of the Vance example, Zelazny goes the economical route in this chapter opener. See the way he plays with word order (‘Bright bloomed the morning’ instead of the more customary ‘The morning bloomed bright’) and then he crushes the clichéd description of daybreak with a hammer blow. The way the sentence finishes is so far from where it started that it takes your breath away.

‘A profound love between two people involves, after all, the power and chance of doing profound hurt.’ Ursula K Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

Never use a strong, unusual word like ‘profound’ twice close together! And certainly never in the same sentence! Except if you’re in serene control like Ursula Le Guin was with this one. It’s almost musing (‘after all’) and is profound in its own right.

‘Atop that, yet more crisp-cut stone towering higher and higher as if men competed with the gods who had thrown up the great rock the whole edifice stood upon.’ Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion

Lovely scene setting. Bujold takes her time with this sentence, a lesson for all writers. She doesn’t hurry, and brings it home with a simile that’s not only a winner, but by its mention of gods it hints at mysteries, vistas and back story that efficiently adds texture to the narrative.

‘Driving east on the Santa Monica Freeway in the pre-dawn darkness, the moon long since set and the skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles standing up off to his left like the smouldering posts of some god’s burned-down house, Crane had been seized with the idea of just staying eastbound on the Pomona Freeway, and all the way out past Ontario and Mira Loma to where it joined with the 15 in one of those weird, semi-desert suburbs with names like Norco and Loma Linda, and then straight on up to Las Vegas.’ Tim Powers, the Last Call

How can you make a description of a humdrum world resonate with otherness? This is how. Pop in a disconcerting simile (‘like the smouldering posts of some god’s burned-down house’), use strong verbs (‘had been seized’) and then the world becomes ominous, uncanny, threatening.

‘Readers will always insist on adventures, and though you can have grief without adventures, you cannot have adventures without grief.’ Catherynne M Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

This is a sentence built around rhythm, using repetition for an effect bordering on the sonorous. Three is the magic number, and using a word three times is like casting a spell.

‘Heidi’s room looked like the aftermath of a not-very-successful airplane bombing.’ William Gibson, Zero History

Sometimes you just nail a metaphor. We can imagine that after writing that one, WG sat back with a small smile on his face.

‘Joe felt the familiar exultation, the epinephrine flame that burned away doubt and confusion and left only a pure, clear, colourless vapor of rage.’ Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

Rhythm again. Hear the drumbeats of ‘pure, clear, colourless vapor of rage’? Hammer blows, building, echoing Joe’s boiling fury. Add to that the startling image of rage as ‘the epinephrine flame’ and we have a sentence to savour again and again.

‘True peace required the presence of justice, not just the absence of conflict.’ N K Jemisin, The Killing Moon

A neat antithesis, a sentence balanced around the comma which gives it a neat impetus. We read the first part and we know that something is coming either to turn this around or to emphasise it. Clean, cadenced, punchy.

Sentences to savour.

All the best from the cloud.

Michael Pryor

www.michaelpryor.com.au

Back to Contents

In the Mountain Valley

Gordon Grice

Morland’s trouble was keeping decent hired hands. The latest to quit was Sweeney.

‘It had big eyelashes like a lady,’ Sweeney said. That was a new one, though Morland had heard the basics of the tale before: a little man, naked and starving, with big round eyes, darting around between the rocks and stealing a canteen here or a bag of jerky there, looking like he meant to do more. It hardly sounded like something to be scared of.

‘How do you know he ain’t some hobo?’ Morland said.

Sweeney had a quick answer. ‘Because when I asked him why he was creeping up on me, he hissed like a fried snake and crawled straight up the cliff. That’s when I saw he had hooks for hands, like the thumbs on a bat.’

You couldn’t force a man to stay. Especially if he was a dumbass.

The next day Morland drove to town to find somebody new. He noticed a big, shaggy man splitting wood in front of the sheriff’s station. The chain connecting his ankles jangled every time he stepped to place a new log.

‘How do you like your work as a wood-splitter?’ Morland said.

‘I don’t care for it,’ the man growled through his stringy moustache. ‘I get splinters, plus nosy bastards ask me questions.’

‘How long they going to keep you at it? I might have something that pays a little better out on my spread,’ Morland said.

‘They’ll cut me loose right this minute if you got fifty dollars bail,’ the big man said. He landed a sloppy blow that sent a wedge of wood sailing into the grass.

‘You’d have to stay on through the winter,’ Morland said.

‘What aren’t you telling me?’ the big man asked.

‘Road’s too rough for trucks. It’s all horseback and mule. No electric, even down at the main house, but you’d be sleeping in line shacks, eating out of cans. Freezing your hind legs off. You wouldn’t see a soul but once a week.’

‘Hell, I ought to pay you.’

‘Also, the other boys say the valley’s haunted.’

‘Bullshit. Pay me out, mister, and I’m yours 'til spring.’

* * *

The big man said his name was Grant and, for all Morland knew, it was. He brought nothing but a bindle, and his smell of wet leather and sour sweat lingered in the truck. At least he only needed one mule to carry himself and his gear up to the south-end shack. When Morland rode in on his white stallion a week later with a fresh supply of grub, he was happy to see Hereford cattle grazing near the shack, and the red backs of more dotting the pasture above. The number looked about right. Grant was curry-combing the mule Morland had left him.

‘Have the spooks given