Aurealis #125

By Dirk Strasser (Editor)

Thumbs up to Aurealis #125! Dirk Strasser explores the differences between reading and listening to ebooks when it comes to fiction. Join us to savour Craig Blane’s fun SF/Western hybrid ‘Drink with the Dead’. Be transported by the rich enchantment of Mike Adamson’s ‘The Witch who Wove Dreams’. And don’t leave before the bitter end as we watch an employee’s sad and frightening decline under the weight of Laurence Barratt-Manning’s ‘Data’. Amy Laurens looks at “Worldbuilding: Using Maps To Build Stories”, Eugen Bacon chills out with Dunedin fantasy author, Kura Carpenter; and Lachlan Walter explores “The (not so Sudden) Rise of World Science Fiction”. Our reviews include Peripheral Visions by Robert Hood, Prisoncorp Orphancorp #3 by Marlee J Ward, The Rich Man’s House by Andrew McGahan, Exhalation by Ted Chiang, Once and Future by Amy Rose Capetta and Cori McCartney, and The Wayfarers Trilogy by Becky Chambers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chimaera Publications
• Release date: Oct 6, 2019
• ISBN: 9781922031891

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 #125

Edited by Dirk Strasser

Published by Chimaera Publications at Smashwords

Copyright of this compilation Chimaera Publications 2019

Copyright on each story remains with the contributor

EPUB version ISBN 978-1-922031-89-1

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—Dirk Strasser

Drink with the Dead—Craig Blane

The Witch Who Wove Dreams—Mike Adamson

Data—Laurence Barratt-Manning

World-building: Using Maps to Build Stories—Amy Laurens

The (not so Sudden) Rise of World Science Fiction—Lachlan Walter

Chilling out with Kura Carpenter—Eugen Bacon

Reviews

Next Issue

Credits

From the Cloud

Dirk Strasser

Is listening to a novel the same as reading it? With audiobook sales exploding in recent years as print and ebook sales flatline, it’s an interesting question to consider. There have been several studies on this regarding non-fiction books, but I’m specifically talking about fiction.

Clearly ‘listening’ and ‘reading’ are not the same physical acts. But is the end result effectively the same?

Not for me. I haven’t enjoyed anyone reading to me since I was very young. At primary school, I hated it when the librarian read to us. Even now I avoid author readings for the same reason. I find I can’t seem to want to concentrate on the words. My mind wanders, I miss something important, and I simply don’t enjoy the story.

The problem is the reader. They’re not telling the story the way my mind tells it. I hear the reader’s voice, not the character’s or the narrator’s voice. Nothing magical happens inside my head when I’m listening to fiction. The alchemy between the words and my imagination that occurs when I read an engrossing novel just doesn’t happen when someone is reading the words out loud.

If my mind wanders when I’m reading or I haven’t remembered who a character is (I’m looking at you, Game of Thrones!), I just go back and re-read a bit. Reading isn’t linear. Studies have shown around 15% of eye movements during reading involve going back and re-checking. An oral story, on the other hand, relentlessly moves forward, leaving you behind. Each sound exists only for the briefest of seconds. While, in theory, you can replay bits in an audiobook, do most people go to the hassle of it?

Reading is active, listening is passive. The words aren’t reading themselves in a book. I read speculative fiction, in particular, to explore worlds, strange beings and unique perspectives. I accept I may be in a minority here but, for me, listening to a novel is the equivalent of sitting through a neutered movie.

I get why people listen to audiobooks. We’re all time poor. For most of us, it’s not a choice between listening to a novel and reading it. It’s a choice between listening to a novel and nothing. I certainly don’t read as much fiction as I used to or would like to. I would ‘get through’ more books if I listened to them on the way to work in the car, for example. But it’s not about getting through books for me. It’s about the magic that happens when it’s just me and the printed page. When I read, I feel I’m part of the creative process.

So, please join us now in the creative process as you read the stories in this issue.

All the best from the cloud.

Dirk Strasser

www.dirkstrasser.com/

Back to Contents

Drink with the Dead

Craig Blane

I was about to stop for lunch when the first person I’d seen in days shimmered through the heat haze. They were just past an old broken-down hauler that had run off the road, up to its propulsion disks in loose dirt. The name Palstor Bros was painted on the side of the cargo hold, just beginning to curl and flake away. As I got closer, I saw the figure was wearing a dirty, blue poncho draped down their shoulders. They were broad enough I could tell it was a man. By the way he walked, I guessed he’d been wandering for some time out here.

I slowed my skimmer down to a crawl as I approached the hauler. The passenger door stood open, and I rode up to it with my good hand on the butt of my railpistol. There were plasma scorches in the cab, and rust-red stains dried on the seat. Whatever had run the hauler off the road, it hadn’t been an accident. Even so, judging from the state of it, it hadn’t moved for a few months. So why did the hairs on my neck stand at attention?

Ahead, the stranger hadn’t so much as turned to look in my direction. He kept shambling on, head down like he was deep in thought. I cruised up behind him, matching his speed about thirty paces back. I noticed a slight limp in his left leg. His boots were practically worn through, leather springing away from his feet. In a few more miles they might well fall apart.

A large part of me wanted to offer a ride. I wouldn’t call myself a philanthropist, but I could be kind when the mood struck. But the core of me, that ancient, animal centre of the brain that imagines monsters in the shadows beyond the campfire, whispered a warning in my ear.

I chewed the skin on my chapped lip as I watched the stranger amble on. Maybe he was just a wanderer. Maybe he was hiding a shotgun under his poncho, or something worse. I’m not an unkind man. I’m also not in the habit of throwing my life at the feet of generosity. I twisted the accelerator, the nuclear engine hurling me forward with instant power. I flew past the stranger, still expecting a bullet between my shoulders. He didn’t even look up.

The gravity pucks under my skimmer blasted down the long grass sprouting from the ancient tarmac, rev dial teasing the red line. Within seconds he was a smudge in my mirror. Just like that, the uneasy feeling melted away, but I didn’t let myself forget it. It would be easy to tell myself I was a fool, to go back and offer the wanderer a ride, maybe even share my lunch with him. Instead, I trusted my instincts. I would lunch a few horizons further on, alone.

* * *

The town I was aiming for was so small I’d practically ridden into it before I saw it. First came the sign—a sheet of corrugated tin bolted against the side of a burnt-out chicken house that read:

PYREWOOD

NO FUNERALS

As I pushed on, the road seemed to sink into the small hills, the earth rising on my right until I was driving alongside a steep, chalky cliff face of orange stone. Ahead the track curved and, as I rounded the bend, the cliff drew aside like a curtain on a theatre stage, unveiling Pyrewood.

The town was little more than a spit of buildings by the roadside, each one a mesh of scrap metal