Aurealis #134

By Stephen Higgins (Editor)

Aurealis #134 continues the tradition of delivering quality speculative fiction to readers worldwide. This issue features three stunning original stories as well as another installment of Dirk Strasser's 'Conquist'. There are more of the reviews and non fiction articles that our regular readers have come to love, plus more incredible artwork. All in all another great issue!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chimaera Publications
• Release date: Sep 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9781922031990

Book preview

AUREALIS #134

Edited by Stephen Higgins

Published by Chimaera Publications at Smashwords

Copyright of this compilation Chimaera Publications 2020

Copyright on each story remains with the contributor

EPUB version ISBN 978-1-922031-99-0

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

Cracticus—D J Daniels

To Sea, A Monster—Danielle Shelton

The Yesterday House—Harrison Demchick

CONQUIST Part 8: The Valley of Ashes—Dirk Strasser

How Arrival Dodges its Source Material’s Most Challenging Concept—Ani White

The Growth of Australian Graphic Novels: An Interview with Ben Slabak—Peter Pascoe

Clone Narratives and the Question of Human Nature—Lachlan Walter

Reviews

Next Issue

Submissions to Aurealis

Credits

From the Cloud

Stephen Higgins

It has been ages since I have sat in the editorial chair here at Aurealis. Has much been happening? It is ok, I promise I am not going to go on and on about the pandemic. We all know the disruption it has caused, economically, socially and in a welfare sense. However, I do think it is important that we try to keep things on an even keel as much as possible and I for one have been glad that good old Aurealis has been keeping the issues coming this year.

I recently ‘attended’ the 73rd WorldCon in New Zealand. I guess it would be more accurate to say ‘I attended the New Zealand WorldCon in my lounge room’. In many ways it was like any other WorldCon. I had trouble finding rooms, I enjoyed some panels immensely and had clashes with other panels I wanted to attend and, of course, there was controversy and angst. As I said, just another WorldCon. I would like to congratulate the organisers for their work. It cannot have been easy switching from a normal WorldCon to an online one and I think the ConZealand team did a good job. Hopefully their expertise will not be needed to advise the next Worldcon on how to do it.

Speaking of awards (I was referring to the announcement of this year’s Hugo awards at the Worldcon when I mentioned controversy and angst) it was pleasing to see the annual Aurealis Awards went off without a hitch a couple of weeks ago. Again, our congratulations to the winners and to the organisers of this great event.

What else is going on? Lots of genre movies and TV shows seem to be getting released or, at the very least, planned. Of course, it is hard to say when these new genre movies will be seen on the big screen given the current restrictions but hopefully soon. There are also lots of new science fiction and fantasy titles being released and you can read about many of them in our reviews section. Also, I should just mention that if you are suddenly left without anything to read, there are tons of back issues of Aurealis awaiting you at Smashwords/Aurealis.

I am looking forward to an enjoyable ride for the rest of 2020 and I can promise some great reading ahead for the last few issues of the year.

All the best from the cloud!

Stephen Higgins

Editor: Stephen Higgins

Stephen has been interested in science fiction for ages and has written a few stories for Aurealis in the past. Lately he has been creating a lot of music. You can hear his music on Spotify, iTunes, Bandcamp and Soundcloud and all of the other usual places you get your music. You can find out more at www.stephenhigginsmusic.com.

Associate Editor: Terry Wood

Terry Wood is a political consultant, writer and editor from Brisbane, and has been an Associate Editor and Non-fiction Coordinator for Aurealis since 2015. He has also been involved previously with Andromeda Spaceways Magazine. He can be found at terrywood.com.au.

Back to Contents

Cracticus

D J Daniels

Vida is on the back verandah, sitting on the good bit where she won’t fall through. Even on the good bit, the wood is rough through her shorts. She wriggles her bum away from a nail. She’s drinking something smoky, peaty, sharp. It matches the air she’s breathing. Her lungs aren’t happy, but she can’t stay inside all the time. She thought it might be better come evening.

The ghost is in the backyard again.

Most days neither of them particularly wants to talk, but she can tell he has something to say. She knows what it is: they are running out of time.

Right now, he is playing the piano. He thinks it will soften her up. It used to, back before. Does he know the piano is outside because she pushed it there? He hasn’t mentioned it, but he would blame her anyway. If he knows. Does he know a vine has pushed its way inside, twining through the strings, strangling the hammers, and up and out across the top? She still doesn’t understand how much he notices, how much he accepts without comment, how much he thinks is just the same as it always was.

She can hear the clear tones he imagines; she can also hear the dead plunk of brittle hammers on broken strings. She wishes for some other kind of plant music, the music the vine might make if it could, the slow expansion and tightening, the burst of growth and green, followed by the sigh of the eucalypts down in the hollow behind the pool.

The trees are too close. If the fire comes this way, they’ll shoot burning embers onto the house. The verandah probably won’t last anyway, even if the fire doesn’t reach her. One part of it was smouldering when she walked outside an hour or so ago. She should do something about that.

When the music finishes—that beautiful, show-off Chopin thing everyone who thinks they can manage it plays—she takes another sip of whiskey. She sees him put the lid down carefully. The smoke helps him, solidifies him, though when he walks he drifts from place to place, as if he is unsure where he is going, or unable to find the straight line between the piano and the verandah.

Finally, he sits beside her. Vida offers him a drink. All unspoken. And he takes the glass. He manages that, but only that, no liquid will spill or disappear. Usually, she drinks it after he goes. Sometimes she won’t. She could pour it on the smouldering timber, though that’s unlikely to help.

‘Do you have them?’ he asks. No preamble. She supposes in one sense there’ve been years of preamble. Four years and ten months, to be exact, though some of those early months were all caught up in disbelief and sorrow.

‘Almost,’ she whispers.

‘I haven’t got much—’

‘I know.’ She fills her lungs with smoky air. ‘It’s under control.’ Though it isn’t. How can it be?

The truth is, she has everything except for the last thing and that she knows where to find. What she doesn’t have is the will to pull it all together. Neither that nor the courage to tell him so.

He is dead, he is gone, he is insistently still here.

When she is in a certain mood, she distinctly notices that nothing she has gathered for him has anything to do with her. Not really. No photograph or lock of hair, no wedding band. So, in that sense, it’s nothing to do with her.

But she promised, yes she did do that.

The next morning, the wind has changed. A reprieve. It’s hard not to feel glad, not to feel guilty about that gladness, because the fire is still chasing someone. Vida puts on a load of washing, hangs it out, despite the smoke. There’s not so much today and it’s too hot for the dryer. Besides, everything smells of smoke now.

The tree trunks are pale in this light, the sheets orange. Everything is alien, except for the magpie sitting on the top of the clothesline.

’I already have feathers,’ she tells the magpie. It is the wrong time of year for magpie eggs. She’s glad of that.

It warbles to her. She wishes she understood. She wishes for its wings, its capacity to fly away.

She could. Not the flying, but she could start up the car, head out and away from here. She doesn’t know why she doesn’t.

Everything in the veggie garden is unhappy. The plants don’t like the smoke or the wind. She picks some cherry tomatoes—she can wash the ash off—rescues some wilting spinach, resists the temptation to pull up a radish or two. The magpie follows her, hoping for a worm probably. It sings again.

‘It’s not that simple,’ Vida tells it. ‘I don’t even know if it will work.’ The magpie sings again, calling out her evasion. Because it is that simple, bringing him back isn’t the hard part. Not really. She knows what he wants her to do.

She imagines it: bringing him back, all that would take, and then arguing with him about whether they should stay and try and protect the house or leave before the fire engulfs them.

He’d want to go, of course. She’d want to stay. Though she wouldn’t, if it came to it. The fire is too savage.

But today she is safe. He never comes in the daylight. Or perhaps he does and she can’t see him, but he never plays the piano.

The back verandah is still intact, if more charred that it should be. The magpie has followed her to the doorway. She opens the screen door and already it has one foot inside. It sings again, lifting its beak.

‘I can’t,’ she tells it.

She hasn’t sung for years. She doesn’t want to sing. It will open her up and all the heartache will come out and she won’t be able to go on. Singing is out of the question.

She fiddles with her phone and plays the magpie a little of the recording. Her, in rehearsal, before any of this happened. She hadn’t known he’d recorded her, but she hadn’t cared. He was in love with her voice. Not her, just the voice.

The magpie listens, head cocked to the side. It warbles a little in reply, but it is half-hearted. Yes, she thinks, no matter how lovely the voice, how spontaneous the recording, it is only being played through phone speakers. They will have to do.

Vida snaps to a decision. She gathers things. She’s going to do this. Now, it has to be now. She puts her phone on the coffee table, places the box with the feathers beside it, lifts the handwritten manuscript out of its hiding place behind some not-read hardcover books her mother gave her. The notes have faded to a wispy blue-black, but they are still legible. The title—Plume—is still scrawled boldly across the top.

All she needs is the egg.

She goes next door.

Arjun is still there, but she reads the same caution in his body as she feels in hers. Neither