Aurealis #149

By Stephen Higgins (Editor)

Fantastic new fiction from Michael Pryor, Tom Walters and Christopher Witty. Aurealis #149 also has all of the provocative articles, informative reviews and stunning artwork that has become a hallmark of the publication. Aurealis has been providing a home for both new and established writers for over thirty years! Subscribe now to make sure you get your copy hot off the press....as it were. Well it sounds better than cold from a digital online source.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chimaera Publications
• Release date: Apr 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781922471154

Book preview

AUREALIS #149

Edited by Stephen Higgins

Published by Chimaera Publications at Smashwords

Copyright of this compilation Chimaera Publications 2022

Copyright on each story remains with the contributor

EPUB version ISBN 978-1-922471-15-4

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

What Fresh Hell?—Michael Pryor

Advena—Tom Walters

God’s Doodle Pad—Christopher Witty

Heterosexual Utopias: the Straight and Narrow Path of Love in the work of Kim Stanley Robinson—Finn Gionfriddo

Vampire: The Ageless Monster—Tim Hawken

Rearranging the Quantum Foam: Stories that Create Time—Stuart Olver

Reviews

Next Issue

Submissions to Aurealis

Credits

From the Cloud

Stephen Higgins

I have heard that there are two sub genres which seem to divide readers of speculative fiction. I mean, there are tons of other things as well but if I try to list everything that divides Spec Fic fans we could be here for ages. Anyway, Space Opera, and Sword and Sorcery. Fans of Science fiction seem to have a weird relationship with Space Opera. They either love it or cannot abide it. There doesn’t seem to be an in-between. The same applies to Sword and Sorcery. Fantasy fans seem to either read nothing but Sword and Sorcery, or don’t read any at all.

When I first heard this, I tended to agree. But then I thought about my own tastes in these areas. I like some Space Opera. I guess I like some Sword and Sorcery as well, but I haven’t read an awful lot of it. I have read a lot of awful Sword and Sorcery but of course, that’s not quite the same thing. But it does highlight the point I wanted to make.

I think genre readers tend to celebrate the good Space Opera, and the good Sword and Sorcery, and they just keep quiet about the rest. I mean, I don’t go around discussing all of the bad books I have read. I will mention them to friends when we are recommending books to each other (or books to avoid to each other) but I tend to be pretty perfunctory in my remarks. I read quite a few books each year and invariably there will be some duds in there. They are not memorable. So, I don’t remember them. I think the problem isn’t that some people only like Space Opera and therefore only talk about Space Opera, but instead it is that they only like good Space Opera and talk at length about it. Similarly, lovers of Sword and Sorcery, love good Sword and Sorcery and disregard the rest. It then seems as if there are only the two options to choose from: love Space Opera or hate it. Or love Sword and Sorcery or hate it.

I suppose that if you have not been exposed to good Sword and Sorcery, you will not have a passion for it and you might say that you hate that stuff. But, in reality, you only hate the small sample of that stuff that you have read. Now that everyone is a critic, people seem to be more vehement in their reviews of fiction. Like most people, I tend to avoid the one-star reviews of books, music and films as well as the gushing five-star recommendations. The balanced three-star reviews usually have some good observations to make. They allow that there are some problems, and they explain what those problems might be. They also recognise the positives in the text and explain why they view these attributes as positives. One- and five-star reviews are not necessarily reviews so much as confirmation bias.

Anyway… This is the April edition of Aurealis. Full of great fiction, fantastic art and impartial reviews. It is just fantastic in every way imaginable. Truly great and life affirming work is contained herein. Or life changing work! It is that good. This isn’t a review by the way, this is an advertisement.

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. His latest album is ‘Architectural Fragments’. 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 with Andromeda Spaceways Magazine. He can be found at terrywood.com.au.

Back to Contents

What Fresh Hell?

Michael Pryor

Since our Hong Kong residence, where I rescued Gordo from Hell for Mrs Gordo, the world has gone to the dogs. This is why Peggy and I decamped to Tahiti.

Demon abductions have gone through the roof, so to speak, and they’ve reached the point that governments everywhere can’t ignore the fact that truckloads of their citizens are being hauled off to Hell before they have actually, you know, died.

The response? Since no earthly power can do anything to stop massive, almost invulnerable supernatural beings crashing into residences and grabbing people, governments basically shrugged their shoulders. They all lined up and declared that the only thing to do was to learn to live with wholesale demon abductions.

Governments, eh? Who would have thought that a system thought up by imperfect mortals to elect other imperfect mortals to take care of things would end up imperfect?

That’s not to say that my homeland, Hell itself, is a shining example of a finely tuned organisation, humming along at optimum capability. With the Big Boss gone, on leave, deserted or whatever, all the Demon Princes, Princesses, Lords and Ladies have been staking out their bits of Hell and defending them against all comers, some with wild glee, others with cold efficiency.

Say what you like about Hell but it’s a diverse place, after all.

Naturally, a few of them have Big Ideas and figure that since there’s a vacancy at the top, they’re the perfect choice to fill it. This means they’re rampaging around, swallowing up whichever neighbour they can, making and breaking alliances yada yada yada. With no-one to keep them in line, it was bound to happen.

You could call the current state of play in Hell either total war or a major restructure, depending on your outlook. And, trust me here, you might think you’ve experienced restructure hell but it’s nothing compared to a restructure in Hell.

The best thing I ever did was to get my demon arse out of there.

Peggy and I were enjoying Tahiti, and I’m not going to apologise for that. Even a demon needs some R&R, and Pape’ete town promised a lot of both even if traffic in the main street—Boulevarde de la Reine Pomare IV and try saying that in an emergency—could be better managed. Besides, Peggy had had word that Bifrons’ mutts were on the lookout for us both, not happy at the way I’d humiliated him and given him the slip last time I was on job down there. If I had him in front of me, I’d point out that he was due a lot more humiliation from me, as well the lopping off of a body part or two. To begin with.

The house I’d rented was up the back of town, near the cemetery, with a view out over the bay to the north, a vista that was staggeringly beautiful at any time of the day, but I particularly love it when one of those South Pacific storms roll in like a tough guy bursting into a waterfront bar, looking for trouble. Massive clouds doing violence to each other, lightning strobing a mile a minute, wind shredding tropical foliage to pieces, it was free entertainment on a grand scale, and I never get tired of it.

And somewhere out there were atolls that I was going to visit if I ever got around to it.

‘I’ve got a job for you, Zagan.’

I squinted at Peggy’s interruption. She was outlined against that tropical blue sky, and it was some outline, let me tell you.

Peggy and I go back a long way, a couple of hundred years, which doesn’t sound so long if you say it fast. I helped her out of Hell when it got to her like it got to me. She owes me, and one of my aims is never to let her forget it. The totality of her aims is to enjoy herself and to work off her debt to me in a way that doesn’t much get in the way of her achieving this.

Our business partnership is a work in progress, and the last half century I think we’ve been making some progress.

Peggy had adopted a new form after we left Hong Kong, as was her habit. New location, new shape. Me, I pretty much stick with the same debonair but rugged appearance that’s broken hearts all over the world for centuries because who am I to argue with the plaudits of the multitude?

Peggy, though, goes from sensational to a different sort of sensational every time, the sort of appearance that inspires slack-jawed gaping wherever she is. She prides herself on local configuration, so here she was a Pacific princess, more or less but more so. Inevitably she ends up what Jazz Age lounge lizards would proffer a ‘hubba-hubba’ over.

Don’t get the wrong idea, though. Peggy and I aren’t like that,