Aurealis #155

By Dirk Strasser (Editor)

What’s the longest SF novel ever written? You may be surprised by the answer in Dirk Strasser’s Editorial in Aurealis #155. Take a deep dive into the speculative depths of the latest issue. Baden M Chant’s ethereal, and elegiac ‘The Winding-Sheet’ asks, does it matter if we can upload our memories if we must die anyway? Greg Foyster’s ‘Shitmining’ is a futuristic reimagining of the ‘Guano Age’ mashed with Peruvian legend. Jared Millet’s ‘Bigger Fish’ is a story that will hook you with its surprising depth. Then explore the Soul and Emotional Intelligence in Humans and Androids, the Appeal of Time Travel, the use of colour in Titane, and the myriad reviews.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chimaera Publications
• Release date: Sep 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781922471215

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 #155

Edited by Dirk Strasser

Published by Chimaera Publications at Smashwords

Copyright of this compilation Chimaera Publications 2022

Copyright on each story remains with the contributor

EPUB version ISBN 978-1-922471-21-5

ISSN 2200-307X (electronic)

CHIMAERA PUBLICATIONS

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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—Dirk Strasser

The Winding Sheet—Baden M Chant

Shitmining—Greg Foyster

Bigger Fish—Jared Millet

The Soul and Emotional Intelligence in Humans and Androids—Mathew Nelson

Timeless—The Appeal of Time Travel—Matthew Harrison

Titane and the Use of Colour in Film—Claire Fitzpatrick

Reviews

Next Issue

Submissions to Aurealis

Credits

From the Cloud

Dirk Strasser

What’s the longest SF novel you’ve read? In a genre known for worldbuilding and galactic-size plots, SF is well-represented in the long novel stakes. Still, I’ve always been a little reluctant to tackle really long novels. They better be bloody good!

Here are some of the most well-known SF door-stoppers:

Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is up there at 470,000 words. It was the very first mega-long book I read. I was twelve years old. Although I was a voracious reader, the books I had read up until that time were more the Narnia and Enid Blyton size. Yes, The Lord of the Rings created the fantasy trilogy phenomenon, and you can quibble that it’s really three books, but it was only released in three volumes originally because of the paper shortage after World War II. I read it in the intended form and in which it has generally been published since, which is as a single book. It's often cited as the longest genre novel of all time—but it isn’t.

It is pipped by Stephen King’s The Stand, which I’m reading at the moment, at 472,376 words. Interestingly, the original published version in 1978 wasn’t that long at 322,000 words, but the Kingster decided to publish the version he had originally written before his publishers made him cut it. I’m really enjoying it, but it’s taking me a lot longer to get through because life seems to get in the way now more than it did when I was twelve. I wonder whether he knew that by publishing the extended version, he would be overtaking Tolkien? King has form in the door-stopper genre: It was 445,134 words.

George R R Martin cracked the 400,000-word mark twice in his Song of Ice and Fire series with A Storm of Swords at 422,000 words and A Dance with Dragons at 420,000 words. Apparently, he was worried about the length in the earlier books in the series and took great pains to keep them down to a modest 300,000 words by moving chapters to the next volume. That process will eventually catch up with you, I guess. Since we’re still waiting for the series conclusion, I think it’s too early to discount his efforts in the largest genre book of all time stakes.

Others in the over 400,000 category are Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon (415,000), Diana Gabaldon’s An Echo in the Bone (the seventh Outlander novel) (402,000), and Patrick Rothfuss’ The Wise Man's Fear (400,000).

But if you’re looking for the longest SF novels of all time, it can sometimes come down to genre definitions and whether you only include best-sellers. Here are some of the contenders: Tad Williams’ To Green Angel Tower (520,000), Diana Gabaldon’s The Fiery Cross (502,000) and A Breath of Snow and Ashes (501,000), Mary Gentle’s Ash: A Secret History (500,000), and Brandon Sanderson’s Oathbringer (495,000).

Of course, we all know size ultimately doesn’t matter. Although, you have to admire writers who can produce high-quality writing over such enormous word lengths. At the other end of the scale are the perfectly polished gems we call short stories. Read some of the now. It won’t take you long.

All the best from the cloud!

Dirk Strasser

Editor: Dirk Strasser

Dirk Strasser has won several Australian Publisher Association Awards and a Ditmar for Best Professional Achievement. His short story, ‘The Doppelgänger Effect’, appeared in the World Fantasy Award-winning anthology, Dreaming Down Under (Tor). Dirk’s fantasy trilogy The Books of Ascension (Pan Macmillan) and short stories have been translated into several languages. The serialised version of Conquist was a finalist in the Aurealis Awards Best Fantasy Novel category. His screenplay of Conquist was a Finalist at the 2019 Cinequest Film & Creativity Festival, Richmond International Film Festival, the Fresh Voices Original Screenplay Competition and the Byron Bay Film Festival. He has co-edited Australia’s premiere speculative fiction magazine Aurealis for over 150 issues and founded the Aurealis Awards. www.dirkstrasser.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

The Winding Sheet

Baden M Chant

‘What do you remember?’

‘Warm. Dark. Susurration. Humus. Leaves.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I pushed.’

‘And?’

‘I fell. Dark soil. A worm. I looked up.’

‘And who did you see?’

‘You.’

‘And who am I?’

‘You are the Winder.’

‘Yes, yes. I am the Winder. And who are you?’

‘I am… I am… me?’

‘No, no. You are my apprentice.’

‘Apprentice.’ The girl looked down at herself. She was naked, her body hairless, prepubescent. ‘So young.’

‘Yes, yes. You seem all of five or six to me. Here, put this on,’ he said throwing an oversized, shapeless dress over her head and rolling the sleeves up her thin wrists. She touched the old man’s arm. It was tightly bound with strips of white cloth imbued with shiny silver filaments.

‘Don’t mind that. It’s not my time, not for a good long while, but I itch. Itch, itch. Binding helps. But not yet. No, I have to train you up. Year and years.’

‘Years and years,’ the little girl echoed, following the Winder as he sidled through concentric rows of green, swelling brassica placenta.

‘We go to Grimshaw,’ he told her.

‘Grimshaw.’

‘There we will wind Lindel Chu.’

‘Chu.’

He held out his hand. ‘The birth shock will pass soon.’ She took it.

They followed the path as it wound through liquid ambers shedding copper-coloured leaves. Threading a tall red tori gate, they emerged into a landscape of emerald pasture and rice paddies. A village of thatched cottages lay at its heart. ‘Lansdown,’ the Winder said, scratching his belly.

The sky above was blue and streaked with high cloud and dotted with ancestral kami. They undulated through the air like jellyfish made of light. Colours danced in coruscating patterns, giving shape to bell-like bodies, and trailing like silken filaments that reached down, down, twisting and shifting in the breeze.

A farmer in a wide-brimmed straw hat looked up from his paddy as they passed. ‘Ho, Winder, you have an apprentice now?’

‘Yes, yes,’ he said, scratching his cheek with one long, thin finger.

‘Time’s near then, is it?’

The Winder laughed, ‘Oh, no. I must train her up. A long while yet. A long while.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Yes, yes. We’re off to wind Lindel Chu.’

The farmer nodded and waved them goodbye.

They stopped at a cottage, one