Aurealis #158

By Dirk Strasser (Editor)

Welcome aboard the good ship Aurealis on its second speculative voyage for this year. In his Editorial, Dirk Strasser road-tests two AIs—one text-to-image and one text-to-text—that have exploded into the public consciousness in recent months. On the fiction front we discover the bizarre ways in which societies can react to threats in Robinne Weiss’ ‘Section 7.3’, a novel concept of Death in Patrick Axford’s ‘Buttons’, and the Shakespearean subversion of the idea of the evil corporation in Robert Bagnall’s ‘Thus With a Kiss I Die’, with striking images created by real people: Zuzanna Kwiecien, Peter Allert and Renkai Liu. For non-fiction Lynne Lumsden Green continues our look at Pioneering SF Women: ‘Vonda N McIntyre: Good Things Come from Getting Involved’, Eugen Bacon highlights ‘Dominant Themes in Afro-centric Fiction’, and Amy Laurens gives us ‘Discworld: An Introduction to Terry Pratchett’s Philosophy and Legacy’. If you’re looking at add to your SF reading list, we have a cornucopia of reviews, including ‘The Science of Witchcraft’ by Meg Hafdahl and Kelly Florence, ‘Firewalkers’ by Adrian Tchaikovsky, ‘Notorious Sorcerer’ (The Burnished City #1) by Davinia Evans, and ‘How to survive your magical family’ by Clare Rhoden.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chimaera Publications
• Release date: Mar 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781922471246

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 #158

Edited by Dirk Strasser

Published by Chimaera Publications at Smashwords

Copyright of this compilation Chimaera Publications 2023

Copyright on each story remains with the contributor

EPUB version ISBN 978-1-922471-24-6

ISSN 2200-307X (electronic)

CHIMAERA PUBLICATIONS

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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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

Section 7.3—Robinne Weiss

Buttons—Patrick Axford

Thus With a Kiss I Die—Robert Bagnall

Pioneering SF Women: Vonda N McIntyre: Good Things Come from Getting Involved—Lynne Lumsden Green

Dominant Themes in Afro-Centric Fiction—Eugen Bacon

Discworld: An Introduction to Terry Pratchett’s Philosophy and Legacy—Amy Laurens

Reviews

Next Issue

Submissions to Aurealis

Credits

From the Cloud

Dirk Strasser

The definition of science fiction is notoriously hard to tie down. One way of looking at it is as the form of fiction that speculates on the impact of actual or imaginary science and technology. While the world heralds the latest technology and grapples with its consequences, the science fiction world has already explored its potential impact on individuals and society.

With the recent explosion of DALL-E, ChatGPT and other AI systems into our awareness, we are in a truly science-fictional moment in history: here is technology that science fictional writers have speculated about for decades. While this is either ecstatically or shockingly new for most of the world, to science fiction readers and writers it’s a matter of reality catching up to our imaginations. As a collective, we’ve already thought about where AI could take us.

DALL-E is an AI system that creates an image from a description. Here’s one I tried. The following is a description I wrote of a key scene in the first instalment of my serialised novel Conquist that appeared in Aurealis #127:

A black conquistador on horseback in the snow-capped Andes facing a shimmering curtain of light at the entrance of a cave.

DALL-E generated the following four options based on this description within seconds:

ChatGPT creates text from an instruction. Here’s an instruction I gave it:

Write a back cover blurb for CONQUIST, a historical fantasy novel about conquistadors, led by Capitán Cristóbal de Varga, who in their search for gold in 1538 Peru find a portal into a new world that refuses to be conquered, where they are trapped between the warring forces of demonic natives and angelic beings whose morality proves to be less black and white than it appears.

ChatGPT generated this text in a number of seconds:

Get ready to embark on an epic journey as CONQUIST takes you to the front lines of the 16th century conquest of the Americas, where greed and glory collide with the unearthly. Capitán Cristóbal de Varga and his conquistadors embark on a quest for gold in Peru, only to discover a portal to a new world, where the lines of good and evil are blurred. Trapped between the warring forces of demonic natives and angelic beings, they must navigate a dangerous game of alliances and betrayal to survive in a world that refuses to be conquered. Will they emerge with the treasure they seek or be trapped forever in this fantastical realm of moral ambiguities? With richly imagined characters and vivid world-building, CONQUIST is a thrilling historical fantasy that will leave you breathless.

Another instruction I gave ChatGPT was:

Write pop song lyrics praising the speculative fiction magazine Aurealis.

Here’s what it spat out:

Verse 1:

Lost in worlds of fantasy and dreams,

Where dragons soar and magic gleams,

A place where anything can be,

Welcome to the world of Aurealis.

Chorus:

Aurealis, you take us away,

From reality to another place,

With stories that capture our hearts,

And worlds that we never want to part.

Verse 2:

From cyberpunk to epic tales,

With writers that never ever fails,

To take us on a journey through time,

With stories that make our hearts rhyme.

Chorus:

Aurealis, you take us away,

From reality to another place,

With stories that capture our hearts,

And worlds that we never want to part.

Bridge:

A treasure trove of imagination,

A realm of pure creation,

With every turn of the page,

We're transported to a new age.

Chorus:

Aurealis, you take us away,

From reality to another place,

With stories that capture our hearts,

And worlds that we never want to part.

Outro:

So come on, let's explore the unknown,

With Aurealis as our guide, we'll never be alone.

With every issue, a new adventure awaits,

In the world of Aurealis, our imaginations take shape.

In addition to these text-to-image and text-to-text AIs, there are also text-to-music and image-to-video AIs in development.

With anything startingly new, there are the true believers, nay-sayers and head-in-sanders. For those of us into science fiction, this is simultaneously an ‘Oh, wow!’ and ‘Oh, shit!’ moment. We can see both sides. We’ve already pictured the potential future in our imaginations. So, let’s prepare ourselves for the exploration. I’ll be looking at some of the potential implications of this technology in the next issue of Aurealis.

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 short story version of Conquist was published in Dreaming Again (HarperCollins). 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 120 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

Section 7.3

Robinne Weiss

The rough hemp rope stuttered through my fingers as we lowered the dinghy from the side of the ship. I scanned the shoreline, where the skeletons of buildings jutted up from a dense tangle of trees.

‘What city was this?’ I asked Ryan, who worked the rope on the other end of the dinghy.

‘Some place called Norfolk, Virginia.’ Ryan nodded toward what looked like a giant rubbish pile, half-submerged in the water. ‘Not much left of the naval base is there?’

The dinghy hit the water with a gentle kerplunk. ‘No surprise. Fifty years of sea level rise and hurricanes would do a number on it,’ I said.

‘Well, at least there’ll be plenty of scrap metal.’

Kali arrived on deck with an armload of gear. ‘I heard the Scrappies were told to wear radiation suits.’

Ryan’s eyebrows rose. ‘Nuclear sub?’

Kali nodded. ‘Reckon so.’

I shuddered. ‘Glad we’re not headed that way.’

The final member of my team, Aroha Smith, emerged on deck laden with backpacks. I jogged over to her and hefted my own.

‘Thanks, Tania. We all ready then?’ She didn’t meet my eyes.

‘Good to go,’ I replied. ‘Are you okay?’ This was our first trip to what had once been the United States of America. Aroha’s maternal grandparents, along with aunts, uncles and cousins had been from there.

Aroha nodded, but her eyes were tense. ‘Gran and Pop were lucky—they died in the first wave of the virus.’

And the rest of her family? I was afraid to ask how many had suffered through the lawless descent into chaos and desperation.

A familiar pang of guilt squeezed my chest. Who would have