Aurealis #162

By Michael Pryor (Editor)

In Aurealis #162 we present the ingenious and quirky ‘Enter the Bubble’ by Edward Brauer, the eloquent and lyrical ‘Sister Snips’ by Imogen Cassidy and the compelling and evocative ‘The Otherworld Theory’ by Desmond Astaire. Our superb internal art comes from Lynette Watters, Kim Lennard and Rebecca Stewart while our engrossing non-fiction is from Lynne Lumsden Green, Rebecca Langham and Gillian Polack. And don’t forget our outstanding Reviews section curating a multitude of books for your consideration. Aurealis— is it too good to be true?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chimaera Publications
• Release date: Jul 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781922471284

Book preview

AUREALIS #162

Edited by Michael Pryor

Published by Chimaera Publications at Smashwords

Copyright of this compilation Chimaera Publications 2023

Copyright on each story remains with the contributor

EPUB version ISBN 978-1-922471-28-4

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—Michael Pryor

Enter the Bubble—Edward Brauer

Sister Snips—Imogen Cassidy

The Otherworld Theory—Desmond Astaire

What is it about Zombies—Rebecca Langham

Why Sissy is the Perfect Post-modern Slasher for the Social Media Generation—Zachary Ashford

Pioneering SF Women: The Critique and Commentary of Joanna Russ—Lynne Lumsden Green

Winifred Law’s Lost Adventures—Gillian Polack

Reviews

Next Issue

Submissions to Aurealis

Credits

From the Cloud

Michael Pryor

Lee Harding died on 19 April this year, and Aurealis has been remiss in not acknowledging the passing of one of the seminal figures in Australian SF.

Bruce Gillespie has put together the most detailed tribute to this fan, writer and editor extraordinaire (file770.com/hard-to-believe-hes-no-longer-with-us-lee-harding-1937-2023/) and Wikipedia has an accurate and complete entry, so we’re not going to go over that ground. Instead, we want to concentrate on the book that is Harding’s masterpiece, the one that had the most impact, the one that is his lingering legacy: Displaced Person (1979).

For a long time in the 1980s, Displaced Person featured as a set text in many, many English classrooms across the country. For a genre novel, this is an extraordinary feat, and it speaks for the novel’s impact. It was a staple and introduced many young readers to the entire concept of SF literature. Some of those who read Displaced Person back then are the grown-up SF readers of today.

Displaced Person is an unsettling story of alienation, and the metaphor of the central conceit is such a perfect capturing of the difficulties of teenage life that Graeme Drury’s story has a resonance that has endured.

In it, Graeme gradually becomes trapped in a world that he sees as fading away, only to find, painfully, that he himself is becoming invisible to those around him. He transitions to being unnoticed, unremarked, gone. He is in a displaced limbo.

In some ways it’s the mundanity of the world Graeme loses that makes the novel all the more poignant. It’s clearly modern-day Australia, Melbourne with ordinary domestic details, ordinary streets, ordinary lives, but a place that Graeme finds he has no place in.

Displaced Person was winner of the 1980 Book of the Year Award from the Children’s Book Council of Australia, a clear recognition of the quality and power of this important novel.

Vale, Lee Harding.

All the best from the cloud!

Michael Pryor

Editor: Michael Pryor

Michael Pryor has published more than 35 novels and 50 plus short stories. He has been shortlisted for the Aurealis Award nine times, and eight of his books have been CBCA Notable books. His website is www.michaelpryor.com.au.

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.

Back to Contents

Enter the Bubble

Edward Brauer

‘Eyes up Brookman, we got two minutes.’

Brookman folded up the paperwork she’d been reading and stuffed it into her jacket. Her stomach gave a brief lurch as she shifted focus to the freeway ahead.

Martins wasn’t kidding, they were close. The Bubble reared up above them into the clouds, a seething jumble of facades, for-sale signs and Astroturf that shifted and breathed like some mucosal egg. They’d long since cleared the final checkpoint, and the freeway was barren but for their trio of vans and the vast obscenity before them.

‘Riveting literature?’ said Martins.

‘Just insurance stuff.’

‘Don’t lie.’ Martins’ eyes remained fixed on the road ahead, her hands gripping the wheel at ten and two.

‘Alright fine. It’s from Brent’s lawyer.’

Martins gave a whistle.

‘Bastard thinks he can squeeze me,’ she continued.

‘How much does he want?’

‘Damn near everything. Apparently, he can get it too. Something about the wording in the prenup.’

‘You going to sign it over then?’

‘I don’t know. I’d love for this all to be done. But a part of me wants to draw it out just to piss him off.’

Their convoy slowed to a crawl as they reached The Bubble’s outer edge—a wasteland of cleared earth littered with building materials and subdivided by construction string. The deeper in they drove the denser the subdivisions became, until the string formed a tight fractal webbing.

Lurking by the side of the road was a pair of real estate agents who’d been ensnared by The Bubble’s event horizon—a tall, dark haired man with band-aids on three different fingers and a middle-aged woman with auburn hair that erupted from her scalp in huge, symmetrical waves. They shuffled dead-eyed around the rubble.

The radio came alive. It was Panabianco, from the van next to them. ‘I swear those things just looked at me.’

‘Don’t flatter yourself, Rick,’ Martins replied.

‘We locked eyes!’

‘They’re experiencing all of eternity in a single moment. I’m pretty sure you went unnoticed.’

Beyond the cleared wastelands the road merged with the swirling outer shell, the sealed tar melting into the façades, its white lines bending and twisting into trellis shapes and climbing like vines.

The radio came alive again. This time it was Zalega, from the agency HQ.

‘Alright folks, final checks. Nobody’s got any undisclosed offshore accounts, or keeping anything of value in a freeport?’

‘No.’

‘None of you are due to receive any kind of regular income, royalty or dividend, or hold even a fraction of any other cryptocurrency?’

‘Nothing but shit-coin, Zalega,’ said Panabianco.

‘Hilarious joke, Rick. You’re definitely the first guy to think of it.’

Brookman had taken bittersweet delight in divesting every asset within her legal reach into Shift-coin and watching its value plummet to a virtual zero in the days leading up to the mission. Once they’d cleared The Bubble, the agency would pump the value up well beyond what they’d all put in. But for now, she imagined Brent would be losing his mind.

‘None of you are carrying any cash, jewellery, valuable electronics or any other material assets that legally belong to you?’

‘Not even wearing my own underwear,’ said Panabianco.

‘Great. You’re all liabilities. Proceed.’

The freeway terminated into the beige outer wall of a Victorian Terrace that had inflated to an obscene size, straddling the carriageway. As their convoy drew near, a divot formed on its surface. The brickwork stretched and contorted as though made of dough, opening up into a tunnel.

‘Would you look at that. Open sesame.’ said Martins.

‘This feels a bit more like an abandon hope moment.’

‘Look at you, all sunny side up.’

‘We’re salvage operators for Christ’s sake. You don’t think this is well beyond us?’ Brookman gestured up through the windshield, at the soaring face of The Bubble that now loomed over them.

‘I think this is the best paying gig we’ve had in years. And we don’t even have to salvage anything.’

As they passed into the tunnel the van shook, The Bubble quaking in seismic protest. It was hard not to think of it as alive.

Echoing Brookman’s thoughts, Panabianco came on the radio again. ‘This thing does not want us in here.’

‘It’s just economics,’ said Zalega. ‘Housing markets don’t like credit risks.’

‘I feel better already.’

The walls of the tunnel were translucent, and Brookman stared out at the entanglement that the immediate interior was comprised of.

It was like an entire suburb of houses had been deconstructed into their components and mixed together. Doors, staircases, lawns and mailboxes had all been jumbled into a great mess that pressed and crushed inwards.

They rolled past a warped sheet of corrugated iron roofing that was sprouting a small succulent garden from its underside. Some of the