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    Aurealis #123
    Aurealis #123
    Aurealis #123
    Ebook157 pages1 hour

    Aurealis #123

    By Stephen Higgins (Editor)

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    About this ebook

    Aurealis #123 is out now! This latest issue features compelling new fiction as well as the usual generous serving of non fiction, reviews and stunning artwork. It has everything you could possibly want in your speculative fiction.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChimaera Publications
    Release dateAug 3, 2019
    ISBN9781922031877
    Aurealis #123

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      Book preview

      Aurealis #123 - Stephen Higgins (Editor)

      AUREALIS #123

      Edited by Stephen Higgins

      Published by Chimaera Publications at Smashwords

      Copyright of this compilation Chimaera Publications 2019

      Copyright on each story remains with the contributor

      EPUB version ISBN 978-1-922031-87-7

      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

      Renascent—Pauline Yates

      Wreck Diving—Joanne Anderton

      Big Heart—L L Wohlwend

      Aliens Anyone?—Matthew Harrison

      Worldbuilding: To Map or Not to Map?—Amy Laurens

      Chilling Out with Director Chris Grace–Thrones! The Musical Parody—Eugen Bacon

      Reviews

      Next Issue

      Credits

      From the Cloud

      Stephen Higgins

      There is a weird relationship between the writer of a story and the reader. Not the readership mind, as that is a whole different thing, but the relationship between the author and the reader in that quiet place where the reader engages with the story.

      I have written a few stories, not a lot, granted, but a few. When I am writing I have no ‘vision’ of my reader. I vaguely think that people of my age, gender, race, etc. will be able to connect with my story to such an extent that I suppose my imagined reader is, in fact, me. A quite different me to the person who is writing the story. This was bought home to me when I recently started to record my own music. Once I had completed a set of songs, I would transfer them to my phone and listen to them. I did this partly to listen out for things I might want to change, but I realised after a while that I was listening to them because I enjoyed listening to them. I know this sounds terribly self-serving, but I will plough on. I listen to them as a listener. I have a link to the creator of the music partially because he is of a similar age, sex, and he shares a common musical experience and, of course, we share common tastes.

      In an attempt to find more new music, I also recently actively sought out music from different cultural backgrounds. Now a lot of it I just didn’t ‘get’ as the musician’s background and, therefore, music were too different for me. I didn’t have any point of reference where I could appreciate the music. I could appreciate the talent, the proficiency on an instrument, but I couldn’t ‘enjoy’ the music in the same way I could appreciate a new piece of rock music for instance. I just didn’t have the commonality of experience, nor the intellectual/artistic experience to appreciate the work. I wrote recently about the experience I had of reading speculative fiction that originated from a different culture from my own. I actually enjoyed the notion of reading an ‘alien’ story from an ‘alien’ writer. That is a writer from a culture alien to my own rather than by an alien if you get my drift. Now clearly, I had enough shared experience (both the author and myself were human and male) and the novel had been translated into my language so no problem there. But what I found striking were the subtle cultural differences that made the story, about first contact, have an added layer of interest for me.

      Clearly there is a unique relationship between the author and reader, even if the writer speaks a different language and hails from a different country. It is said that music in an international language. I could sit down with someone from a different culture, and we could make decent music together without needing a translator. I think that because readers of speculative fiction are used to dealing with different cultures, they have a better chance of appreciating the ideas propagated by writers from a different country. I think this is why anthologies that collect the work of writers from China or India, or wherever, are quite popular. You just do not get Chinese anthologies of murder mystery stories, not because people would not ‘get’ them, but rather because the readers of that genre, do not expect to have to deal with a load of cultural differences that may have an integral role in the plot.

      Anyway, read widely. Listen widely. There is a whole world of stuff out there.

      All the best from the cloud.

      Stephen Higgins

      Back to Contents

      Renascent

      Pauline Yates

      The Scalpers took my left eye today, but I wish they’d take my heart. Every beat holds me shackled to this existence and I want out. I give up trying to escape. I can’t find the right connection with any of my recipients. I can’t even rely on my soul. I sold that to the Scalpers the second I signed the consent form. My face may now be on a missing person’s list, but I’ll never be gone. I’ll live on in other people while my ghost remains here, on this recliner chair in this grey-walled room, for eternity.

      Since I’m not dead yet, I may as well continue tormenting the new owner of my right hand. She’s just arrived for her shift. I thought she’d show some level of kindness due to our new connection, but she still treats me like a piece of meat curing on a slab waiting to be sliced and diced. Her name is Cathy. She has small eyes and a paunch for a neck and greasy, black hair pinned up in a bun. She also has not one ounce of humanity. Not one of the Tubers do. If they did, they’d have reported the Scalpers long ago and this heinous body parts trafficking operation wouldn’t exist.

      The Scalpers are clever how they nab their victims. If I was clever, I wouldn’t have been duped with their lure of a fat cheque in return for trialling a new allergy drug. How proud was I to accept money from a stranger instead of calling home to ask my parents to top up my bank account? Smart backpackers know how to make a quick buck, the Scalpers told me. But smart backpackers don’t arrive at an unassuming medical clinic without a friend in tow. I bet the Scalpers saw straight through me—a naïve twenty-year-old who was a fool to think she had the wits to survive travelling around a foreign country alone.

      I wonder how many of the other seven victims currently in this room hate Cathy as much as I do? Being on the second chair at the end of the row, I can’t see everyone. I don’t even know if they are the same people who were here when I arrived. Bodies get wheeled in and out through the large doors at the end of the room so often I lose track of who is who. No one looks the same when they return minus limbs, or hair, or eyes.

      Nor can I keep track of time. I have no sense whether days or weeks have passed. I don’t know if it’s night or day. All I know is that the discovery of my extrasensory ability keeps me sane.

      A metal bucket clangs on the floor, followed by the stench of body fluids being drained through tubes. Rolling my eye to the left, I watch Cathy tend to each victim with intensifying hatred. She grabs arms, of those who still have arms, with unnecessary force and jabs needles into elbow joints as if driving in metal stakes. She uses scissors instead of plastic-tipped forceps to remove the tubes that drain the cavities left after the Scalpers have

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