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    Aurealis #104
    Aurealis #104
    Aurealis #104
    Ebook97 pages1 hour

    Aurealis #104

    By Stephen Higgins (Editor)

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Quality speculative fiction featuring new work from around the world. Each issue has great new fiction, reviews and articles of interest to readers, writers and, well just about everybody. You can subscribe to Aurealis by visiting our website at www.aurealis.com.au. We are on Facebook too!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChimaera Publications
    Release dateSep 22, 2017
    ISBN9781922031617
    Aurealis #104

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      Book preview

      Aurealis #104 - Stephen Higgins (Editor)

      AUREALIS #104

      Australian Fantasy & Science Fiction

      Edited by Stephen Higgins

      Published by Chimaera Publications at Smashwords

      Copyright of this compilation Chimaera Publications 2017

      Copyright on each story remains with the contributor.

      EPUB version ISBN 978-1-922031-61-7

      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

      Nine Weeks a King—Tony Plank

      Fear of the Dark—Mike Adamson

      Transubstantiation—Todd Sullivan

      Visiting Australia and Creating Borderlands: James Hume Nisbet and His Distant Shores—Gillian Polack

      Near-future Satire and Our Contemporary Relationship with Technology—Lachlan Walter

      Secret History of Australia—Enzo Marrelli—Researched by Stephen Higgins

      Reviews

      Next Issue

      Credits

      From the Cloud

      Stephen Higgins

      George Orwell’s 1984 has returned to the bestseller lists along with a few other dystopian texts. This has been attributed to the election of Donald Trump and I suppose you can throw in all the references to ‘fake news’, ‘alternate facts’ and the interpretation of truth. So I’m not sure if people are buying these texts in order to learn how to deal with this Brave New World or because they’re trying to see if there’s an upside to the whole dystopian thing.

      Philip K Dick’s The Man in the High Castle has also been doing well as a television series and, of course, there have been numerous other films that have had a dystopian setting. Why is this? Why do we turn to this type of story when things are a bit grim? There might be an element of schadenfreude about it. Things might be bad but at least they’re not as bad as they could be.

      And that’s just the science fiction side of things! Why is Game of Thrones such a ratings winner?

      I’ve read comments that the dark nature of GOT lends itself to the zeitgeist. I know there has always been war and strife of one kind or another and that it has influenced the creation of some very great literature. I recall having to teach World War One poetry to a Year 12 English class and it was quite emotional for us all. Very moving and very, very persuasive regarding the folly of war. Not quite persuasive enough sadly.

      So, if great misery begets great literature, I assume we will see more and more fantastic literature being produced both within the speculative fiction genre and in the mainstream. I suppose that’s the only upside of these dark days. I just hope that it’s a case of art imitating life because we’re in big trouble if it’s the other way around.

      All the best from the cloud.

      Stephen Higgins

      Back to Contents

      Nine Weeks a King

      Tony Plank

      A train of vessels looms from the soot-black void. The lead vessel is the powerhouse, and behind follows twenty spheres. Having played follow-the-leader for almost a century, they near their destination, yet throughout their journey have made only one course change, such was the expertise of their long-dead designers. Hulls, once smooth and polished, now show the ravages of space, all pitted, some dented, none breached.

      In the distance shines a star whose light illuminates one side of the train, leaving the other in stark, cold blackness. Sargonis-5 radiates all the hues of heliotrope while Amons, its only planet, glints like a jewel against a velvet background. Exoplanets were first discovered in 1992, and since then, more than 20,000 have been located and studied, but those in the habitable regions of their suns raised the most interest. Sargonis-5 was one such exoplanet.

      At some time in the next decade the train will enter orbit around Amons, dispense spheres around its surface, and release a myriad of small machines that will race groundward and arc away to predefined sectors of the surface.

      * * *

      PIPs, Planetary Investigation Probes, were first used on Jupiter’s moons, but huge advances in evolutionary electronics now permits them to rewire themselves by switching circuitry into whatever pattern is best suited to handle any problem they might face. Over the years, PIPs pushed themselves way beyond artificial intelligence until possessing primitive self-awareness, and in advanced cases, personality. For Amons they were organised into teams of six with only the leader possessing personality traits. A master and five workers for each of 24 sectors, 144 in all, plus a backup team in the orbiter to cover losses.

      On 16 May, 2088, they’d begun a journey that would cross the 18-light-year divide between Mars and Sargonis-5 in 97 years.

      * * *

      At 6.30 in the morning on 4 February, 2203, Matthew Callahan was edgy. He studied the maze of instruments in the Star Cathedral while trying to blot out the babble of the hundred or so technicians arrayed before him. If all had gone well, then sometime very soon the first signals from Amons should arrive. The train had arrived 18 years earlier, but its first signals would take another 18 years to reach Mars. Slightly built with pointed features, Callahan gave the impression of shrew-like intelligence as he adjusted controls with shaking fingers, and although trying to hide his nervousness, it was on display to anyone who cared to look. For the hundredth time his eyes roved the four aisles before him, each with six monitor stations manned by two technicians. Along with a galley now packed with observers, the Star Cathedral held an audience of 500. Never had it been so full. Callahan perspired heavily; the heat from 500 bodies seemed way beyond the capacity of the cooling systems. One or two techs had donned their helmets, but Callahan knew that until signals arrived, all they’d see was white noise, and all they’d

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