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    Aurealis #65
    Aurealis #65
    Aurealis #65
    Ebook75 pages53 minutes

    Aurealis #65

    By Michael Pryor (Editor)

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    About this ebook

    Aurealis #65 features Jason Franks' confronting and visceral 'Butcher's Hook', a story you'll never forget, plus the elegant and unnerving 'Poppies' from SF Larner, who says: '‘Poppies’ came about after watching an extremely disturbing incident of violence captured on video and distributed on the internet for the world to see.
    This issue Aurealis non-fiction includes another forgotten legend from the SF Hall of Fame, plus a deep delving into the world of sleep from Patricia O'Neill, and more reviews from the latest speculative fiction offerings.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChimaera Publications
    Release dateOct 1, 2013
    ISBN9781922031198
    Aurealis #65

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      Book preview

      Aurealis #65 - Michael Pryor (Editor)

      AUREALIS #65

      Australian Fantasy & Science Fiction

      Edited by Michael Pryor

      Published by Chimaera Publications at Smashwords

      Copyright of this compilation Chimaera Publications 2013

      Copyright on each story remains with the contributor.

      EPUB version ISBN 978-1-922031-19-8

      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

      Butcher’s Hook – Jason Franks

      Poppies – S G Larner

      From the Archives: The SF Hall of Fame – G K ‘Doc’ Tolliday D.D.

      Xtreme Science: Go to F**k to Sleep – Patricia L O’Neill

      Reviews

      Next Issue

      Credits

      From the Cloud

      Michael Pryor

      One of Science Fiction’s great themes is looking at the future. Aurealis has done more than its share in this field, with the usual mix of calculated prophesy and wild imagining.

      It’s an outsider’s mistake, of course, to think that SF is solely concerned with predicting the future. This has really only been a minor concern of the genre, with more hits than misses. For every Arthur C Clarke, who accurately imagined communication satellites (tellingly, not in a story but in a non-fiction article) we have thousands of writers whose stories were bizarrely off the mark. The internet, the major pervasive influence in the early twenty-first century, was famously missing from just about every SF story through the fifties and sixties, which would seem a galaxy-sized lacuna.

      SF is more about imagining possible futures rather than predicting our actual future. Imagining possibilities gives a writer room to move, to explore where we are going, to extrapolate trends that will provide fertile grounds for narrative.

      Australia has a long history in this field, most notably beginning with Catherine Helen Spence’s A Week in the Future, first published in 1888. This was a classic experiment from one of our greatest social activists, where she imagined a socialist-feminist utopian future—the year 1988!

      The glorious future that Spence imagines has extraordinary developments in child-rearing and education, as well as huge changes—for the better—in the influence of religion. Poverty has been eliminated and the class system is a thing of the past, while men and women are equals in almost all ways. Most daringly predicted, from an 1888 viewpoint, was the depiction of freely available contraceptives, part of a more open attitude to sex.

      A realistic future? Perhaps not, but that’s not the point of Spence’s story. She is challenging the mores of 1888 through postulating a vastly changed future. Was she betting that her predictions would prove to be true? Probably not, but she was dreaming a dream.

      The future is out there, coming whether we’re ready or not. SF helps us prepare for it by presenting us with some of the possibilities that lie ahead.

      All the best from the cloud.

      Back to Contents

      Butcher’s Hook

      Jason Franks

      When the rugby’s over, the publican changes the channel on the big screen and the Butcher’s Hook comes on.

      I’m sitting at the bar, nursing my beer, and it actually takes me a moment to match the image to those familiar slashing chords. Live at Madison Square Garden. That was a hell of a show.

      ‘That’s me up there,’ I tell the publican. Soon as the words are out of my mouth I feel like a loser.

      Understand, I don’t make a habit of this. Sharing sob stories with drunken strangers in the pub. Never was much of a talker… that was Trina’s job. The guitar said everything I wanted to say. But tonight…

      Tonight I’m halfway lit and it’s all flooding back now. The euphoria, the adrenaline, the hate and rage and loathing. Tonight, I have to share it.

      The publican looks at me doubtfully. Looks at the screen. Looks back at me. The barfly sitting a couple of stools away

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