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    Aurealis #115
    Aurealis #115
    Aurealis #115
    Ebook106 pages14 hours

    Aurealis #115

    By Dirk Strasser (Editor)

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    About this ebook

    In this issue Dirk Strasser looks at the intensely private portal books that opened up reading for each of us. Clive McAlpin’s ‘The Spoils’ transports us to a truly alien yet strangely recognisable Australia. In the hard science fiction story with heart, ‘The Empty Quarter’, Jai Baidell takes us to a planet evacuated by humans after indigenous life forms have reasserted themselves, while Pierce Skinner’s ‘Sacrifice’ drags us kicking and screaming to place where the only choice is between two sorts of devils: ones we know are real, and ones we would rather not think about. David F Ellrod looks at the disturbing parallels in H P Lovecraft’s life and fiction, and Gillian Polack explores ‘What We Take for Granted: the Australian Fantastical Imagination and Ida Rentoul Outhwaite’. We review A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe by Alex White, Time Was by Ian McDonald, Tree Spirit and Other Stories by Michael Eisele, The Biggerers by Amy Lilwall, War Cry by Brian McClellan, What the Woods Keep by Katya de Becerra, The Queen of Crows by Myke Cole, and Thylacines by Deborah Sheldon.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChimaera Publications
    Release dateOct 7, 2018
    ISBN9781922031723
    Aurealis #115
    Author

    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.

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      Book preview

      Aurealis #115 - Dirk Strasser (Editor)

      AUREALIS #115

      Edited by Dirk Strasser

      Published by Chimaera Publications at Smashwords

      Copyright of this compilation Chimaera Publications 2018

      Copyright on each story remains with the contributor

      EPUB version ISBN 978-1-922031-72-3

      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—Dirk Strasser

      The Spoils—Clive McAlpin

      The Empty Quarter—Jai Baidell

      Sacrifice—Pierce Skinner

      What We Take for Granted: The Australian Fantastical Imagination and Ida Rentoul Outhwaite—Gillian Polack

      The Outsider: Disturbing Parallels in HP Lovecraft’s Life and Fiction—David Ellrod

      Reviews

      Next Issue

      Credits

      From the Cloud

      Dirk Strasser

      We all have books that we read when we were younger and which led us into fantasy or science fiction or whatever genres we choose to spend the bulk of our time reading as adults. These are often called gateway books, those novels that opened up reading for us. While some of my gateway books into fantasy include staples such as The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings and the Narnia series, I would also count a handful of more obscure books as my way into fantasy in particular. I suspect we all have some of these lesser known books in our reading past that have had a profound influence on us.

      I think of these as portal books. A gate is a public entrance, a way in that everyone is aware of. Some of us may choose not to enter, but there’s no denying its renown. It’s there for everyone to see, bold and unforgettable. Like Babylon’s Ishtar Gate or the Golden Gate of Byzantium or the Meridian Gate to the Forbidden City. But whereas a gateway is public, drawing attention to itself, portals are hidden, only visible to the few—and that’s often where the truly profound magic lies. It’s these sorts of books that reveal most about us. While gateway books are those we share with others, portal books are more personal—they divulge our uniqueness. We rarely talk about them because others will most likely not have read, or even heard of, them.

      One of my portal books was so buried in my past I couldn’t even remember the name of it. (By coincidence, it also featured a type of portal as a plot device.) It was by British author E (Edith) Nesbit. Her most famous novel is The Railway Children, but this well-known book had little impact on me and I barely remember reading it. At around age eleven I scoured my local library for E Nesbit books. I found many of them a little disturbing. She didn’t write like the other authors I’d read. There was an edge to it I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Perhaps I’d now call it a hint of the grotesque, a slightly off-kilter frisson. The novel I remember most powerfully, the one that I would nominate as my key portal book, was about a dirt-poor crippled orphan boy in Edwardian London who mysteriously travels to an alternative world 300 years earlier where he’s a healthy son of a nobleman. The story didn’t pivot around predictable plotlines. I haven’t re-read it since, but I remember the boy moved between the two periods several times until it got to a point where he had to make a choice. I remember being floored by his freely-made decision to stay in the world where he was dirt-poor and crippled because he was needed there. The novel was called Harding’s Luck.

      It’s usually relatively easy to pinpoint how gateway novels have affected you. The influence of portal books, by their nature, is harder to tie down. I’ve only recently realised the connection between this book and my latest novel, which while having a totally different setting, structure and feel to Harding’s Luck, is about portals and the crucial decisions they force on people.

      I don’t expect too many of you to have read Harding’s Luck, and I suspect its life as a potential portal book is over. Younger readers these days will probably baulk at the Edwardian street language, and for those of us older readers, the time for gates and portals into reading will never return. You can quite easily find Harding’s Luck online these days. But of course, it doesn’t matter whether or not you’ve read it. You all found your own portals.

      All the best from the cloud.

      Dirk Strasser

      www.dirkstrasser.com

      Back to Contents

      Candlebark

      Music to read Aurealis by…

      Some science-fictionish music, along with some rock and ambient and weird.

      Available from CD Baby, iTunes, Spotify and tons of other places.

      https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/stephenhiggins

      The Spoils

      Clive McAlpin

      I been on another brannigan and I’m hiding out from the gallowboys what’s on me tail when the Musician finds me in the Jackaroo’s Arms out Etherton way.

      I’m ropable that night on account of me money being all gone on the races, but also because that’s the day I had to shoot me horse Margie. Calm old girl never spooked much in the Spoils when one of the unfinished come too near. Some horses get one gander at them melty-looking buggers what once was bandicoots or roos, and they lite out, and your saddle better be tight bloody cinched. I was hiding in the scrub from Toff and his boys what wanted to dice me up for me debts and if Margie wasn’t such a calm old girl maybe that taipan wouldn’t of managed to batten on and fang her up full of the venom what would of done for her if I didn’t put her down first.

      Well I’m drinking away me sorrows and wondering how to earn enough to pay them

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