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    Aurealis #117
    Aurealis #117
    Aurealis #117
    Ebook152 pages1 hour

    Aurealis #117

    By Michael Pryor (Editor)

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    About this ebook

    Aurealis #117 features Carolyn Hine’s ‘The Moonstone in the Dust’, J. Ashley Smith’s ‘The Moth Tapes’ and Eric Del Carlo’s ‘She Sells Sea-Hells by the C Door’, plus top non-fiction—‘Worldbuilding: How Climate Zone Determines Culture by Amy Laurens and ‘Comedic Science Fiction: More Than Just a Laugh' by Lachlan Walter. With extensive reviews and great artwork, Aurealis #117 is another landmark publication.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChimaera Publications
    Release dateFeb 5, 2019
    ISBN9781922031747
    Aurealis #117

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      Book preview

      Aurealis #117 - Michael Pryor (Editor)

      AUREALIS #117

      Edited by Michael Pryor

      Published by Chimaera Publications at Smashwords

      Copyright of this compilation Chimaera Publications 2019

      Copyright on each story remains with the contributor

      EPUB version ISBN 978-1-922031-74-7 

      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—Michael Pryor

      The Moonstone in the Dust—Carolyn Hine

      The Moth Tapes—J Ashley Smith

      She Sells Sea-Hells by the C Door—Eric Del Carlo

      Worldbuilding: How Climate Zone Determines Culture—Amy Laurens

      Comedic Science Fiction: More Than Just a Laugh—Lachlan Walter

      Reviews

      Next Issue

      Credits

      From the Cloud

      Michael Pryor

      Writing Diseases

      It’s poorly appreciated, but writing is an occupation which has hazards. Most writers, at one time or another, will suffer from at least one of the following diseases, conditions or injuries. Most are treatable and, with appropriate therapy, writers can look forward to living relatively full and normal lives.

      Adjectivitis: condition especially pronounced at first draft, where adjectives spawn, multiply and run rampant through one’s writing.

      Criticosis: a type of writing paralysis caused by overly active and insistent self-criticism.

      Swelled Head Syndrome: condition that comes from reading too many glowing reviews. Rare.

      Commadosis: A proliferation of commas so virile that they infect and convert all other punctuation.

      Over Capitalisation: particularly common in Fantasy writing, where everything is made strangely Portentous by Splashing Capital Letters around Willy-Nilly.

      Adverbia: the helpless need to add adverbs to every verb, relentlessly, inexorably, unstoppably.

      The Grumps: envy stemming from the success of other writers. Common.

      My Own Myopia: a form of selective blindness where a writer cannot see his or her own poor writing.

      Forehead Haematoma: bruising to the brow, resulting from banging one’s head on the desk because of recalcitrant scenes, characters, plot developments etc.

      Weighty Word Syndrome: a condition where every single word seems to weigh hundreds of kilos and requires commensurate effort to put in place. See ‘Immense Sentence Disorder’.

      Hyperplotting: a deep-seated compulsion to construct narratives that rely on the regular use of the word ‘suddenly’.

      Complications Complex: a form of writer delusion where ‘Complicatedness’ is mistaken for ‘Complexity’.

      Naturally, this list is not exhaustive. Writers are more than capable of inventing new conditions at the drop of a hat. It is only through regular donations to writing-related medical research that we can hope to ameliorate the effects of Writing Diseases.

      All the best from the cloud.

      Michael Pryor

      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

      Back to Contents

      The Moonstone in the Dust

      Carolyn Hine

      Having an imaginary friend was almost mandatory amongst the younger urchins running about the streets of Madina Harir. Thrown into a hard life scrounging for every scrap of food and staying out of the way of the authorities, every child needed a kind figure to listen to their troubles as they drifted off to sleep in whatever hidden nook was available. Imaginary friends were not as capricious as the other urchins, who sometimes ostracised their peers for being odd-looking, or too good at begging, or too likely to attract the attention of the authorities. Imaginary friends didn’t care about any of that.

      Hers was different though. While some children said their imaginary friend talked to them, Elidda knew it was make-believe. Not hers, though. Hers really spoke to her, most often in those moments before she fell asleep. And not just idle chatter. Her imaginary friend taught her things.

      ‘Do you want to learn something, Elidda?’

      ‘What sort of thing?’

      Lessons were a vague memory from happier times, when she had a mother and a father and a house. She had learned how to read, how to write a little, and she had kept up her skills by reading whatever scraps of books came her way. The time the bookseller’s shop had gone up in flames had been a gift for Elidda—so many books thrown away, only missing bits and pieces. Sometimes you could piece the whole story together out of the multiple copies, all singed in different spots, and sometimes you just had to fill in the blanks with your own imagination.

      Still, reading was only something to be enjoyed when she had the chance, and as for writing and lessons, those were definitely something done by those who had time to spare, who didn’t have to spend their whole day tracking down a scrap to eat or shadowing other city-dwellers, hoping to pick a pocket.

      Perhaps her friend sensed her reticence. ‘A trick. It will help you.’

      ‘How?’

      ‘Well, it’s easier to pick a pocket if the owner of said pocket is distracted by fairy lights.’

      ‘Fairy lights?’

      That was how she had learned the spell she later found out was called prestidigitation. The voice taught her other things too, new tricks. How to cloak herself in shadows and become almost invisible. How to walk without leaving traces. All things that were very useful for an urchin.

      She was smart enough to know that stealing too much or taking advantage of her new skills would only draw the attention of the authorities, and times were still hard for anyone with juz’iiblis blood. The last purges might have been a full five years ago, and pacts and treaties might have been in place between the Empire and the representatives of the juz’iiblis, but the common folk still whispered and pointed at her horns and tail, and the City Watch was drawn from the common folk. No, she did not want to attract their attention.

      Still, she did better than most other urchins thanks to the tricks her imaginary friend had taught her. This did not make her better-liked, and so she spent more and more time on her own, waiting for the comforting whisper of her friend. Sometimes he just chatted, but other times he doled out snippets of information, of new secrets and tricks. Those were the best times.

      It wasn’t without a price, though. Sometimes her friend told her she grew too bold, and her spells backfired, putting her in danger. She learned not to push her friend for too much knowledge. Whenever he asked her if she would ever be tempted to abandon him, should another friendly voice come calling, she always promised she would be true to him.

      One night a slender dagger had appeared near her, and her friend had asked her to seal her promise in blood. She had nicked her hand willingly, and the dagger had vanished in a flash of light, leaving behind the smell of hot metal and burnt blood.

      The next night he had taught her how to create an unseen servant. He had said that most people used this trick to get out of performing menial tasks, such as chopping food or folding clothes. Then he had laughed and said that he was sure someone as clever as Elidda could come up with much more inventive ways of using the spell.

      Elidda’s reliance on magical assistance for her thieving left her with more time free for continuing her own studies. She was not content to wait for her imaginary friend to dole out his next scrap of knowledge, and so she hoarded scraps of manuscripts and books, even collecting the pamphlets from temples and the advertising material of the merchants, just to practice her reading.

      The other benefit of her prowess at pickpocketing was that she could afford to stay farther away from the market places and squares, where most of the urchins congregated to scavenge after the stallholders had retired for the night, desperate for any little scraps to supplement whatever they had gleaned during the day.

      She managed to find a little roof space in an outlying temple building to a deity who was no longer as popular as they had once been. The only other inhabitant had been a tiny mouse, which she befriended. Sometimes she wondered if the mouse was a little odd—it always seemed better fed than the others scampering around the temple grounds, and it often regarded her with a knowing look, especially if she read aloud to it. Perhaps it was like her, she thought. Different from the rest.

      One day she was loitering in the shadows near the market square, trying to pick out which inhabitant was going to supply her daily bread, when she saw a member of the city council hammering up posters. She sidled up to look at one of them. It announced the annual bazaar, where all the finest traders came in from their journeys in the eastern lands, bringing with them precious gems, silks, spices, and other

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