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    Aurealis #122
    Aurealis #122
    Aurealis #122
    Ebook173 pages1 hour

    Aurealis #122

    By Stephen Higgins (Editor)

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    About this ebook

    Aurealis #122 is out now! The latest issue of Aurealis has been released. It is crammed full of the best new fiction, non fiction, reviews, news and art. Aurealis is published 10 times per year and has been Australia's premier speculative fiction magazine for over twenty five years.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChimaera Publications
    Release dateJul 2, 2019
    ISBN9781922031792
    Aurealis #122

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      Book preview

      Aurealis #122 - Stephen Higgins (Editor)

      AUREALIS #122

      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 978-1-922031-79-2

      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

      Getting Home—P K Torrens

      Serine—Shane Drury

      Tigers of Mars—Conor DiViesti

      Rosa Praed, Fugitive Anne, A Romance of the Unexplored Bush, Including the Unexpected Wrath of Kan—Gillian Polack

      Chilling Out with Victoria ‘V E’ Schwab—Eugen Bacon

      Is Science Fiction the New Western? How Genres Interact—Mathew Nelson

      Reviews

      Next Issue

      Credits

      From the Cloud

      Stephen Higgins

      Recently I listened to the album ‘Another Day on Earth’ by Brian Eno. It is his first ‘vocal’ album in ages and follows on in part from his classic ‘Another Green World’ album. I found the album on YouTube but was not able to find it on iTunes or Spotify, despite there being plenty of Eno Albums on those two sites. I found the CD version available from Amazon for over $100, but was not prepared to pay that amount. I bemoaned the fact that I couldn’t find a suitable source for the album (I did find it on Spotify, but then it wasn’t available so I guess there are licensing restrictions) and stated that the search would continue.

      Then I found a place to buy the CD or digital album at a reasonable price. It was on Brian Eno’s website. I felt like an idiot but at least now I know that websites are still useful. I bring all of this up simply because I had a reply to my last editorial regarding disappearing Classic speculative fiction. Darren Nash worked at Gollancz focussing on their Masterworks series, but he was also instrumental in creating their sfgateway site. Here you can buy all sorts of good stuff. You can find it all at www.sfgateway.com/ and you should know that Darren is very proud of this site and I have looked there and he has reason to be proud. Darren in back in Australia now and we are hoping to coax some stories from his time at Gollancz soon.

      I guess the point I was trying to make with my last editorial was that although the good old stuff is out there, it is becoming harder to find simply because the shiny new stuff can be distracting. It is good to know that it is all still there, and sometimes you just have to look at the most obvious places.

      Speaking of which, every so often I delve into the back issues of Aurealis and I’d just like to remind everyone that there is a ton of very good stuff still available in both our digital issues and in our (getting hard to find) print issues. Have a look at the Aurealis website to see what is available.

      All the best from the cloud.

      Stephen Higgins

      Back to Contents

      Getting Home

      P K Torrens

      I sit at my desk, in my cramped pseudo-office, writing a report on the latest lab workup from the alien hair clippings we’d received. Nothing exciting. Just the same damned DNA contamination issue crippling our under-funded lab.

      Cutting through the gorgeous silence and peace, my computer horns the arrival of a new message. Probably from General Thompson, harassing and demanding some kind of awfully wasteful test he’s just read about on Earth’s news. I’ve lost count of how many times I had to explain that at four-point-two lightyears from home, on a miserable military-run base, we don't possess the ability to make toast adequately, let alone perform the latest-craze test.

      But the message isn’t from Thompson. My family have sent me a video. An explosion of endorphins courses through me like a dose of morphine after surgery. I leap from my chair, slam shut the door of my shitty cubicle and sit back down.

      Their voices flow from the computer’s speakers. They apologise for not being in touch that month. Hockey games. New job. New boyfriends, girlfriends and a pet. I eat it all up—it’s been twelve years since I’ve seen them in the flesh. They ask when I’m heading back.

      I’m supposed to be on the next ship out, but I haven't fulfilled my contractual obligations. Yet.

      The opiate-like high melts away with their byes and waves, replaced by a sickly emptiness. Why the hell had I agreed to twenty-fucking-two years away from them? Money of course.

      The door crashes open and smacks against my desk. General Thompson storms into my containment box, his oversized holstered gun and swinging knife no doubt serve as compensation for his small penis. ‘Valeria, why in God’s name are you crying?’

      I wipe the tears away, furious that I let the bastard see me like this. I never invite him because the prick gives me the shits and his breath stinks—they don’t bring air-freshener to Earth’s only occupied exoplanet. It takes a few hours for the atmosphere-scrubber to leech it out. Longer, if the native pollen clogs it.

      I wish I could clog him.

      General Thompson folds his arms and contorts his potholed face into a broad grin. ‘I’ve done it.’

      I force a smile. ‘Done what, mein obersturmfuhrer?’

      ‘I’ve told you before. You call me that again and I’ll have you iced.’

      ‘Please do. I’ve been asking to get out of here.’ Ten years here and ten years back plus the two-year expedition contract, they said. Lying packs of worm juice.

      ‘Just shut up. I’ve been here eight years longer than you, so don’t talk to me about wanting to get away from this place.’ His I-recently-got-laid smile fades. ‘Listen, I’ve got an agreement for a body swap with the Faceless.’

      ‘What?’ No way. The guy is a literal walking-disaster for science and he managed to do it? ‘An alive Eulipot, right?’ It needed to be alive. If I could outline the anatomy and physiology of the damned things—I’d be outta here on the next subluminal.

      ‘Yeah.’ He slaps his hands on my table and leans forward, obliterating any remnant of my personal space. And my last refuge of unadulterated air. His breath is putrid—a mix of stale rubbish, rotten fish and vomit. ‘You do this right and I get a promotion.’

      Sure. Because that’s what I spend my time obsessing about. No. I get this right and I’m off to see my babies, asshole.

      * * *

      The day has come. I get into my scrubs and pin my ‘Chief Surgeon Valeria Spencer’ badge above my left breast. The mood had been electric all morning with the suspense of what we’d find. What I’d find. But H-hour comes and suddenly you could hear a fly fart. The two hundred staff all glued to screens set up around the desolated base so everyone can watch the first vivisection of a Eulipot.

      I don’t make the bastards wait. For too long.

      I wash with iodine in the pseudo scrub-bay, take a couple of deep breaths, and make my way to the pseudo operating room.

      The alien lies sprawled out and unconscious, but alive, on the operating table. Eulipots are an interesting lot. The species have no facial features, just smooth and continuous hair from the scalp down to the rest of the body—a surreal version of a primate.

      I stroke the incision site with gloved fingers, while over twenty senior officers look on—they wouldn’t accept screens.

      My hand betrays a tremble.

      Masks and hazmat suits obscure the identities of the people crammed into the makeshift operating room like tinned protein biscuits. They shuffle and cough under the glare of ceiling lights and reflective white walls. Wafts of ammonium bleach, intermingling with the furred alien's wet dog stink, percolate through my mask.

      We’d been observing New Earth's only intelligent life for well over two years. This is the closest anyone has come to examining one and I’ve got the crowd standing at my mercy.

      And my damned jittery hand.

      I inhale deep and tap a foot to the beat of my thumping heart. Better the foot move than my operating instrument—an old boss taught me that.

      Only my nanobot monitor provides a distraction. The n-bot feeds coalesce into a unique scan, revealing the hairy being’s near-human anatomy, down to the left testicle hanging lower than the right. Of course, General Stink has picked a male subject. The aliens are smarter and selected a human woman to examine. So much more to gain from being able to access eggs, but the military meatheads never do listen.

      Eulipots are a bona fide anatomical enigma. The abdominal cavity has nothing in it. Empty—no colon,

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