There were two stories in this edition. The first was Heaven and Earth by Greg Mellor, which uses the connection between two star crossed lovers as a thread to hold together a story documenting the evolution of the human race into a digital, perfectly connected society. I found it hard to get into the story, picking it up and putting it down quite a few times. Some of the imagery was beautifully rendered though and it was an interesting investigation of the topic of this kind of evolutionary convergence.
Love Death by Andrew J McKiernan explores the impact on a relationship where one of the participants dies but necromancy is a real option. A solid story without being spectacular.
Along with the fiction there is an interesting interview with author Felicity Pulman and an editorial on the rise of self-publishing in an electronic market. Carissa’s Weblog provides a good round up of some of the more interesting articles around on the web in the area of Australian speculative fiction.
Aurealis are also actively seeking feedback on their issues, which I think is a good idea I don’t see many magazines doing. There is an online survey for those that have read issue #46.
Now, Aurealis is still free so you can’t really complain about the price. An excellent way of keeping across the Australian speculative scene. I notice the next edition has a story by Jason Nahrung, who is an author whose work I’ve enjoyed when I come across it (Anywhere But Earth anthology and the Terra Incognita Speculative Fiction website most recently).
Reminds me that I need to port this over to my vox so I can test out more of the web linking.
Yes, I'm reading on the iPad – the linking stuff works really well there. Will be interested to see how it works on other devices like the vox. I've been reading your posts on your adoption of the vox with a lot of interest.
-m