“Indistinguishable from Science” in Antipodean SF #293

If any of my longer term readers are still looking at this website (I know, it has been literally years since my last post!), you might recall that I have published some flash fiction pieces with Antipodean SF.

Recently, the editor Ion “Nuke” Newcombe put out the call for stories for the 25 year anniversary edition of Antipodean SF (you read that right – 25 years!) and I submitted a story. And low and behold, it was accepted.

The story is called “Indistinguishable from Science”. A very short piece, which came from the thought that most science fiction postulates science that might as well be magic (artificial gravity, faster than light travel etc). So why not make it magic?

I’ve also always been interested in thinking about what role magic would have in a technologically advanced civilisation.

Issue 293 came out in February 2023, but you can still read it in the archive or by going to the page with the eBook version.

After a few years where writing had to take a back seat to life, I’m just starting to dip my toe back in the water. Hopefully this won’t be the last post you see on this poor, deserted website!

Antipodean SF Issue 248

As you may know, I help out on the Antipodean SF website, creating the eBook version of the online magazine each month.

…and beyond…

Issue 248 has a great range of stories, including:

A Taste For Salt by Noel Osualdini

Better Ballers by Salvatore Difalco

First Choice by Vanessa Kittle

Forever In Time by Shane O’Halloran

Frozen Moments, Stolen Out Of Time by George Nikolopoulos

That Monster Show by Bart Meehan

The Last Word by Roger Ley

The Tower by Mathew Nelson

Vocation by Ishmael A Soledad

Wet Paint by Simon R. Gardner

As well as reading on line, you can also check out the eBooks.

Antipodean SF Issue 247

As you may know, I help out on the Antipodean SF website, creating the eBook version of the online magazine each month.

Best Thing. Really.

Issue 247 has a great range of stories, including:

As Time Ticks On by Elizabeth Kovacs

Beneficence by David Scholes

Best Thing Since Sliced Bread by Andy McGee

Cleanse by Mark Tremble

Left Overs by Monica Carroll

Statement To The Ship Walkabout’s Coroner by Wes Parish

Stop Copying Me by Jason Retallack

The Alien Nutcracker by Brenda Anderson

What’s So Funny? by Ed Errington

My Dream Girl by Tim Train

As well as reading on line, you can also check out the eBooks.

The Regersek Zone (a story)

I’ve often wondered that if aliens had the technological wherewithal to travel the stars, why they wouldn’t just terraform another planet in our solar system, rather they take the risk of tangling with a sentient species and its associated diseases. That wondering found its way into this very short story.


The Regersek Zone

Rignof watched in unfeigned awe as data from the visual spectrum scanners brought the first images from the Destination up on the screen. Twenty generations of Aarnak had been born, lived and died on the Desolate Hope and finally the giant seed ship was about to reach the end of its long journey. Rignof’s fingers danced over the input device, trying to bring the picture into sharper relief.

There were eight planets in this solar system all told, as well as a vast array of smaller bodies. There was even a dwarf planet, a planetary phenomenon that had been theorised but never before seen. The best scientists on Aarn had determined that it was extremely likely that there would be worlds in the Regersek zone of this messy system, capable of sustaining Aarnak life. They had not been wrong. While gas giants dominated the outer solar system, there were four inner planets that were candidates for colonisation.

The innermost planet was little more than a molten rock – too close to the sun to be viable for any form of life.

The fourth planet was a dry, barren world, smaller than the remaining two inner planets and with gravity only a third of the Aarn home world. The aarnaforming technology contained in the lower reaches of the Desolate Hope combined with the resources to be found across this solar system would be able to convert the planet into an acceptable world, but it would be too chilly for the cold-blooded Aarn when there were other options.

The third planet teamed with life. It was closest in size and gravity to Aarn and would require a lot less modification than the other worlds, but the effort of subduing an entire planet, especially one with an intelligent species on it, was too high for their limited resources. The alien inhabitant’s technological level was not great, but they had split the atom and visited their moon. They may look like furry grozts, but a grozt with a bomb is still dangerous for all that it is stupid.

Besides, the germs! Who the hell would want to live with the ever-present risk of a deadly alien flu?

But the second planet – oh, the second planet was perfect. A little too close to this new sun, but nothing that a well placed array of solar mirrors couldn’t overcome. Completely barren, so the introduction of Aarn native species could go ahead unhindered by alien biology once the initial atmospheric modifications had been made, the surface cooled and the planet’s magnetic field jump-started. It even already had sulfuric acid in the air! This planet could be an Aarnian paradise.

Rignof turned off the display and sighed in satisfaction. Barring misadventure he would live to walk on the surface of this marvellous new world, although he himself would be old and scaleless by the time it happened. He wondered how their soon-to-be neighbours would react to sharing their solar system.

They shouldn’t complain. It wasn’t like they were using the planet.

THE END


‘The Regersek Zone’ was originally published in Antipodean SF, in issue 184 (October 2013). It is also available in the free collection of my published flash fiction and short stories A Flash in the Pan?See my bibliography for more details about my published work.

‘Narration Blues’ stars in the AntiSF radio show Abnorba

My recently published flash fiction piece ‘Narration Blues’ was included in the AntiSF radio show this week (the show is codenamed Abnorba).  The editor, Ion ‘Nuke’ Newcombe, runs the radio show out of Nambucca Heads on 2NVR Nambucca Valley Radio. Fortunately for everyone in the rest of the world Nuke provides the radio show as a podcast.

Nuke encourages authors to narrate their own stories, so you get to hear my dulcet tones. I’ll leave it to you, dear reader, to decide whether that is a good thing.

New story “Narration Blues” published on AntipodeanSF

One of my flash fiction pieces, titled “Narration Blues”, is in the latest addition of AntipodeanSF, an Australian publication.

It cannot be denied that “Narration Blues” is a silly story. I was listening to the voice over at the start of a fantasy television series, and I thought to myself “gee this is a lot of backstory – lucky they got the right person”. What if the hero died? Didn’t quite finish the quest? Gave up to become a carrot farmer? All that wasted destiny…

“Narration Blues” is the result.

As always, many thanks to Ion “Nuke” Newcombe, the editor of AntipodeanSF, for his support of my work. This is the 11th flash fiction piece that Nuke has published of mine, for which I am very grateful.

2017 Ditmar nominations

The Ditmars are the primary voted awards for Australian speculative fiction (as opposed to the Aurealis Awards, which is a juried award). The 2017 ballot is out, and available for voting for any eligible member of the national convention (this year held in Melbourne at Continuum 13 – the 56th National Science Fiction Convention).

The ballot is filled with some wonderful people, and my warmest congratulations go to everyone who received a nomination. I especially wanted to note that a story published in AntipodeanSF (which has published many of my flash fiction pieces) made the ballot for Best Short Story. Congratulations Edwina (author) and Nuke (editor)!

I also noted that Dimension6, the free magazine published by Keith Stevenson, published 2 of the novella/novelette nominations – a fantastic effort showing Keith’s excellent eye for talent.

http://wiki.sf.org.au/2017_Ditmar_preliminary_ballot

Best Novel

  • The Grief Hole, Kaaron Warren, IFWG Publishing Australia.
  • The Lyre Thief, Jennifer Fallon, HarperCollins.
  • Squid’s Grief, D.K. Mok, D.K. Mok.
  • Vigil, Angela Slatter, Jo Fletcher Books.
  • The Wizardry of Jewish Women, Gillian Polack, Satalyte Publishing.

Best Novella or Novelette

  • “All the Colours of the Tomato”, Simon Petrie, in Dimension6 9.
  • “By the Laws of Crab and Woman”, Jason Fischer, in Review of Australian Fiction, Vol 17, Issue 6.
  • “Did We Break the End of the World?”, Tansy Rayner Roberts, in Defying Doomsday, Twelfth Planet Press.
  • “Finnegan’s Field”, Angela Slatter, in Tor.com.
  • “Glass Slipper Scandal”, Tansy Rayner Roberts, in Sheep Might Fly.
  • “Going Viral”, Thoraiya Dyer, in Dimension6 8.

Best Short Story

  • “Flame Trees”, T.R. Napper, in Asimov’s Science Fiction, April/May 2016.
  • “No Fat Chicks”, Cat Sparks, in In Your Face, FableCroft Publishing.
  • “There’s No Place Like Home”, Edwina Harvey, in AntipodeanSF 221.

Best Collected Work

  • Crow Shine by Alan Baxter, Ticonderoga Publications.
  • Defying Doomsday, Tsana Dolichva and Holly Kench, Twelfth Planet Press.
  • Dreaming in the Dark, Jack Dann, PS Publishing.
  • In Your Face, Tehani Wessely, FableCroft Publishing.

Best Artwork

  • cover and internal artwork, Adam Browne, for The Tame Animals of Saturn, Peggy Bright Books.
  • illustration, Shauna O’Meara, for Lackington’s 12.

Best Fan Publication in Any Medium

  • 2016 Australian SF Snapshot, Greg Chapman, Tehani Croft, Tsana Dolichva, Marisol Dunham, Elizabeth Fitzgerald, Stephanie Gunn, Ju Landéesse, David McDonald, Belle McQuattie, Matthew Morrison, Alex Pierce, Rivqa Rafael, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Helen Stubbs, Katharine Stubbs and Matthew Summers.
  • The Coode Street Podcast, Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe
  • Earl Grey Editing Services (blog), Elizabeth Fitzgerald.
  • Galactic Chat, Alexandra Pierce, David McDonald, Sarah Parker, Helen Stubbs, Mark Webb, and Sean Wright.
  • Galactic Suburbia, Alisa Krasnostein, Alex Pierce, and Tansy Rayner Roberts.
  • The Writer and the Critic, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond.

Best Fan Writer

  • James ‘Jocko’ Allen, for body of work.
  • Aidan Doyle, for body of work.
  • Bruce Gillespie, for body of work.
  • Foz Meadows, for body of work.
  • Tansy Rayner Roberts, for body of work.

Best Fan Artist

  • Kathleen Jennings, for body of work, including Illustration Friday series.

Best New Talent

  • T R Napper
  • Marlee Jane Ward

William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism or Review

  • Kat Clay for essays and reviews in Weird Fiction Review
  • Tehani Croft & Marisol Dunham, for Revisiting Pern: the great McCaffrey reread review series.
  • Tsana Dolichva, for reviews, in Tsana’s Reads and Reviews.
  • Kate Forsyth, for The Rebirth of Rapunzel: a mythic biography of the maiden in the tower, FableCroft Publishing.
  • Alexandra Pierce, for reviews, in Randomly Yours, Alex.
  • Gillian Polack, for History and Fiction: Writers, their Research, Worlds and Stories, Peter Lang.

Publication – Narration Blues

Some excellent news over the summer, when Ion ‘Nuke’ Newcombe, the editor of Antipodean SF, picked up one of my flash fiction pieces, called ‘Narration Blues’.

‘Narration Blues’ will feature in issue 226 of Antipodean SF, due out in May 2017.

This will be the 11th flash fiction piece I’ve published in Antipodean SF, and I remain very grateful that Nuke has been such a big supporter of my work.

Antipodean SF

It’s been a while since I mentioned my friend Ion “Nuke” Newcombe, and the excellent publication he edits and produces, Antipodean SF. Antipodean SF has been running online since February 1998, meaning its 18th birthday has just come and gone. And given the publication is now old enough to drink, I thought it was well worth celebrating with a little shout out.

I’ve had ten or so flash fiction pieces published at AntiSF over the years, and I’m not the only Australian writer to get early publication credits with Ion. I’m always amazed to look back and see how many of my favourite Australian speculative fiction authors got their start with AntiSF.

There have been 212 issues of AntiSF since 1998, each issues publishing between 6 and 10 flash fiction pieces of around 500 words (sometimes longer, sometimes shorter). By my calculations, averaging 8 stories at 500 words for 212 issues equals approximately 850,000 words of flash fiction, a large portion of which has been from Australians.

Ion is very generous with his time, and considering he is not making any money out of the publication, he gives a very generous amount of editorial feedback to his authors. He cares deeply about the Australian SF field and is well worth a chat if you ever see this man at the bar at a convention somewhere.

nuke-at-mic-100-2

So, if you fancy writing a short piece, you could do a lot worse than submitting to Antipodean SF. Who knows, you could be the next great talent that Nuke discovers!

2015 versus 2016

Well, 2015 certainly kicked my writing backside. I started off the year well, but a combination of work and family commitments conspired to drop my writing productivity to almost zero by the time we reached December.

This website was a victim of my malaise – I haven’t written an article for a few months now. It has been a combination of a lack of time and not feeling like I’ve had much to say. A poor excuse, granted.

On the writing front, I only published one short story in 2015, Authentic Empathy which was published in the special 200th edition of AntipodeanSF earlier in the year. It was a great privilege to be selected for the magazine (and if you’re interested in looking at the story, check out my bibliography). The rest of the year I spent skipping between a few longer works, including refining the draft of my urban science fantasy novel (Unaligned), and building out a fantasy long story into a novella length work. Both require a lot more work, but it was good to make some progress.

I also wrote the start of a science fiction novel (about 10,000 words) as well as a couple of chapters of a middle grade novel, as well as the opening scenes for the sequel to Unaligned. From this you can probably tell that I’ve spread myself a bit thin over too many projects, rather than finishing a smaller number. There is probably a lesson in that.

I also accumulated a backlog of reviews I haven’t written, especially for the Australian Women Writers’ Reading Challenge.  I reviewed 4 books (reviews can be found here) by Australian women authors and read another 3, but didn’t hit my goal of ten in total. This certainly reflected my much reduced reading for the year, but I’m disappointed nonetheless.

On the podcast front, I contributed exactly nothing to the GalacticChat podcast this year. Stupidly, I should have thought about setting up some interviews when I was at GenreCon in Brisbane – fellow podcaster Helen Stubbs and I both attended and there was such a wide variety of authors and other interesting industry types, good interviews couldn’t have helped but follow. Ah well, lesson learnt for next time.

So, what is in store for 2016? GenreCon in November and a few weeks off work over Christmas has renewed my appetite for writing, which has been great. I’ve been transcribing a lot of my longhand writing from the year onto the computer over the last few weeks which has been surprisingly validating (I wrote more words last year than I thought!). I’d like to get the first draft of Unaligned into fighting shape and finish off the fantasy novella. I seem to do better at writing first drafts than the editing process, so I will punctuate the editing with working on a couple of short story ideas (I think having some short stories published does help me keep a sense of momentum).

For this website, I’ve decided to work towards publishing one article each Sunday night, to create some sense of regularity. I will publish any news about publishing of my work separately, so the Sunday night article will be either a review, a general musing or something that has caught my attention. This probably means finding some kind of project to help create content – I’ll add that to my to-do list.

Hopefully this will also mean that my reviewing for the Australian Women Writers’ Reading Challenge will be a little more prompt!

I’ve been contributing to AntipodeanSF behind the scenes, producing the eBook versions of the magazines each month. I’ll continue doing that, and will look at how I might improve my contributions in the podcasting space, depending on what happens with Galactic Chat.

That should be enough to keep me going.

Given my long absence from this website, I doubt I have any readers left, but if there are any of you out there, what are your 2016 writing resolutions?