Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #32

Given that most short fiction magazines don’t struggle past the third or fourth issue, turning out number 32 on a more or less regular schedule of six issues per year must make Australia’s Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine something of an old stager. Thankfully, although the name remains, the original conceit about the magazine being the inflight entertainment on dodgy space cruisers has been quietly dumped, and what remains is a solid SF and fantasy magazine with reasonable production values and a pretty strong pool of writing talent.

One of ASIM’s quirks is that it does not have a single editor. Instead, the magazine is produced by a cooperative with individuals taking turn. This issue was edited by Monissa Whiteley, and she has put together an interesting collection of stories—with some interesting thematic links.

Issue #32 opens with a pair of stories, “When Winter Came” by Brian Dolton and “If I Die Before I Wake” by E C Myers, which are both love stories where relationships form over years as men and women meet briefly and are separated. In “When Winter Came,” the protagonist, Marra Fell, is a “Gatekeeper,” one of a select band who walk across worlds fighting an endless battle against the undead “Grey Host.” She finds herself being followed across worlds by an unwanted suitor, Winter, who is determined to woo her—but Gatekeepers do not marry, and Marra is not one to shirk her duty.

“When Winter Comes” works because of the quality of Dolton’s writing, the emotional restraint he shows in the construction of his characters, and the simple clarity of the story.

In E C Myers’s “If I Die Before I Wake,” Jon falls in love with the woman of his dreams—Phoebe. Unfortunately for Jon, he doesn’t know who she is and can only reach out to her when rare dreams allow him to inhabit the body of those next to her—a school friend, her brother, her abusive boyfriend. All of which is creepy enough, but Jon’s obsession and the melodramatic turn that the story takes make the whole thing a distinctly uncomfortable and unconvincing read. Jon’s willingness to make any sacrifice for a woman he barely knows does not ring true, and the whole thing feels too fraught and too shallow.

In Damon Kaswell’s “God at the Bottom of a Cup,” Garrison Smith is hearing voices—specifically, he is hearing God’s voices in everything everyone says, and it is driving him mad—especially since God can’t seem to make his mind up. There is a row going on between the fundamentalist God and the liberal God about what the truth is. In a coffee shop, Garrison watches two men play a game of Scrabble, which is won by the word “compromise,” and suddenly differences are forgotten, and the world is a finer, sunnier place.

“God at the Bottom of a Cup” contains two elements guaranteed to drive this reviewer into a throat ripping frenzy. First, it is a story that features God. There may be, somewhere in the multiverse, an author who can successfully encompass the majesty of a being said to have conjured the universe and every wonder in it through their imagination and the simple expression of their will, but if there is, this reviewer has never been privileged to read the tale. Instead, we usually get what we have here, which is the warmed over and reconstituted dregs of the mythology of a few Eastern tribes passed off as universal truths. If this is really the best God can do, then it’s a miracle that he was able to organise an explosion in a big bang factory.

But, for this reviewer, Kaswell’s second transgression is far worse. For the liberal (and I’m using that in the non-pejorative European sense) and well-meaning conclusion that Kaswell lumbers his reader with: “wouldn’t the world be nicer if we could all just shut up about our differences and get along?” The answer is, of course, no. What type of society would we live in if people turned their backs on injustices and moral outrages simply because they don’t want to rock the boat or upset people? Disagreement may be annoying, confusing, or even frightening, but it is also unavoidable in any decent society that values the idea that people are free to think as they wish and to seek to persuade others of their view. It makes the world a little messier, true, but then people who seek to create neat worlds where everyone agrees with everyone else tend to get called rude things like “dictator.”

Kaswell’s writing is competent, but the characters are ciphers; his philosophy is wimpy, and the story goes nowhere.

The premise of Eugenie Edquist’s “Motor Skills” is almost as flawed as Kaswell’s (though less annoying). Her story is based on the idea of a technology called biomechanics which, like Soylent Green, is really people. The big secret is that they’ve put human brains into every new car, and no one knows. This seemed to me entirely improbable. We live in an era of the hobbyist hacking every piece of technology that emerges from the factories of the world—everything, no matter how mundane, gets modded these days and cars most of all. So the idea that these brains could be floating around inside an engine and no one would poke around and work out what was going on seemed utterly impossible. All that being said, however, the story is neatly told and the character interactions well handled, making it an implausible but not unlikeable story.

Kent Purvis also does a pretty good job with unlikely material in “Pieces of Eight,” where a woman finds out that the destruction of her home is probably the least strange thing that’s happened to her recently, as seven bodies—all her own—turn up in and around the burnt out wreckage. There’s some mumbo-jumbo about the protagonist Emma Jane being born at some sort of crucial point for humanity, but the story is neatly laid out with a darkish humour and an engaging voice. Only the ending lets the story down—an unnecessary final twist and an overly melodramatic flourish over-gilding what, until that point, had been a perfectly pretty lily.

Susan Wardle’s “The Children’s Crusade” is one of this issue’s strongest stories. In a future where fertility is falling and children are getting smarter, a small group of kids rebel against the way the adult world has treated them. Following the death of one of their classmates, they lock themselves in their classroom, rig a bomb, and demand a greater say in the way they are treated. Wardle does a good job with the children’s voices—staying just the right side of precocious so that they don’t become too irritating. She does a good job too of taking the innocence of the children and playing it off against the experienced cynicism of the grown-up world. The ending, though, is both smart and chilling. Be nice to the kids, because one day they’re going to be in charge!

The next two stories—“Son Et Lumiere” by Ian Nichols and “The Last Deflowerer” by Karen Maric—are the issue’s second pair of tales linked by a thematic bond. They are also two of the most memorable stories in the magazine. Both deal with sensuality.

In “Son Et Lumiere,” Nichols’s protagonist is dying slowly and painfully. There is a treatment readily available, but he will not take it because choosing to live comes at a price. The world has been swept with a plague—“Neoprionic Systemic Breakdown”—spread by bird shit, infecting the nervous system and rotting the body. With billions dying, the scientists have come up with a cure; the only problem is that the cure cannot reverse the damage the plague does to the nervous system, and the cost of the cure is the loss of the ability to appreciate music, taste, colour, and texture. In other words, every fine thing in life is stripped away. Faced with the choice of a long life without the ability to appreciate the things he loves or a few months packed with the sensual experiences of beautiful music, fine food, and great art, the protagonist has chosen to die. This is an intelligent story, well told and with real poignancy.

In Maric’s “The Last Deflowerer,” Salus Sententiae is the eponymous “hero,” living in a puritanical world where everything is leached of colour, passions are kept rigidly controlled, and the state wages war on the glimmerflower—a tenacious weed with red blooms that spread an arousing aroma that robs the victim of their inhibitions. Salus has lived his life locked in a battle with this dangerous weed, uprooting the plant and preserving the buttoned-down status quo. But Salus is increasingly questioning his motives as his own passions are brought to the surface by his brassy new assistant, Miss Monitus.

The gradual crumbling of Salus’s resolve is predictable enough, but it is all handled in a clever, amusing, and enjoyable way so that the final outcome, while no surprise, is nonetheless immensely satisfying.

As an Irishman, this reviewer concedes he groaned when presented with D Gullen and M Owton’s “The Sea Inside.” Featuring a character list with such names as Padraig, Enda, and Aoife and, of course, a fierce and powerful priest who uses words like “afeared” and asks questions like “Which of ye is it that belongs to the sea now?” (twice!), all it needs is a leprechaun and a pint of Guinness and the set of stereotypes would be complete. So, despite all this generic “O’Irishness,” it is to the authors’ credit that there remains an affecting emotional core to this story of love and loss that manages to touch despite the stale trappings.

Padraig breaks a seafaring taboo and rescues his daughter’s fiancé, Enda, and then protects the young man by pretending that it was him who was washed overboard. Enda responds to his rescue by turning over a new leaf and becoming a better man, but Padraig is an outcast driven from the community and eventually to the ocean. However, Enda cannot escape his fate, and Aoife is left bereft. Despite strong reservations about the voices, accents, and the vocabulary employed here—these Irish owe more to Hollywood and The Quiet Man than to any real community—this story packed a surprising emotional punch.

This issue of ASIM finishes on a strong note. Dave Luckett’s “Breeding Season” is a nice tale of first contact told from the point of view of an alien species, and it makes some interesting points about the pressures that might be brought to bear when a technologically advanced race interacts with one at the early stages of development. Luckett’s protagonist is a male who tells of how he won his “range” and the females within it and why he has chosen to give it all up and refuse to breed rather than be manipulated by the startraders who have started to appear amongst his people. I felt Luckett might have done more to make his aliens more “otherly,” but the momentum is maintained throughout, and the conclusion is smartly delivered.

Amongst the other content in ASIM #32 is a very amusing, very short poem by Simon Petrie, “I had a Little Nut Tree,” a brief but unenlightening interview with Justine Larbalestier, and a selection of reviews (mostly of Australian books and authors).

Overall, ASIM presents a varied, well-written, and intelligent bunch of stories in a robust package. With over five years and thirty-two reliably produced issues behind it, ASIM feels like an established and mature product that is confident enough to present itself straightforwardly to its readers without pretension or bombast. It’s a strong magazine and well worth your time.