Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #37

According to editor Tehani Wessely, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine issue #37 is a compilation of tales that “deal with loss and change, in a wide variety of incarnations.” Why? Because this is the editor’s swan song. Wessely is leaving ASIM for other pastures. So the question then becomes, does this 37th issue of the popular Australian SF magazine live up to its editor’s claim? I think it does.

This issue collects 13 stories from writers around the world that are from many subgenres, varying plot lines, and vastly different worlds. Yet all, no matter how strange or unusual, should resonate deeply in the mind of the reader. These narratives will pluck that string in your heart that has felt that there is something missing, something that you once had that should not be gone.

The magazine opens with a story by one of the members of the cooperative that publish ASIM, Dirk Flinthart. Though the story begins in a cliché format (the narrator who tells you he is telling a story), what follows is a powerful tale about the imagination. “This is Not My Story” is about a young boy, now grown up to become a writer, who remembers parts of his young life, particularly his close friendship with a girl named Janey. Janey was an inventor, someone who could create something from scraps and pieces of things here and there. But Janey is lost to the narrator through an unfortunate set of circumstances, or is she? Maybe she is only somewhere else, waiting?

Flinthart celebrates childhood imagination, and the writers who manage to keep that sense of wonder and place it in their writing:

“I think it must be the same with everyone who writes these stories. I think we all remember, and we all know what we’ve lost. Why else would you keep seeing the same story again and again; different names, different authors, but the same sad, lonely idea?”

Writing becomes a reminder of “who I really am—and who I will never be.” Though this story is quite sad throughout, it ends on an upbeat note, when the aged narrator has an encounter with his son.

“Dominion” is a funny tale by Christine Lucas. She provides an alternate history of the Garden of Eden, and the reasons and motivations behind the Serpent’s tempting of Eve. It has something to do with cats. Lucas’s story is much like works by Rudyard Kipling. Like Kipling’s “How the Leopard Got His Spots,” “Dominion” is an explanatory tale that uses flights of fancy rather than true fact to give reasons for why the world is the way it is. I found myself laughing quite hard at this alternate mythology, which gives new meaning to the loss of the Garden of Eden.

Penny-Anne Beaudoin writes a narrative about the loss of beauty in “Drowning in the Air.” Through powerful imagery, Beaudoin creates a visceral reaction to the story of two boys and a father fishing, making it a metaphor for the seeking of truth and beauty—something mankind has sought since long before even Aristotle’s Allegory of the Cave. The boys, brothers, one older, come to find beauty in the catching of a fish. But the younger of the two boys is an inept fisherman, and only through an empathetic magic taught by the elder brother can he find success. That very empathy makes the thrill of the chase a wondrous thing but its conclusion something sad and ugly. Beaudoin moves the reader quickly from extreme highs of emotion to extreme lows, rapidly building tension to a palpable crescendo. This was an emotionally draining story, so simple in idea and yet so complex emotionally, and all plotted on the basis of the simple catching of a fish.

First-time author Leith Daniel’s “Love the Tattoo” is quite creepy. Remember back to watching The Silence of the Lambs, and you’ll get the right feeling for this story. It is quite short and speaks of a man who encounters a stranger while camping. Watchers of the TV shows CSI or Bones can imagine the gruesome event that occurs next. Daniel’s story is simply shocking. It is about rapid loss, the sharp knife edge of pain that comes when something important is taken away. “Love the Tattoo” leaves more questions than it answers, and that is as it should be.

For the uninitiated, the amygdala is the part of the brain that controls fear and emotional responses, among other things. In “Amygdala, My Love,” the narrator undergoes a surgery that causes her new reactions to be the opposite of the ones she had before the surgery. Fear becomes an overriding emotion. This is trouble, because the female protagonist has a family. In a way, this tale by Lee Battersby is a metaphor, even an explanation of the reasons why people abandon their families. It is very sad, and its theme of a trust betrayed cannot possibly end well. Although it is a metaphor, Battersby fails to give the reader enough concrete connection to reality. The narrative is a sequence of emotions, and it made the piece hard to follow because there are few concrete events. The reader will feel the emotion of the protagonist deeply but will spend a good portion of this rather short story wondering about the facts. It is distracting.

Grant Stone tells what happens to “The Little Mermaid” after she finally begins living on land. “Under Waves and Over” tells the story of Peter, who falls in love with a mermaid. But when the mermaid comes to live with Peter, she finds that she is completely unhappy. Stone could have done more with this story; he ends up making it about environmental issues—apologetic rather than an eloquent tale of love and loss. The final few paragraphs make some commentary about nuclear testing, ruining the effect of all that came before, which had been delving deeply into the concept of marriage and the relationship between two people in love. The story is poignant, however, and the sadness of the mermaid stuck on dry land is emotionally powerful.

“Map” by Adam Bales takes the Australian aboriginal mythology of lost places and creates a metaphor about how easily we can be lost without our roadmap for life. Anthropologist Sarah is crossing a desert region to reach a tribe she wishes to talk with. As she drives, she fails to notice that all the manmade markers are disappearing. When she does, it is nearly too late. Only by conquering the land through anchoring it to real things can she keep from being lost in the lost place. This story will resonate with those who have ever felt lost and without purpose, or will serve as a warning to those who are not focused on their goals.

In a historical fantasy set in the days leading up to the Great Fire of London on September, 1666, Eilis O’Neal tells the tale of the salvation of a young virgin by the fabled unicorn. “The Unicorn in the Tower” is mostly an adventure story, about how the girl saves the unicorn from the Great Fire and how she is rewarded in an unusual way. The girl becomes less of a thing bandied about by the men in her life and more of a strong, self-confident woman, all through the encounter with the unicorn. The tale upends the traditional concept of the unicorn and the young and naive virgin.

From the moment that Jason Fischer uses the term “product” to describe what the protagonist of “Rick Gets a Job” is making, you know that things are not going to end well. Rick has taken a job in a processing plant, creating food products for humanity’s alien overlords. It is a gruesome task, and Rick is conflicted about what he is doing, which leads him into conflict with his superiors. Fischer turns into science fiction what is described in books like Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. The way that much meat is prepared for human consumption is grotesque in many ways, and Fischer takes a process that we have rationalized, and humanizes it. You will look at meat quite differently for some time after reading this story. Though the story follows a predictable pattern, and it is a little on the pedantic side, its still ends up being enjoyable.

Eugie Foster* tells an apocalyptic story akin to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road in “The Better To….” But unlike The Road, Foster’s tale has more fantasy elements. The world has been Transformed and now lives in a cloudy murk. Creatures called “hunters” use their skills to hunt humans and machines, and drugs no longer work. The plot takes several surprising twists and turns, and the protagonist becomes an unwitting accomplice to the very thing he wishes to destroy. Foster builds some sexual tension at the beginning but does nothing with it later, so I wondered why it’s part of the story. This tale’s theme is the balance between reason and belief. The reader will be surprised to find out which one trumps the other.

“Terraformer” by David Conyers takes place on a far distant planet. A terraforming project becomes infected by a machine plague, and it is up to the humans to stop it before it spreads to the rest of humanity. Although Conyers has some trouble in creating an emotional connection to his characters, the story lacks nothing in terms of action. The ending is powerfully climatic and quite a surprise. The story reminded me of Transformers but without the benefit of the Autobots. A good action/adventure tale.

Thoraiya Dyer also turns to Australian aboriginal mythology in “Night Heron’s Curse.” Swamphen is a plain girl in love with a man who is to be betrothed to her beautiful sister, Night Heron. But Night Heron doesn’t want to marry Crooked Spear, so she runs away. Being a good sister, Swamphen goes with her. As they flee, Night Heron is cursed by their tribe’s shaman and is turned into a cliffside. Swamphen is saved, but she must kill the gigantic Eel-Shark in order to save her sister from the curse. About the rewards of self-sacrifice and the vanity engendered from everything coming easily, Night Heron’s curse is greater even than that which the shaman put on her. This story ends happily for Swamphen and is a sweet tale, almost a myth, about nobility of character.

Paul Haines concludes this issue with the twisted fairy tale, “Failed Experiments from the Frontier: The Pumpkin.” A good story for an October publication, a young man’s need to carve a jack-o’-lantern, and when he finds a large one in the middle of the road, he cannot believe his luck. Even when the pumpkin acts strangely, he pushes on to carve it. Haines then produces a surprising and horrifying ending. Well written, this one had me guessing till the end.

With issue #37, editor Wessely achieves her objective of publishing an issue of ASIM with the theme of loss. These 13 stories run the gamut of subgenres, from contemporary fantasy to historical fantasy to science fiction, but all, in some way, deal with loss in its many guises. An excellent issue, worth a thorough reading.

[*Disclosure notice: Eugie Foster is the editor of The Fix.]