Editorial
…Tansy Rayner Roberts
There have been some interesting questions floating around the Australian
speculative fiction community in the last year.
Are there too many markets for short fiction, and does this mean a lower
standard of fiction is being published.
Is Australian speculative fiction good enough.
What is “good” speculative fiction anyway.
I should point out that these questions are coming from writers and editors
— but mostly writers. Readers have much simpler criteria for “good” fiction
— Do I like it. Did I enjoy reading it. Would I read it again. And, most
importantly — Where can I find more like it.
The question of whether too much speculative fiction is finding
publication in Australia surprised me. The writer in me says, “More,
more markets! More magazines, more anthologies! Maybe they’ll publish
meeeee!” The editor in me thinks, “Hmm. More competition. But still, that
means a wider audience coming to Australian speculative fiction, right. And
that means more subscribers for ASIM!” The reader in me says, “Bring it on!
The more the merrier. Maybe I won’t read all of them, but at least I’ll have a
choice.”
I think “choice” is the operative word here. Readers of Australian
speculative fiction have never had so much choice before. Between Voyager,
Allen and Unwin, ASIM, Agog! Press, Aurealis, Ticonderoga Online,
Shadowed Realms, Chimaera Press, Mirrordanse, Prime Books, Orbit, and a
host of other publications/publishers here and overseas, you can now choose
between epic fantasy, urban fantasy, literary fantasy, YA fantasy, space opera,
hard SF, soft SF, funny SF, dark horror, medium horror, light horror and a
host of other possibilities.
If you only like one of those kinds of speculative fiction, then something
by an Australian author that you will enjoy was published last year. If you
Issue 22
2
like many different kinds of speculative fiction, then roll on up. It’s your lucky
year. Let’s hope you have more of them.
In his most recent Year’s Best Science Fiction (in which ASIM scored 6
recommended reading mentions!) Gardner Dozois lamented that ASIM’s content
wasn’t a little more serious, while at the same time wishing that Canadian
magazine On Spec would “lighten up a little”. While I respect and enjoy Mr
Dozois’ editorial taste, that sounds a lot like wishing all icecream was chocolate.
I’m a big fan of chocolate icecream, but sometimes I want vanilla. And
sometimes, I want pineapple.
So here’s to ASIM, the pineapple icecream of the spaceways, offering
something different: entertaining, well-written speculative fiction that allows
(and even encourages!) its authors to have fun with the genre — to just relax and
tell stories, without worrying about how literary they are, or whether they fit into
current marketing trends.
There’s a mixture in this issue of the light-hearted and action-packed, the
dark, the very dark, the outright silly and even a touch of elegance here and there.
I really enjoyed this mix of stories from up-and-coming and established writers,
and I hope you will too.
But whether you enjoy the stories or not — either way, we’d love to get some
feedback from you. Write us a letter or an email — review the issue on your
website or blog, and send us the link. Sometimes the writers and editors and
publishers are talking so loudly about what matters to them that they forget to
listen to the readers. And we’d really like to hear what you have to say.
Tansy RR
Editor, Issue 22
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cassiphone/
ANDROMEDA SPACEWAYS Inflight Magazine
Vol. 4/Issue 4
Next Issue Available
January February 2006
March/April 2006
Fiction
4 The Sun King. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Adam Browne
10 Blake the God. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lee Battersby
16 Marco’s Tooth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Trent Jamieson
29 The Last Cyberpunk. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Will McIntosh
42 It’s Only Rock and Roll. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hannah Strom-Martin
57 Mail Chauvinism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . G Scott Huggins
65 Tiny Sapphire & the Big Bad Virus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Josh Rountree
70 The Once and Future Creepy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Andrew Hindle
82 Love in the Land of The Dead . . . . . . . . . . . . Shane Jiraiya Cummings
Special FEatures
84 Interview — Trent Jamieson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tansy Rayner Roberts
87 The Mainstreaming of SF. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cory Daniells
Regular Features
92 Reviews. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Various contributors
96 Acknowledgements
Editor Tansy Rayner Roberts
Non-fiction Editor Ben Cook
Art Director Alisa Krasnostein
Reviews Editor Ian Nichols
Poetry Editor Ian Nichols
Editor-in-chief Robbie Matthews
Layout
Zara Baxter
Subscriptions Simon Haynes
Advertising Tehani Wesseley
Cover Art Conny Valentina
Copyright 2005
Andromeda Spaceways Publishing Co-op Ltd
c/- Simon Haynes, PO Box 127 Belmont, Western
Australia, 6984.
http://www.andromedaspaceways.com
Published bimonthly by Andromeda Spaceways
Publishing Co-op. RRP A$7.95. Subscription rates
are are available from the website.
Andromeda Spaceways Publishing Co-op actively
encourages literary and artistic contributions.
Submissions should be made online by emailing:
submissions@andromedaspaceways.com
Submission guidelines are available from the
website. Please read them.
ISSN 1446–781X
The Sun King
…Adam Browne
January/February 2006
The sun King
5
On the occasion of his twenty-fifth birthday, Louis XIV, Le Grand Monarque de
France, was promoted to the position of God, that office having been vacated by
its previous tenant for reasons of death.
As this was an inevitable advancement in the monarch’s career, the
announcement of his ascension caught exactly no-one by surprise. Even Louis,
who normally enjoyed a bit of pomp, felt the deification ceremony was something
to be got through as swiftly as possible. No sooner had he been coronated,
anointed with sacramental oil and handed a parchment affording him authority
over the Deep and Secret Machineries of the Universe, than he was hurrying out
the great doors of the Notre-Dames de Rheimes Cathedral and into the sunshine
for which he was now responsible.
Nor did he pause when he reached the square outside the cathedral. He
strode across the flagstones, outpacing the ragged crowd of his attendants (his
fatly panting Valet de Chambre; his Nanny with her immense whaleboned gown
creaking like the rigging of a tall ship; his First Physician and First Surgeon, both
weighed down by hairpieces of a size more often associated with civil engineering
than wig-making), until he came to the northern corner of the courtyard where
the reason for his impatience stood demurely awaiting him.
Her name was Mademoiselle Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart.
As a deity, Louis was now officially a divine being of pure spirit, perfect in power,
wisdom, and goodness; but he fancied the pretty ladies as much as ever. And the
Mademoiselle was most uncommon pretty. She was his petit divertissement, his
little dimpled plumpling, the one upon whom the royal eye, but not yet the royal
lips, had alighted.
“May I offer my congratulations on your ascension, Sire,” she said — rather
stiffly, he thought.
“You may indeed,” he replied. “And as my first official act, I shall present you
with a token of my esteem.”
He gestured as is sometimes seen in ecclesiastical art; an elegant, holy figuration
of his fingertips; and from nowhere (or, more accurately, from the pregnant fizzing
Nothing that underlies all Creation) there appeared a gigantic bunch of roses, their
scent miraculously identical to the Eau de Admirable of the Florentine perfumier
Giovani Paolo Feminis. Louis nodded to acknowledge the scattered applause from his
assembled courtiers, but really, privately, he didn’t know what all the fuss was about.
Miracles were a doddle once you had the trick of them.
He bowed to the Mademoiselle, his robes (a gold-scintillated explosion of ostrich
feathers) rustling about him as he proffered his gift. The Mademoiselle accepted the
flowers, but Louis could not help but think there was something of sufferance to her
manner. “Eau de Admirable,” she sighed, “it was all the fashion, was it not, a few months
ago.” She gave him a perfunctory curtsy, then tossed the flowers to her maid.
Louis smiled indulgently. True, she was spoiled, but whom in Louis’s court was not.
Having grown up in the infinitely brattish context of Versailles, where even the boy
who wiped your arse of a morning conducted himself with the hauteur of a peer of the
realm, what else could she be but a brat.
And indeed, apart from her beauty, her opulent thighs, sumptuous upper arms and
succulent bosom, it was her very resistance to his charms that had attracted him at
the first. In a society where the battle to win his heart had reached such a pitch that
ladies were known to consult sorcerers for love spells and philtres, the Mademoiselle’s
disinclination piqued his interest, as did the hint of shyness he seemed to detect
behind her prickly manner.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, “I am about to conduct a survey of my new kingdom, being
the Universe-at-large.” He indicated a nearby sedan-chair (his gesture accidentally
causing a small miracle in a nearby farm, where a goat surprised itself by giving birth
to a toad). “I hope you would not think it too forward if I invited you to join me.”
In reply, she indicated with the slightest but most expressive arch of an eyebrow
that she did think it a little forward, but that as he was now her Lord in both senses of
the word, she would do as she was bid within, of course, limits dictated by propriety.
In his turn, Louis quirked his own eyebrows (being quite as eloquent in the idiom
as she) to assure her that his motivations were entirely honourable; but that if she
were ever to stumble outside the bounds of propriety, he would stoutly follow, if only
to keep her company.
So she took his arm and they repaired to the sedan-chair where, by royal decree, he
repealed the law of gravity (which was the invention of an Englishman after all). The
little vessel swifted upwards, beyond the clouds, splashing out of the atmosphere on a
fountain of air, a rarefied chandelier that flash-froze then dissipated into a thousand
lights to mark the beginning of their voyage.
They swung away from the Earth. The sedan-chair moved smoothly through
space, an excellently beautiful vessel in which to ride, adorned all over with rich
architectural exuberations, its gold-chased surfaces everywhere inlayed with silver and
living mother-of-pearl. Nevertheless, the ambiance within was not an easy one. The
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