// First appearance in ASIM Issue #44, July 2010

// Art by Marc McBride (Cover of ASIM #44)

-1-

The rarefied air of Coprahaagendas swirled and separated into zones, like vinegar whisked into milk—an acrid miasma that puffed and seeped from the great building atop the hill.

There is only this one building in Coprahaagendas, but the singularity of this temple-high structure makes up for its loneness, not just by its prismatic colours that exceed our vision. The structure defies architecture. Figures and symbols cover it, as uncountable as they are unstill. They cling to, spring from, crawl over and maybe are every wall, ceiling, column, cupola, dome, grate, doorway, step and arch. Arms, wings, hooves, snouts, breasts, cunts and priapuses do everything imaginable, and more. Beings humanick and otherwise fuck and slaughter; lust and leer; look out and inwards, reach down and upwards—making and remaking this stupendous edifice into an evermore impossibility of unfathomability, to us.

Not that we would ever see this building, let alone Coprahaagendas. Our leaders have only just left Copenhagen.

In the great hall, up on the stage, the smiling pink fatty closed his eyes. With one hand, he shoved a shell into his floppy left ear, sighed, and opened his eyes so slowly that it looked like it took supreme effort—as though his gorgeously long lashes might have been made of heavitrium. They were only weighed down by reluctance. With another hand, he sniffed a water lily while he waved a mace with another hand. Finally, with his fourth hand, he lifted up a sun-polished discus so that its face, turned away from him, should make countless eyes blink.

Still, that was not enough, so he trumpeted.

And no one can trumpet like Ganesh.

“You will please be silencing,” he said in his normal tone—sweet, soft and rich as caramel.

So then, despite the desperate planning, the cajoling and officiousness, the promises to fill the hall with pomp for those who wouldn’t come down for anything less, that “You will please” ad hoc call to order ended up being the opening statement of this unprecedented assembly, one so important it is called merely “The Coprahaagendas Summit”.

Ganesh had been chosen to chair the meeting, as he was the only one who was both significant and unhated by all. He was also a stickler for responsibility, even having given himself the task of reading Robert’s Rules of Order. So although the meeting had no precedent to those assembled, he opened it almost in the manner to which we have become accustomed.

With a flourish of his trunk, he said: “I call the distinguished …”

Kuan Yin was first. She barely topped the podium, swaying like a graceful willow. “We are simply talking about the very life support system of this planet,” she said, but since there was no sound system, practically no one heard her. Tears sprang from her eyes. Her face blotched with the passion she felt, but she had not managed to memorize any other words, so she fled from the stage in a whirlwind of peach blossoms.

Next to speak was an old man. He took forever to get there. Hands gripping two arms as if they belonged to a walking frame, he was led through by a translucent young woman and a scruffy young man. Once the old man’s hands had been transferred to the podium, however, he leaned on one and picked the other up and pointed it as if it were a staff and he were Ruler of All.

Behind and to the side, Ganesh made silent patting-down motions with his trunk while trying to glare at the assembly, a bad choice.

“The time for hesitation is over,” the old man screamed. “Smite—”

“Bwahhh!” blared Ganesh, but though he trumpeted so loud he bruised the delicate inside of his trunk, he couldn’t shush the troublemakers, who must have been waiting just for this. The very walls reverberated mirth.

The young man and woman grabbed the old man’s elbows. “My pulpit,” he snarled, gripping the sides with hands that were stronger than they looked.

A blast-ray just missed him.

“Take his gun!” ordered Ganesh.

But Xenu is no evil intergalactic warlord for nothing. His hand flickered at the two hulking giants (blue- and red-faced respectively) coming for him, and faster than a blast, he had his hands full of their body parts and was stuffing them in his frog-wide metallicate mouth. Then, like any frog, he used his thumbs to push the flailing legs in.

A roar rent the outrage. “Who let Xenu come?” demanded Seth. He jumped forward, foam dripping from his long curved snout. His man’s arms stuck out awkwardly from his overmanly chest, his muscles ridiculously engorged. But it was his erect tail, high as a sacrificial flame, that really showed his rage.

“You’re always angry at something,” said Astarte. But Seth paid no mind to this interjection from a goddess who was only half-risen-from-the-dead—she of less worth than a barley offering. Only Sita, the pallid former beauty who had also been married unhappily (but at least she wasn’t murdered like me, Astarte had always thought resentfully) and the blue hippo nodded. Astarte’s heart flooded with love for her newfound friends, but the three of them might as well have existed in another universe, so noticed were they in the tumult. Indeed, this first agreement in the summit missed being a historic moment, as it was never noted.

Ganesh pointed to Saraswati. “Did you not say to me that everyone says that Nostradamus predicted nine-eleven?”

“Almost,” she said. “The numbers are countless. This is why we must agree to my plan.”

“What is this ‘my plan” my lotus blossom?” rumbled Thoth beside her, baring his baboon’s teeth.

“Hoo hoo hoo,” piped Hanuman. “Their first fight!”

Up on stage, Ganesh had difficulty holding back his tears. He couldn’t keep his ears from flapping as he motioned to Ogiuwu, who had been standing at the foot of the stairs to the stage, smiling smugly.

Ogiuwu sauntered up sure as a death after treachery. His footsteps were naturally slippery and red—the spoor of this God of Death.

Even his voice is scary. “The clock is ticking,” he said.

“Good planets are hard to come by,” called Xenu.

A low wet sound of hmming and umming began. Ganesh, powerless spectator to countless kitchen arguments, rubbed his stomach in agony. From mixed agreement and disagreement flows digression, into the river of aggression where everything is lost— Anarchy threatened to flood the assembly, yet again.

A fixed grin on his elephant face, Ganesh waved his big head slowly, panning the crowd. The noise grew louder, the mixing of the deities more bodious.

Just when he thought he was defeated, he genuinely smiled and pointed to someone Ganesh recognised from the nametag pinned to the delegate’s lapel. During the pre-summit publicity and arrangements, they had corresponded. Ganesh had found him to be so dry and pedantic that the savvy pink god knew this being could dry up anything.

And, Ganesh, thought, to get this unprecedented Summit properly launched, plans made and agreements entered into, something important must happen to get past the introducing prattle from those who don’t count but who could make trouble. He had to steer the Summit past them, and into the flow of the discoverers of the EoN Crisis.

He had to get everyone to listen to Saraswati (whose very name means “flow”) and not just look at her, for though she is a goddess of learning, her beauty is apt to swamp her message, especially in the minds of those who do not value reason—and seeing that the assembled have an absence of reason to thank for their existence, how, Ganesh asked himself, can anyone defend reason? As Saraswati had said when she and Thoth announced their discovery and called it the Crisis of All Time, “We must fight this with collective reason. It is a dangerous tool, but the only one we have.”

Ganesh had agreed then, but now, up on stage, looking out at everyone who is anything—the movers and shakers—he thought it his greatest challenge, not to argue for reason, but to stop the sniggers when she and Thoth soon appeared together. Will they be listened to, or rudely gestured at? Will the severity of the crisis bring minds to thought, or will gossip and crudity take the fore? For Saraswati and Thoth are an item these days. Matched brain for brain, otherwise he sometimes baboon shaped and at other times an ibis where his head is, but a man everywhere it counts

All these worries flashed through Ganesh’s mind in the half-moment before the devil’s hooves flashed like patent leather. With one leap over two rows of beings as if they were only rocks, the devil clattered to a stop, just behind the podium. As if that weren’t enough, with a theatricality that simply brooked no inattention, he shot his long-nailed hands from two impeccably tailored cuffs.

“The pace and scale of the threat may now be outstripping even the most sobering previous predictions,” he said, impressing the assembled by his lack of notes for a statement with so many words. He gripped the podium and leaned forward, as professional as a preacher.

“If we don’t act now,” he said, dropping his voice to a whisper, “if we lose sight of our goal. If we don’t find the eye of Nostradamus. And destroy it. I repeat: If we don’t find that eye of doom, and all its tinctures, it will be irretrievably—”

He pointed to a clump of red-bearded giants having fun punching each other. “That means, for all of you un-studious ones. If we don’t do something at this summit, what we live on will be lost. We’ll starve to death. We’ll be destroyed.” He pointed his hand at the podium. “It—” Scratch! “Will—” Scraatch! “Be.” Sssscccrrrraaaaaatch!

He turned his red eyes on Ogiuwu. “Too late, even for the strongest.” The little devil had not met this god before, but that hadn’t stopped this devil knowing about Ogiuwu and this god’s growing strength. For years, the devil’s dearest hope had been that Ogiuwu would live long, suffering fate worse than death. O, this devil might be little, but his heart is big and jealous.

“Even you!” he pointed. “The great Ogiuwu. You’ll cause as much quaking as the feathers from a dead hen’s egghole.”

Ganesh was astounded. He had never guessed the depths in the foppish little fiend. But the devil worked the miracle. The assembled had watched him, spellbound, and remained silent after he leapt down with a stylish flick of his tail.

Ganesh took control again. “The summit is finally tracking!” he cried, and couldn’t help dancing a few steps. His stomach jiggled so happily, you’d think it had just received a ball of ghee-and-coconut offerings.

Ganesh felt a little giddy, but calmed his tone. “I predict,” he said, looking as down to business as his pinkness could, “that history will be made. Coprahaagendas, we will be coming to agreement and save our world.”

“So you are a seer now?” quipped Hanuman, who was slapped so hard for his wit, the monkey god spent the rest of the summit practicing his arts of thievery.

~

As meets like this are meant to do, committees formed and met. But the assembly wasn’t formed of delegates other than in name. Each attendee was an individual, representing the self. Each self shared the common fear that brought this unprecedented meeting into being but each had a private interest to feed, not to mention a curiosity to slake. Few had met many if any others in the panoply, and there were many hopes that others might not live through the cataclysm to come—a fate that each hoped to have the strength to survive, but none held the certainty.

So each had come to this assembly, not necessarily believing the pushy invitation “The time for hesitation is over,” but enough alarmed by this possibility that the frightened outnumbered the morbidly curious.

There were only three committees expected to actually do any work. The plan was that they would come up with three proposals, hopefully the same, but close enough that a quick meeting of their chairs would then sort out the differences. The proposal would be presented to the Summit. There would be instant concordance, and the plan would be immediately implemented. The only problem that Ganesh, Saraswati and Thoth had fretted over was the delegation of responsibilities. There are so many jealous gods.

One of the problems that occurred instantly when the delegates sat around their tables was that Coprahaagendas has no laid-on food. The air whirred. There was a constant flitting off from the place. Angels, gods, goddesses—practically everyone breathed snatched offerings, wiping their lips of blood, sweat, butter and chicken. This annoyed other delegates trying to work, and made the three chairs of the most important committees angry. Each chair tried to hold that unconstructive emotion in, but it made them testy in their duties.

So Saraswati pretended not to see the foppish devil raise his finger while she explained the need to think laterally to solve this most dire threat to the world in history.

“I say,” he said, and jumped onto the table, swishing a clump of papers from her hand. “You’re all talk. If this is such a clear and present danger,” he said, smoothing his moustache, “why don’t we just take them out with extreme prejudice. Isn’t that what you call it? And neutralize the threat?”

The tortoise opened one eye, and shut it so eloquently that Saraswati felt grateful.

“We would have,” she said.

“You?” someone laughed.

“What’d the devil say?” boomed someone.

The devil stood up on his hind legs. “That someone should have damned well crushed ‘em!”

“Tell me where!” Thor stomped forward. “I’ll grind their bones.”

“No bread,” screamed Hanuman, leaping from shoulders to heads.

In another room, Ganesh was having the same problem. And in another, Thoth was wishing he could crawl back amongst the dead.

The truth, which they were having difficulty getting across, was that the Institute and all associated had proved as impossible for them to find as Coprahaagendas is to mortals. They couldn’t even find the banks that must get those vast riches. Every purchase made of FutureSeize is impossible to trace. The route dissolves into the air of the internet as surely as the smoke from a sacrifice grows invisible, even though the blood leaves stains.

O, if killing had been easy, they would have done it. Not the three of them, to be sure, but Ram, for instance, had been let into the knowledge early, and had been disconsolate when he had learned that he could not just do it.

Thus, this conference, for which the edifice had been built, something that should be recognised as the achievement that it is. For this building is made of contributions from every delegate, offspring created for the purpose. The idea (a gem thought of by some god of war) was that if all the living Otherworldies are to meet in one place for the first time in history, each delegate must feel protected by an army of faithful minions. So each delegate sent the minions on the moment agreed upon (another unprecedented agreement) and the building that sometimes looks like a temple in Southern India and at other times, like a writhing Parthanon, and at all times quite like the new Scottish Parliament, exists as a shining example of cooperation, on the hilltop of Coprahaagendas, a hill appointed for that purpose.

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But what, you might ask, is this great threat?

Saraswati and Thoth had been playing on that other otherworldly world, the internet, when one of them (they were too much in love to remember who) found it—the source of the EoN Crisis.

The news was in an online newspaper sponsored by the Global Institute for Future Certainty. It seems that a team from the Institute opened up a wall in the ruins of a church in Galinoxy, “a region that has in history, times been rule by Goth, German, Frank, and Cossack.” In those ruins, they found a small box once sealed in bands of iron. They opened the box and found what only one man in the team ever truly thought they would, though the others doubted.

“The team leader, who for obvious reason, must remain anonymus, is found the stoled piece of the great Knower of the Future—Nostradamus. There are many falsenesses about his body. He was not standing up. But his body was dig in the French Revolt and beary again. Our team set out to find the parts that peoples thoughted to be so value, they were take from his box.”

The article was short, as are all the news stories in the newspaper of the Global Institute for Global Certainty, but the text was large and illustrated by many small pictures full of drama and colours.

The gist of this article, and all the others in the newspaper—was that the team found a reliquary in a sealed glass bottle. Unlike other reliquaries—gruesome sentimental keepsakes all—this piece in a bottle is the very source of the greatest power in the world. This is the Eye that Can See the Future, the right eye of Nostradamus, an eye reputed to be twice the size of any normal man’s, but Nostradamus was never any normal man.

By the time Saraswati and Thoth had read the articles four times, and looked at all the pictures just as much, and picked out to read yet one more time, every article that talked about the special offer of FutureSeize™ and “how, for this short time only, you can obtain your own piece of the future, for you and your family, forever”; they were rolling on the floor locked in embrace, stinking of jasmine and jism, wet fur and fear.

After a cooling drink, they resumed their studies.

Of course, they didn’t believe that the offer was for a short time only. But as Saraswati pointed out to Thoth, who had never known housekeeping: “This Institute is not quite Ghandian, as it must fund itself to continue to do good works. But it is undoubtedly subsidising this great gift.”

“Not to the masses,” said Thoth, who’d been raised to higher consciousness by his current love.

Saraswati rolled her beautiful eyes. “I am so happy that you see this. However, remember our stays in Mumbai and New York—where we posed as a tourist and her pet?” She stroked his coat. “How many times have we pondered distribution.”

Thoth somersaulted away and clutched his knees. “Only few mortals can ever share the good.”

Saraswati sidled over to him. “I am thinking it is a natural law of physics.” She closed her eyes and chanted, “Take for yourself your future.” This was a rallying cry in many of the special offers. Other consciousness-raising reminders related to the state of corruption, secrecy, and selfishness common to government, officials, and “the people who control power”.

“So this?” Thoth pointed to the screen.

Saraswati started. Sometimes she thought Thoth too analytical.

“This special offer,” said the god who had watched the pyramids go up. “Even if the tincture is affordable at a reduced eight times $89. 95, it will be bought by how many, can we estimate?”

Saraswati licked her lips. She loves big numbers.

“And used at the suggested dose,” interrupted Thoth, who was rewarded by a little crease between Saraswati’s silken brows.

“Two, point three five nine billion for the first quarter,” said Thoth in a rush, looking at Saraswati uneasily. She smiled. “Approx,” he added.

~

When Saraswati and Thoth looked back on this little discovery session filled with fearful love, they called it the Calm Before the Full Cataclysm Realisation (dubbed by the EoN Crisis Steering Committee, the CalBeFuCatR).

They threw themselves into the work of reading all the news from the Institute. Each article in the Institute’s FORWARD SEIZED CHRONICLES not only illustrates the value of the Eye, but proves how valuable the tinctures taken from it are.

The couple’s suspicions about the side-effects to people taking this drug were only displayed to each other in that perfect state of communication that is current love. So they spent several weeks alternating reading, worrying privately and reassuring each other aloud, and rolling sweatily over Saraswati’s petal-strewn marble floor.

The clincher was the day Thoth ventured off the Institute’s site, hitting first, the headline “Nostradamus and Gurus leaving the body”—about the Guru Osho, and his relationship with Nostradamus. In an advanced state, “Oshocould be seen with his eyes fixed in the middle of his brow.” And Osho predicted he would “dissolve into the body” of his followers after death. Furthermore, those predictions of Nostradamus were noted (chapter and verse!) yet the teachings of the Vedas, the Mahabharata and Ramayana, and even the most common New Age Book of the Dead—all ignored. Instead, the guru declared: “Government will always fail as long as its root to the cunning, political mind remains uncut.”

“Listen to this,” Thoth said, breaking into Saraswati’s study of some problem. His throat convulsed, so he could only point.

Only that morning Saraswati had been telling Thoth of the time Lord Krishna changed the time of sunset to give Arjuna a no-risk opportunity to kill Jayadratha. And Thoth had fed her in turn, some delicious bit of treachery he remembered between, who was it?—not that the story mattered. They called these incidents “soup”, made as they are from what they’d labelled in a lovers’ brainstorm: “The Essence of Power”.

Now Saraswati shrugged one shoulder. She slid over to look at whatever Thoth … and instantly forgave him for breaking her train of thought. A moment later, they were both crying with laughter.

Yet a moment after, Saraswati wiped her face. “He is not too ignorant for followers. That lie!”

Thoth tried to compose himself, but couldn’t. “He says, therefore.” He straightened his back and dropped his eyes, taking up the guru’s pose of knees out, legs folded, hands upended on knees. Without the guru’s robe, Thoth looked so tempting that Saraswati’s laughter would have rung with delight and fun.

Not now. “He expects his followers to believe that he posseses some magic scythe! That with a sweeping statement, he cuts down what is, and ever has been?”

Toth sighed. “I only told you to see the dimples in your cheeks.”
He stretched himself out on the floor and licked the deep curved base of Saraswati’s back. “Don’t trouble your mind with such … mmm, nonsense. This so-called guru knows no history.”

Her buttocks twitched. “Nor any present, in any world!”

Toth slid away, not just wounded that she did not respond to him, but peeved that she sweated about a man. He sat up with his back to her, and stared at nothing. “Perhaps,” he said, bored with this silly guru and his ignorance-spreading. “Perhaps to followers, to say is to know.” He felt a bit soiled saying something so stupidly vaccuous, but his scorned tongue needed the pleasure of annoyment.

She was silent. Thoth hoped she was trying to find a way to end this and get back to making love. Always a generous lover, he planned to say yes to anything she said, and then take her divine feet into his hands.

“To his followers, to say is to know,” she repeated. “If they are buying!” She grabbed Thoth’s coat so hard that she made a bald spot on his back. “See there on the screen? He too, is selling.”

Thoth turned.

“Whoever buys this tincture,” one said, “has no need for us,” the other finished, putting in stony terms what they both had airily worried might be true.

… and their hands found each other, and their eyes saw each other, through the mirrors of their tears.

~

“Throw away your false beliefs!” cry the ads. This call to action sits next to those other calls, irresistible to the mortal:

“Lose 5 to 15 inches in one day”

“Cut Down 3 lbs of belly fat EVERY WEEK! … In fact it worked so well I lost 8 stubborn pounds of fat in 3 short weeks!”

“Regrow your own crown.”

“With this secret of successful lovers, you can have so many, you can watch them fight.”

The irresistible appeal of the tincture taken from the eye of Nostradamus is explained in many different ways, such as this advertorial in a popular online current affairs magazine centred around the lives of celebrities:

“Put only one drop of FutureSeize™ in both eyes per day, and you can not only see the future, but enjoy it. Do you see yourself dead in five years from cancer? Celebrate! Get that loan tomorrow, quit your job, and sale around the world. Or take that lover you know you want. Or if your on a budget, plan well and you could happily give your neighbors what coming to them. Make your life your own. You can finally use your money yourself. Waste nothing on false hopes and silly prayers. Who will help you if you no help youself? You only have one life. Live it NOW. But act quick, or this special offer will be …”

~

The Saraswati-Thoth team networked widely, spreading the knowledge of the threat. To make their knowledge understood by all, they had to dumb it down, first trying to explain their discovery of the Eye of Nostradamus in terms that didn’t necessarily accept the power of the eye, but stressed the lack of necessity for truth, if belief sustains its popularity.

This concept was too hard to put across. So the two next tried flattery, using the most modern concepts as if everyone were up-to-date. But meme failed, too.

No one was the least bit frightened. Saraswati and Thoth were only laughed at. Finally, they had to sink to a slogan they hated, as both live above clichés.

“A plague is coming to us” worked when they matched it with “Our end is nigh.”

Ganesh was their first believer. He instantly understood that if people could see their fate, they would not waste their time offering any bribes to gods or otherwise to save them from inevitability.

With his supreme perception, he saw a future of starved immortals wandering, not able to leave their world but doomed to die in it. Eat or be eaten? With his supreme strength, he cut off his speculative vision, but he couldn’t help patting his stomach and shuddering.

Ganesh thought of the Summit, and was the principle organiser. If the firmament awarded an honour for a supreme effort made for the Otherworldly Commons, Ganesh should receive it.

There isn’t, however. Not only that, but if an effort fails, should anyone receive honour for trying? That is a question worthy of Ganesh, though he has not had the mindspace to fit it in.

~

The Coprahaagendas Summit ended in general discord. Most delegates, it seems, just came to see the others. Some viewed each break in the proceedings as a chance for a bit of light rape and murder. There was no sense of urgency amongst the bulk of delegates, because they could not imagine a world in which the sacrifices to them stop. There was one point in the discussions, Ganesh is pained to remember, when the Summit almost reached something—a point of no return.

That was on the third day, back in the big hall, when the old man started raving again. “Smite them!” he kept saying.

He meant the whole mortal population. A clean sweep.

Saraswati bustled up to the podium. “We do not have that luxury. Focus, please!”

The old man’s son raised his hand meekly. “Perhaps He could remake them.”

Ganesh lost his temper. He made the mistake of stamping his feet, which jiggled his stomach and made his fat pink trunk slop back and forth.

Hanuman led the laughter. “Cleanliness is next to godliness,” he said, always the sneaky one. “Any god who doesn’t consider destruction isn’t serious.” And with that, he stole a pin from Kuan Yin’s coif and gambolled out the great doorway, down and out of Coprahaagendas.

~

Today, above and around us, many of the Otherworldly quake. The tables have been turned by a mere mortal, or a band of them. The problem is, the idea of targeted destruction is not something that can be contemplated, not unless the target is, as the old man wants, all of us. And he is gaining some ground amongst the short-sighted who fear but do not see.

Even the tax departments of our most feared governments can’t find the Institute, nor anyone associated with it. The coffers and storehouses of FutureSeize™ are as hid, to high and low, as the Greatest Secret in the Universe.

The question, therefore, is a moral one. If every one of us in the humaworld pitches in, it wouldn’t take much to save the Others’ world. Just resist, if you can, that offer. Lose your belly fat instead.

But perhaps action to solve this Crisis must be led by those of us with vision, so this is a call to architects. That World-Heritage-worthy building on the hill in Coprahaagendas is admittedly designed by amateurs and is a work in progress, but dooming those amateurs to death could lead to the death of their offspring that constitute that building (where these innocents live and play, in expectation of another Summit) and the death of the offspring’s offspring—first undermining and then causing the destruction and elimination of this singular Built Structure—this Grade A Listable Wonder of the Otherworld.

ASIM 52 is now available!

David Kernot edited Issue 52 and amassed a wonderful collection of 19 modern Australian and overseas speculative fiction selections from the following authors: Sean Monaghan, Dominik J Parisien, Nicky Drayden, Kathleen Jennings, Brenda Anderson, Felicity Pulman, Liz Colter, Ray Tabler, Melanie Typaldos, Linda Jenner, Rachel Kolar, GR McLeod, LK Pinaire, Margaret Karmazin, Pam L Wallace, David Conyers and John Goodrich, Peter Cooper, Natalie Nikolovski, and Ken Liu.

Poetry is from Alexandra Seidel and Jack Horne. ASIM’s own Jacob Edwards presented some of the best features seen, and artwork is from David Conyers, Kathleen Jennings and Olivia Kernot.

This issue is also available in the new E-formats too, just give us a moment to upload them… The Australian Conflux is on, and taking a moment of speculative fiction time…

Within ASIM 51’s 172 pages, you’ll find dragons, nano-bots, wayward robots, a yabby, and dinosaurs too. When you read what is the second of the new bumper ASIM issues, you’ll find a wonderful mix of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and more… be surprised. ASIM 52, is officially now available!

ASIM 52. Coming to a planet near you. (I hear we took our first shipment to Titan today, and Gliese is showing interest.) Check it out, today!

The newly-released ASIM 51 EPUB complements the existing pdf, paperback, and sick-bag editions of the Galaxy’s hardest-hitting most informative tastiest inflight magazine, and should be legible using Sony Readers, iPads and other EPUB-friendly devices. At present, the issue 51 EPUB is available only for single-issue purchase (at $AUD4.95, the same cost as our pdf edition), but we aim to have EPUB subscription options available within the next few days; and we’re also working on a MOBI format for the issue. If MOBI is your preferred format, watch this space for further developments!

You’ll find the new ASIM 51 EPUB on our ‘Latest Issue’ page, here. Try it today!

Finally, as a question of safety, please note that ebook readers must not be used on any Andromeda Spaceways interstellar flights, since electrical interference from the devices has been found to nullify our vessels’ antimatter containment fields.

Have a nice day!

This issue’s editor, Simon Petrie, has selected stories from the minds of Rachel Manija Brown, Stephen Case, Thoraiya Dyer, Ellen C. Glass, Chris Large, Chris Large again, Chris Miles, Carolyn Nicita, Sandra M. Odell, Robin Shortt, Keith Stevenson, E. Catherine Tobler, Calie Voorhis, Katherine Woodbury, and Rachel Zakuta. The issue is garnished with the poetry of of Darrell Schweitzer and Lee Clark Zumpe, and buttressed by the artwork of Kathleen Jennings.

We could wax lyrical on the issue’s contributions, but that would be a poor substitute for seeing them for yourself, so we’ll keep this brief:

Within ASIM 51’s 168 pages, you’ll find mirrors; creatures exotic, extinct, or evanescent; artefacts; buttons of doom; alien landscapes; twisted trees; disjunctures; meerkats; and inventive financial arrangements. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll place a call to your accountant. (Well, that’s assuming you buy a copy. If you don’t, of course, then you won’t. But you’d be missing something special. Honest.)

(And speaking of buying a copy, we’ve made some pricing adjustments. The cost of a printed issue has risen to $AUD12.95, in accordance with the bolstered page count. International postage costs have lifted a little too. But the pdf single-issue cost has been held at $AUD4.95, while subscription prices have been reduced (slightly, for the print edition; rather substantially, for the pdf). If you’re curious to sample the Andromeda Spaceways experience, the pdf now represents better value than ever. As do the subscriptions.)

ASIM 51. Check it out, today!

This is our bumper 50th Issue, with an especially generous serving of original fiction by Debbie Cowens, Damien Walters Grintalis, Shona Husk, Barry Kirwan, Ian McHugh, Nicole R. Murphy, Dennis J. Pale, Anthony Panegyres, Mark Lee Pearson, Simon Petrie, Natasha Simonova, Robert P. Switzer and Mark D. West, poetry by Nigel Stones and Sean Williams, a retrospective on the people behind ASIM, and interviews with Rowena Cory Daniells and Nicole Murphy.  It has to be said that Issue 50 is a milestone of an issue, and it has some real gems inside – those pieces that reflect the very nature of ASIM over the years – so why don’t you indulge yourself (we did).

For those who love our PDF issues, and perhaps feel that a PDF issue is a real pre-carbon tax initiative, go on, save a tree or a planet, and download  a PDF Issue.  Because we are celebrating, and this is this is Issue 50, with every 12 month subscription for the month, there is a choice of either a Best of Fantasy, Horror, or Science Fiction Volume 2 PDF included.

And just to mention that the cover is a reprint of ASIM Issue 1 that was resubmitted as a full sized front and back cover by the ASIM’s original illustrator Les Petersen.

This book views the world, or a small peculiar part of it, through the eyes of Captain Horatio de la Terre, of the British Royal Navy. The good Captain is a Naval Attache on a diplomatic posting to Maldona which might be all well and good if all the locals didn’t insist on talking Foreign, and if there wasn’t a confounded “thing” floating in the harbour, newly constructed for the Maldonian Navy. A steel-hulled thing that has no right to float, is way too thin to be a battle ship, and besides where are the gun turrets? And the smoke funnels for that matter? Strangest boat he’s ever laid eyes on. Surely no danger there.

So much for de la Terre’s spying on the locals to report back to the British. All too easy! But why does he always seem to cross paths with Reddon, another inhabitant of the Embassy? Still, Reddon comes in handy, turning up in a fetching diving outfit to save de la Terre when he’s kidnapped and taken aboard the skinny, useless battleship that, as it turns out, has been designed and built, not to mention manned – err, womaned, err personed by the formidable Makiniri sisters, daughters of the Maldonan President.

With its old world charm and gentle humour, it’s apparent Dave Luckett had the time of his life writing this book. His enjoyment with his characters and situations is conveyed to the reader on just about every page. Though it’s been called science fiction, I think pigeon-holing this book would be a challenge. To me it’s more alternate history, or possibly fantasy, but no matter what subject heading you want to put it under, it’s a wonderful book to read and I highly recommend it.

Published by Vivid Publishing, 2009 (http://www.vividpublishing.com.au/subversiveactivity/)

ISBN 9780980700909

… ASIM 49. Assembled by the crack team of Robbie Matthews and Edwina Harvey, issue 49 is a veritable smorgasbord (or, as it should more properly be, smörgåsbord) of deities, demons, washed-up superheroes, witches, crones, aliens, explorers, sidekicks, and frozen desserts. But moving beyond the membership of the Andromeda Spaceways co-op, to the contents of the issue itself, you’ll find work by Chris Large, Marissa Lingen, Rachel Mohr, Kimberly Van Ginkel, K. H. R. Smith, Darian Smith (no relation), Sam Bowring, Tom Howard, Joseph L. Kellogg, Karl Bunker and Leona Wisoker, as well as poetry by Peter Cooper, Andrew Findlay, James Frederick William Rowe and Darrell Schweitzer. There’s a reprint of issue 48′s Marty Young story, with which we were somewhat too imaginative in the typesetting first time around, there are book reviews and interviews and artworks. And, of course, ink, rather a lot of ink, for what is a magazine without ink?

ASIM 49. You can buy your copy here, now. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll spill your coffee onto the lap of the passenger in the adjacent set. Because after all, isn’t that what Andromeda Spaceways is all about?

Well, that and the deep-space economy-class life-support failures, but we don’t talk about those …

… ASIM 48, our latest offering, is an appropriately dark offering, expertly assembled by the inimitable Juliet Bathory, with words supplied by C. S. Cole, Peter Cooper, Mark Farrugia, Ross Murray, David C. Pinnt, Melanie Rees, Jayaprakash Satyamurthy, Jamie Shanks, Amanda J. Spedding, A. Dale Triplett, Mark Welker and Marty Young, and featuring also interviews with a cross-section of Australian dark fiction and fantasy notables. There will be blood. There will be death. There will be nods to SF TV shows, and to English dons who kick-start high-fantasy-epic crazes. You have been warned …

… so what are you waiting for? Purchase a copy and see for yourself!

Back in 2007, we looked back over the first three years’ worth of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine (i.e., issues 1 through 18), and we liked what we saw. And we thought to ourselves, Hmm, wouldn’t it be great if we cherry-picked some of the very best stuff from those early issues, divided the stories into the four main subgenre categories of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Time-Travelling WereElf Steampunk-tinged Murder Romance, and put out four collections of ASIM stories built around those themes? And ourselves thought back to we, Hmm, that sounds like a right dandy idea, let’s do it. And lo and behold, so it came to pass. Except that a dog ate the final category. So we went with just the first three options. The first set of ASIM ‘Best Of’ anthologies, released as zero-carbon pdf files (edited one and all by the indomitable Tehani Wessely), provided a popular and accessible overview over our early years, while they remained on sale.

Now, jump forward three years. (We’ll wait.) It occurred to us, as these things do, that a lot of very good fiction had appeared since those first eighteen issues. Didn’t that fiction deserve a second moment in the sun, as well? And thus was spawned (or cloned, or regenerated) the second tranche of ASIM ‘Best Of’ pdf anthologies, three of which are currently on sale on this very site. (The fourth anthology, which this time around focusses on Sparkly Zombie Western Slipstream Alternate History Space Opera, was inadvertently beamed towards Alpha Centauri by the Arecibo radiotelescope in late pre-production, and for copyright reasons we are unable to bring you this particular volume until a reply has been received.) ASIM ‘Best Of, volume 2′ is assembled from the best stories contained within issues 19 through 36, and contains some very good stuff indeed. Even if we do say so ourselves.

You can find out a bit more about each anthology on the ‘purchase’ page. But to whet your appetite:

The ‘Fantasy‘ collection, edited by Nyssa Pascoe, includes outstanding contributions from names such as Lee Battersby, Aliette de Bodard, Marissa Lingen, Michael Merriam, and Tansy Rayner Roberts. The ‘Science Fiction‘ issue, edited by Ian Nichols, contains brilliant stories from such authors as Simon Brown, Jay Lake, Will McIntosh, Susan Wardle, and Sean Williams. And for the ‘Horror‘ volume, edited by Juliet Bathory and Mark Farrugia, need I do more than mention the names Marie Alafaci, Shane Jiraiya Cummings, Jennifer Fallon, Rick Kennett, and Kaaron Warren?

(It’s not just about great fiction, either. The purchase price for each anthology includes a one dollar (AUD) donation to Variety Australia, the Children’s Charity, which means that every anthology sold will be doing more than just keeping our readers entertained. Please visit the Variety website if you’d like to learn more about the charity’s goals and aspirations.)

You can purchase any one of the three anthologies for just $10 (including the $1 donation to Variety), or if you’d like to sample all three, you can do so for just $16 (including a $3 Variety donation). Anthologies can be purchased as pdf downloads, or, while stocks last, you can select to acquire them as attractively-packaged pdf files on CD. Postage on the latter option, within Australia, is included in the purchase price; for postage overseas, it’s necessary for us to charge an additional $3. But even including the postal surcharge, we’re inclined to think the 450-odd pages of the combined anthologies represent a very good deal…

We hope you do too.

So what’s the deal with this Lunatic Mage thing, we hear you ask? (We have exceptionally acute hearing.) Well. We at ASIM happen to be the proud custodians of the Galaxy’s only known copies of Doug’s book, which, er, fell off the back of a hyperspace freight transport. Honest. And we know a Good Thing when we see it. Lunatic Mage is a rollicking tale of royalty, loyalty, true love, mayhem, and the dangers of associating with an ultra-powerful mage whose faculties have gone. Those of you who are frequent travellers with Andromeda Spaceways will probably have encountered some of Doug Van Belle’s stories in earlier issues, and largely on the basis of his ASIM publications Doug himself was the recipient of the Sir Julius Vogel award for Best New Talent back in 2007. His writing has only improved since then.

You can’t buy Lunatic Mage in the shops. (Only known copies in the Galaxy, like we said.) But you can get your hands on it, at no extra cost, by taking out or renewing a print subscription to ASIM. It’s that simple. Just make your way over to the ‘Buy Now‘ link, select ‘Subscription’ or ‘Overseas Subscription’ as appropriate, and take it from there. But you may need to hurry. The offer only holds while stocks last, or until the Sirius Fraud Squad cotton on to just how we acquired the books.

I turn to Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. It’s packed with Patrick S. Tomlinson, Stephen Watts, Felicity Pulman, and Charlotte Nash wholesome goodness. Not to mention that ASIM provides almost five time the daily nutritional requirements of John Phillips and Ferrett Steinmetz.

Plus it’s good for the sproglets too. The carefully selected ingredients of Gary Cuba, Tam McDonald, Pacze Moj and Debi Carroll won’t have them jumping of the space cruiser walls and tormenting the family pet. With packaging provided by Greg Hughes it’s a complete meal for everyone. And at such an affordable price!

Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. Very filling.

This issue is packed with so much fiction, features and reviews, there’s almost too much to mention, but we will anyway. We’ve got premium fiction by John Dixon & Adam Browne, Christopher Green, Jason Fischer, Amanda J. Spedding, Patty Jansen, Simon Petrie, Felicity Dowker, Anna Tambour, Pete Kempshall, and Paul Haines.

Plus simply priceless new poetry by K.S. Conlon, and Grant Stone.  Andrew J. McKiernan fleshes out the issue with cover and interior art worth the cost of admission alone.

Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. It’s right on the money.

*Note*:  To our subscribers, we will be sending it out shortly in print form, with Issue 47 …

Issue 45 of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine is our best issue ever! We know we said that about issue 44, and issue 43, and issue 42… okay, you get the idea… but we just can’t help but top ourselves… err, that didn’t come out right…

The fact is you’d be shooting yourself in the foot if you don’t get a hold of this issue. It’s jam packed with stars the brightest of which is none other than the former Goodie himself, Mr Graeme Garden who supplies us with a gem of a poem ‘The Man Who Invented Time Travel’.

We also have an exclusive non-fiction piece ‘Who’s That Knocking?’ by the late science fiction legend Eric Frank Russell whose fiction has appeared in Astounding Stories and Weird Tales among others.

What company we keep! Plus check out these heavy hitters that are gracing this issue’s pages –

Deborah Kalin (author of novels Shadow Queen and Shadow Bound);

K J Parker (yep, her of Fencer, Scavenger, and Engineer trilogies, and latest novel The Folding Knife);

Stephen Marley (Chia Black Dragon trilogy);

Simon Messingham (author of six Doctor Who novels); and

Tom Holt (author of May Contain Traces of Magic and The Better Mousetrap).

To round it off we have another non-fiction piece by ASIM’s very own Jacob Edwards.

With a startlingly tasty cover illustration, and interior art, all by the supremely talented Inna Basman, you could hardly ask for more.

Well, you could but you’d have to wait till next issue… which will be our best issue ever!

Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine! It’s goodie-goodie yum yum.

Don’t get us wrong. There’s certainly a leavening within the pages of ASIM 44, the wit and levity for which ASIM has become a byword (unless the Powers-that-Be decide that ‘byword’ status has not yet been attained, in which case we may need to edit this to reflect the absence of ‘byword’ credentials in this instance, and to point out what we actually think of the Powers-that-Be). But there’s a gathering darkness as well. Which is pretty much as you’d expect it, with rising-star-of-Australian-horror Felicity Dowker in the pilot’s chair for this flight.

Thus: zombies. Mysterious strangers. Succubi. Malevolent corporations. And zombies. (Did I mention ‘zombies’ already?) Felicity’s selection includes work by Team Zombie cohorts Chuck McKenzie and Jason Fischer, atmospheric and mesmerising tales by Janeen Samuel and Joanne Anderton, and a piece by Anna Tambour that – well, let’s just say, if you’re allergic to irreverence, keep your epi-pen close at hand while you’re reading Anna’s story (and speaking of which, you can read Anna’s story entirely free-of-charge, on this very website, in the ‘Passenger Entertainment’ section …)

Five striking stories, by five immensely talented local writers. But the overseas contributions are just as memorable: Ralph Benedetto’s comedy-of-felinoid-manners, Sarah Ann Watts’ tale of enforced maternal disaffection, Mike McMullen’s what’s-a-vampire-to-do sob story, Matthew Fryer’s searing story of vice and vigilantism, and the reality-checking poetry of Jason DeGray and Michael D. Turner. Plus all the genre commentary you could hope for.

Purchase it now. While you still have the choice. Because our zombie sales teams will be visiting your area shortly…

Reviewed by Simon Petrie

C. June Wolf is a spec-fic writer who lives in Vancouver.  Finding Creatures is her first collection of stories, several of which have appeared previously in various small-press magazines and anthologies.

“Claude and the Henry Moores” features a failed-artist security guard who works at the Art Gallery of Ontario, and becomes gradually captivated by the gallery’s collection of Moore’s abstract sculptures.  Claude is convinced there’s more to the objects than meets the eye.  This is a closely-informed story with an intriguing premise.  It works well, although the ‘aurora’ scene carried less power than I felt it should have.  But all up, it’s an effective and memorable story that does a good job of introducing Wolf’s style to the reader.

“Thunderbirds,” the collection’s longest story, has nothing to do with the marionette rescue specialists.  Instead, it’s the story of Norman, a native North American who struggles to balance the ways of his ancestors with the necessities of modern life.  It’s also the story of Chitta, a doomed alien explorer who crashes on Earth, in the woods behind Norman’s home.  Told in alternating slices centering on the two protagonists, ‘Thunderbirds’ attempts a separate resolution for the two of them.  Does it succeed?  I’m not completely sure, but Wolf is nonetheless adept at crafting stories that stick with you after the telling, and this is no exception.

“The Ziz” sounded, to me, to be a made-up word, which only goes to betray my level of ignorance.  Ziz is in fact the aerial sibling of Behemoth and Leviathan, and Wolf’s story here is an irreverent and didactic retake on the biblical fate of these colossi.  This one didn’t particularly resonate with me, but it’s nonetheless a short, fun tale with a serious subtext.

“The Coin” is a token given several times to Likner, a young Haitian streetkid, by a mysterious middle-class woman who tells him each time not to lose it.  There’s a sharp edge to this one, which manages to present itself as both intense and subtle.  A good example of contemporary urban fantasy.

In “Finding Creatures”, Bernadette is a pious young girl who longs for a miracle to prove God’s existence.  What she gets is a horse… but can anyone else see the horse?  This is a charming story that plays to Wolf’s strengths: she seems most assured in characterising introspection and solitude, and these are attributes very much at play here.

“Miss Lonelygenes’ Secret” starts promisingly, but to my mind throws a few too many ingredients into the mix.  Rosaleen is a phenotypic profiler, a career for which she has her pioneering, Nobel-winning mother to thank, although the sentiment would not be reciprocated.  For Rosaleen uses her skills to the end of pairing up lonely souls with safe, compatible life-mates.  So who is she holding out for?  The ideas explored here are very interesting, though I ended up feeling the overall story didn’t do them justice.

“These Old Bones” has previously appeared in the anthology _SF Waxes Philosophical_ which, as it happens, I’ve also reviewed.  Back then, I described it as ‘a subtle, atmospheric tale of the interaction between two loners who share an interest in palaeontology.  It’s an intriguingly elusive story that’s reminiscent in style to the work of Kate Wilhelm.  For me, it echoed long after I’d finished reading,’ and my view of it hasn’t changed.

In “Aggie’s Game”, the young narrator’s sister is overly given to theatricality, perhaps not without reason.  This one is charming, principally for the exactitude with which the sister’s foibles are drawn.

In “The MagniCharisma Machine”, two young lovers attempt to make the world a better place by collaborating on a machine which engenders empathy.  Despite the serious premise, this one feels more light-hearted than many of the other stories accompanying it.

“Equals” is one of the collection’s more overtly SF-leaning tales.  It jarred somewhat with my own tastes in SF – and to my mind, it doesn’t quite pull off what it’s attempting – but the central ideas are intriguing.

“After Hours At The Black Hole” is a whimsical fable on the dangers of shovelling awkward things and unwanted memories under the carpet – or, as in this case, into the mouth of a black hole.

I didn’t fully fathom the significance of the title hand in “Dana’s Hand”, but it’s nevertheless a well-crafted and unsentimental story of the bleaker attributes of senility.  If there’s a speculative element in this one, I missed it.

In “Kouzen Zaka”, fifty-year-old Vancouver resident Isabel is haunted by memories of her time in Haiti, with Denys, a young journalist committed to revealing those resposible for the entrenched abuses of power.  Such idealism is, of course, dangerous.  For my tastes, the story’s pivotal scene is inappropriately muted, but the depiction of Haiti and its people remains effective.

“Mr. Cowmeadow’s Sky” is a closely-observed story of resilient old Mr Cowmeadow, whose existence creeps along in a world gone to ruin.

“Saint Francis and the Green Man” explores a mythical meeting between the two.  It’s a story about belief, which manages to avoid pushing any particular barrows (and is the stronger for that.)

These are the fifteen stories in _Finding Creatures_ (unless my counting is inaccurate).  There’s a variety of tones and themes, but if I had to tease out some common threads from what I found in its pages, these threads would be a tendency to focus on loners (and therefore on solitude and introspection), a persistent concern with the past in all its forms, and a subtle yet unflinching quietness of observation.  It’s not a book to attempt to read in one sitting, nor – to my mind – did every story succeed on all levels.  But there are enough memorable moments here, including “Claude and the Henry Moores”, “These Old Bones”, “Aggie’s Game” and “Dana’s Hand”, that I found the overall collection to be enjoyable and worthwhile.

Published by: Wattle and Daub Books (www.wattleanddaubbooks.ca)

ISBN 978-0-9810658-0-9

(Syndicated from Australian Specfic in Focus, http://www.asif.dreamhosters.com/doku.php)