Speculative Flash Fiction
G'day flash loving folks, you're about to launch into an adventure at AntipodeanSF, the online magazine that's devoted to the regular monthly publication of fabulous and original science-fiction, fantasy, or horror mini-stories of about 500–1000 words each, with occasional feature stories of 2000 words and beyond.
AntipodeanSF will entertain you, and get you out there, perhaps even land you in places you never expected to see — yet won't take hours to read.
Please get to it and read this month's stories.
Nuke.
Turing Test
By Roger Ley
Mr Riley liked to start his day in the library. It was a short walk from his house and conveniently situated at the top of the main street in the Suffolk market town that he and his wife had retired to. When they’d first arrived, he’d joined the local writing group which met at the library and he’d spent many happy, creative hours in its welcoming embrace. He told his wife that it was as much group therapy as creative writing, but sadly, it was all gone now. People had moved away, lost interest, died. He was the only one left of the old crowd. He and the chief librarian, Mrs Peterson, who was nearing retirement. Mrs Peterson had a soft spot for Mr Riley. She had known his wife, Estella, before she died, and liked to exchange a few words with the widower, not every day, but most days. He was a fixture, in his corner, reading the newspaper.
The Waker
By Phil Wallach
There was peace in the town. Only the sighing autobuses broke the silence as they passed between the recreation centres. Tall, white concrete and glass, they stood over streets where grass reclaimed the pavements.
He had his palms against the glass, his nose squished against it, and knew it must be hot outside. He could tell because the glass was warm. He turned and leant back on the glass, looking at the moving people. His parents were here somewhere, this was his family's day at Glenford. Then he saw children leaving the education terminals at the far end.
The Stinging End
By Tara Campbell
At what point should we have been concerned?
To be honest, we were all pretty grateful when the wasps and hornets disappeared. Flowers were still blooming, crops were still producing, and those farms that weren’t flooding or suffering drought still had a chance at survival.
Recall
By Ishmael A Soledad
“A thousand bucks.”
Dave knew his mark. Ratface didn’t flinch.
“Cash?”
“Always.”
Qantas Flight 2134
By David Scholes
Canberra Airport
Australia 2045
“QF 2134 left Perth for Canberra ten years ago and never arrived.” Bathr hesitated. “It is held, ageless, until the time vortex that holds it collapses.”
My heart leapt at this revelation. My husband and two children might still be alive.
Procreation Privilege
By Steve Bellavia
His left lip curled upward as if it was trying to readjust his crooked nose.
The man was sneering. He was actually sneering.
Onement of the Teleman
By Conor Ross
I've made it this far — you tell yourself as you are telling yourself the story of your life — out on the highway, on the make, with two toasters and twelve knife sets left to sell. Wandering in dustbowls and canyons with rattlesnakes before your feet and the banditos at your spur'd heels.
Fallen Angel
By Alistair Lloyd
It still haunts me, the future.
***
It began with a ‘Fallen Angel’. Someone had been found dead in orbit around the Earth.
Bums Off Seats
By B A Keon-Cohen
One day in December after a hard day in the office (doing not much at all), I boarded the 5.54. Being peak-hour, the train was crowded, of course. Reducing train services both maximises the operator’s profits and generates a certain herd-like numbness amongst commuters that facilitates seamless government and minimises accountability. Anyway, that’s my view. I pushed through to the end of the carriage, passing a gaggle of shop-assistants, bleary-eyed and fazed by the hard-end of the Christmas shopping rush. At the back wall of the cabin, two guys in shorts and t-shirts occupied three seats, two on the wall facing down the line, one against the side windows. The guy sprawling across the two back seats gestured.
'Brillo'
By Zebuline Carter
Dedication: 'To the kindly Bird Ladies, in every 'verse'.
“They're all bubble-heads, and too much reality makes them pop,” thought the middle-aged man as he stared up at the chemtrails lacing the crisp autumn morning sky. Around him, the street was stirring, older neighbours fetching their newspapers (“a useless endeavour, that was”), others walking their dogs, and already bumping into each other and everything as they stared intently at the infernal devices in their hands, fingers twitching on the miniature keyboards as they reacted excitedly to some banal snippet of gossip just posted on the bread-and-circus forums. All the while their lungs were breathing in whatever concoction was raining down from the trails overhead. But none noticed, not a one wondered why these straight lines formed neat parallel train tracks and criss-crosses in the sky.
A Tale of Tyl Feánn - In which a child is conceived
by steve duffy
On a small dairy farm a little way from the edge of town Máriel sets about readying the butter and cheese for market, taking careful account tallying the stock. After two solid hours milking, she is in no mood to deal favourably with young Gålen Rudge and his playful flirtations; besides Uncle Wyatt is already at market readying the stall and never liked to be kept waiting. Rudge should know better.
Read more: A Tale of Tyl Feánn - In which a child is conceived
AntiSF & The ASFF
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Please visit the ASFF website and consider joining for up-to-date info about Australian SF cons, awards, competitions, and to receive the Foundation's newsletter, Instrumentality, and more.
AntiSF's Production Crew
Ion Newcombe is the editor and publisher of AntipodeanSF, Australia’s longest running online speculative fiction magazine, regularly issued since January 1998, and conceived back around November 2007. He has been a zealous reader and occasional writer of SF since his childhood in the 1960s, and even sold a few stories here and there back in the '90s.
“Nuke”, who it turns out loves editing more than writing, lives in the New South Wales North Coast holiday destination of Nambucca Heads, where he is self-employed in IT training, computer support, desktop publishing, editing, writing, and website implementation. He is also the resident tech-head, skeptic, and board member of community radio station 2NVR, where he produces a number of shows including The AntipodeanSF Radio Show.
Mark Webb's midlife crisis came in the form of attempting to write speculative fiction at a very slow pace. His wife maintains this is a good outcome considering the more expensive and cliched alternatives. Evidence of Mark's attempts to procrastinate in his writing, including general musings and reviews of books he has been reading, can be found at www.markwebb.name.
One of Mark’s very best forms of writing procrastination is to produce the eBook series for AntipodeanSF, which he has been doing since issue 175.
Main Menu
In The Next Issue...
Coming In Issue 260
A Tale of Tyl Feánn: In which occurs a moment of revelation
by steve duffy
Banjo Music
By Steven Fritz
Devil's in the Detail
By Col Hellmuth
Last Resort
By Andisha Sabri Carey
Restorative Justice
By Geraldine Borella
Speakeasy of the Heart
By Wes Parish
The Wager
By Lynne Lumsden Green
The Burning
By William Kerr
The Only Cool Equation
By Hassaku Namino (Translated by Toshiya Kamei)
The Sacred Order of the Guardians of the Last Door
By George Nikolopoulos
Will Work for Dopamine
By Katlina Sommerberg
The Contributors
Steve Bellavia was born and raised in Adelaide, but these days he can be seen trudging around Melbourne.
He has two kids, one wife, and zero pets.
Another one of his stories can be found at: <https://365tomorrows.com/2019/09/29/deicide/>
Bryan is a Melbourne-based writer, activist and retired-barrister.
He has published numerous law-related articles, including in The Age newspaper; a memoir Mabo in the Courts (2013); and short fiction in Woorilla (No 17, 2010) and the UK on-line magazine Bandit Fiction (No 3, 2018).
He is married to June, as lawyer. They have three children and four grand-children.
Tara Campbell (www.taracampbell.com) is a writer, teacher, Kimbilio Fellow, and fiction editor at Barrelhouse.
Prior publication credits include SmokeLong Quarterly, Masters Review, Jellyfish Review, Booth, Strange Horizons, and Escape Pod/Artemis Rising.
She's the author of a novel, "TreeVolution", and two collections, "Circe's Bicycle" and"Midnight at the Organporium".
Phil is actually a software engineer, so spends his days attempting to write code that is concise, elegant and correct.
A handful of poems have been published in journals such as Overland and Scarp, but that was a long time ago.
Alistair Lloyd is a Melbourne based writer who was raised on a steady diet of Douglas Adams, Iain M. Banks, David Brin, Neal Stephenson and Richard Feynman.
He feeds a healthy and somewhat nerdy interest in space travel, theoretical physics, design and organisational psychology.
Alistair once won a competition for his pitch to “Sell ice to the Eskimos”, holds a Master of Business Administration and has a seemingly inexhaustible knack of describing things through analogies.
You may find him on Twitter as <@mr_al> and online at <alistairlloyd.com>.
Conor Ross is a student and avid traveller.
He is either studying literature in Melbourne or else somewhere else on the planet teaching English as a second language.
A great fan of being useless he finds literature to be the most agreeable way of ignoring life.
Roger Ley enjoys writing in a variety of speculative genres.
This story is from his anthology, 'Dead People on Facebook'. His other books include, ‘Chronoscape,’ a science fiction novel about time and alternate realities and, ‘The Muslim Prince. What if Diana hadn’t died?’ which is an alternative reality techno thriller.
Find him at: <https://rogerley.co.uk> and <https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/14211596.Roger_Ley>.
I've read and watched sci-fi all my life I think it's time to give back instead of just taking. My stories have appeared in Aphelion, AntipodeanSF, Far Cry Magazine, Planet Web Zine, Schlock! Webzine, Short-story.me and Unrealpoloitik!. I have one short story collection - Hawking Radiation - published and am currently working on my first novel, due for release in 2020. You can connect with me on Twitter (@Ishmael_Soledad) or my blog at: <https://ishmael-a-soledad.com/>
Zeb writes:
Last week, on a whim I submitted some of my own musings to ‘Nuke’, and when I checked back today — my time in my ‘verse, which is plus six years comparative to you — I saw that he had published some of them! I wasn’t even sure the contrived email and attachment would get through, let alone end up published on your internet of things. (BTW — We have nothing quite like your ‘net, but we’ve gone far further into the solar system than you have. Figure that!) Now that I know a connection is possible, I thought I’d tell you a little more about myself and where I’m from. So, from the beginning…
Hi. My name is Zebuline Carter — that’s Zeb for my friends or Zeb-you-leen if you want to get formal — and I’m a forty-two year old former astronaut now working as an administrator at Farside, on Luna. Farside is a research base, where innerscopes are just starting to peel back layers of our sheath of the local multiverse. Because our work is so sensitive to em influences, Farside is situated within a one hundred klom diameter exclusion zone.
In my late teens I earned a double major in aerospace and business but passed over grad school for civilian astronaut training. As a kid I collected coupons from cereal boxes until I had enough for my first telescope, and built scale models of all the commercial shuttles and orbiters. Growing up, I’d always felt slightly out of place, like I was meant to to be somewhere else and part of me already was — until, that is, I had my first trip into low orbit aboard a high-riding intercont-cruiser, or ICC. That was a high-school graduation present from my Uncle Jim, and during the fifteen minutes of freefall I found that other part of myself, grabbed it tight, and never let go since.
Did I also mention I’m 180 cents tall with bobbed chestnut hair? Or that because of heart damage from a bad landing, I’m also marooned in low gravity? But heh, there are now six bases around Luna, supporting a permanent population of around twelve thousand Lunans, and a transient population of several thousand tourists and stopovers returning form the outer system, so it never gets boring and I don’t get lonely. And living in low G means I won’t age or sag as fast, either.
Until next time —
Dave has written over 250 speculative fiction short stories. Some of these are included in his nine collections of short stories (all on Amazon). He has also published two science fiction novellas and been published on a range of speculative fiction sites. Including: Antipodean SF, Beam Me Up Pod Cast, Farther Stars Than These, 365 Tomorrows, Bewildering Stories, the WiFiles and the former Golden Visions magazine. His latest work “Contingency Nine and Other Science Fiction Stories” was published in October 2019 and he is currently working on another collection of science fiction short stories as yet unnamed.
husband, father, brother, son
poet, writer, artist, friend (et al.)
the list of pigeon holes
into which I fit, is endless
AntipodeanSF April 2020
ISSUE 259
Speculative Fiction
Downside-Up
ISSN 1442-0686
Online Since Feb 1998
Download AntiSF E-Book
AntiSF's Narration Team
Carolyn's work spans devising, performance, theatre-in-education and a collaborative visual art practice.
She tours children's works to schools nationally with School Performance Tours, is a member of the Bathurst physical theatre ensemble Lingua Franca and one half of darkroom — a visual arts practice with videographer Sean O'Keeffe.
(Photo by Jeremy Belinfante)
Garry Dean lives on the Mid Coast of New South Wales Australia, and has been a fan of SF for most of his natural life. Being vision impaired, he makes good use of voice recognition and text to speech in order to write. Many of his stories have appeared in AntipodeanSF over the years, and his love of all things audio led him to join the narration team in 2017.
You can read examples of Garry's fiction on his website <https://garrydean.wordpress.com>
Timothy Gwyn is a professional pilot in Canada, where he flies to remote communities. During a lull in his flying career, he was a radio announcer for three years, and he is also an author.
In addition to short stories at AntipodeanSF and NewMyths.com, his SF novel is available internationally in print and ebook formats. "Avians" draws on his love of alternative aviation to tell the tale of a girl who runs away from home to join a cadre of glider pilots on a world without metal or fossil fuels.
On Twitter, he is @timothygwyn, and his blogs are at <timothygwyn.com>.
Laurie Bell lives in Melbourne, Australia. She was that girl you found with her nose always buried in a book. She has been writing ever since she was a little girl and first picked up a pen. From books to short stories, radio plays to snippets of ideas and reading them aloud to anyone who will listen.
She is the author of The Butterfly Stone (YA/ Fantasy — available now) and White Fire (Sci Fi — available now)
You can read more of her work on her blog Look for her on Facebook <www.facebook.com/WriterLaurieBell/> or Twitter: <@LaurienotLori>
Pixie is a voice actor, cabaret performer & slam poet From the Blue Mountains in NSW.
She enjoys writing short fiction, plays for radio and stage as well as her own brand of weird poetry.
She hosts the 'Off-Beet Poetry Slam' held bi-monthly in Katoomba, and is a theatre reviewer for 2SER FM in Sydney.
Margaret lives the good life on a small piece of rural New South Wales Australia, with an amazing man, a couple of pets, and several rambunctious wombats.
She feels so lucky to be a part of the AntiSF team.
David Whitaker is originally from the UK though has travelled around a bit and now resides in India. He has a degree in Journalism, however decided that as he’s always preferred making things up it should ultimately become a resource rather than a profession.
His stories, covering everything from sci-fi to philosophy, have been published across the globe and links to each can be found at <wordsbydavid.com>
Mark is an astrophysicist and space scientist who worked on the Cassini/Huygens mission to Saturn. Following this he worked in computer consultancy, engineering, and high energy research (with a stint at the JET Fusion Torus).
All this science hasn't damped his love of fantasy and science fiction. It has, however, ruined his enjoyment of rainbows, colourful flames on romantic log fires, and rings around the moon. He has previously been published in Stupefying Stories Showcase, Everyday Fiction, Escape Pod, Perihelion and also on AntipodeanSF where he is part of the narration team.
SF News
SF News
AntipodeanSF contributor Douglas J. Ogurek has been appointed to edit UNSPLATTERPUNK! 4 anthology. Call for story and art submissions. Please visit: <Theakersquarterly> for more information.
Upcoming Cons
Most up-coming cons have been postponed until next year because of the current COVID-19 situation, but please visit the ASFF for up-to-date information.
<asff.org.au>.
The AntipodeanSF Radio Show
AntiSF Radio Show
The AntipodeanSF Radio Show delivers audio from the pages of this magazine.
The weekly program features the stories from recently published issues, usually narrated by the authors themselves.
Listen to the latest episode now:
The AntipodeanSF Radio Show is also broadcast on community radio, 2NVR, 105.9FM every Saturday evening at 8:30pm.
You can find every broadcast episode online here: http://antisf.libsyn.com
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