Changes at Aurealis

There will be a number of changes happening to Aurealis over the next few months.  Longtime AurealisXpress Editor, Carissa Thorp, will be resigning after the April issue to concentrate on her own writing. We decided to take the opportunity to look closely at the way we’ve been doing things and not simply assume we should continue doing exactly what we’ve been doing in the past.

As a result, we decided that the April issue of AurealisXpress will be the last. However, we will be replacing and enhancing the function AurealisXpress had in a number of ways, and making sure that we give even more free stuff to people interested in Australian fantasy and science fiction. Here’s an outline of what we’re doing:

  • We have appointed Elsie Michael in the new position of Reviews Manager.  All reviews will now appear first in Aurealis issues and will be archived on the Aurealis website later.
  • We have appointed Julian Thumm in the new position of News Editor.  He will be seeking out and collecting the sorts of news items that Carissa has in the past.
  • Our Social Media Coordinator, Dan Allan, will be placing the news items, depending on what they are, on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or Google+, as well as a new Aurealis blog.  You will no longer have to wait for the monthly AurealisXpress to get the news.
  • We have appointed Angelika Arvela as our new Submissions Manager, replacing Sari Webb.  After a short break, we are now open to submissions again.  We thank you for your patience.

We have even more changes in the pipeline.  There are some exciting times up ahead!

Aurealis Duos launched

Chimaera Publications has launched the first two epublications in its new Aurealis Duos series: Terrorism by Jack Dann and Transalienation by Dirk Strasser.  They can be downloaded for free for a limited time by clicking the title links in this news item.

The editors asked some of Australia's top fantasy and science fiction authors to select two of their stories tied together by a single theme and to write an introduction on how they had explored that theme — to give some insight into their writing and how they see the big issues. They also paired the writers with Australia's top SF artists, so that each publication also showcases the illustrator. Then they released the publications in pairs for $2.22 each. The result is the Aurealis Duos series.

In Terrorism, Jack Dann, an expat New Yorker and multi-award winning SF author who eats Vegemite with an American accent says, “I didn't feel patriotic the morning that the towers fell… I just felt that someone had burned down my house… the only way I could get my arms around the subject was to write about… us. No treatise on terrorism and suicide bombing here, just two stories that are set on the other side of the looking glass.”

In Transalienation, Dirk Strasser asks the question, if science can help a transsexual become the gender they know themselves to be, what would happen in the future if humans could become the alien they truly believe they are?