Aurealis #64 – whose side are you on?

Aurealis #64, which has just been published, created a furious controversy among the Aurealis editors.  The first story,  Penny Stirling's 'Love Over Glass, Skin Under Glass', will no doubt split our readership's opinion.  The second one, Marta Salek's 'Intelligent Design', will also lead to some arguments. Read this issue and make your own mind up.

Aurealis #63 out now

This month's Aurealis #63 brings on the aliens with Gerry Huntman's 'The Pillar of the Small God', an alien contact story featuring communication problems with an intriguing race, and a translating device that doesn't work perfectly. And Liam Pieper’s 'Prophet' provides the sort of world-within-a-world-within-a-world immersion that you may never disentangle yourself from. Download it now.

 

Aurealis Awards going to Canberra

After 18 years the Aurealis Awards, Australia's premier awards for speculative fiction, finally make it to the nation’s capital.  The owner of the Aurealis Awards, Chimaera Publications – the publishers of the Aurealis magazine and book imprint – have reached agreement for Conflux Inc to administer the Awards for the next two years.

The Awards’ founder, Dirk Strasser says, “SpecFaction NSW took the Aurealis Awards to new levels of professionalism during its three years in Sydney, and the energy, enthusiasm and experience in the Conflux team indicates the awards will be raised to even greater heights.  With Canberra now joining past hosts Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide, we can truly claim the Aurealis Awards as fully national.”

Conflux Inc President Nicole Murphy said Canberra and the Aurealis Awards would be a great match. "Conflux has always had the support and promotion of Australian writing as an important part of our charter, and we're delighted to be hosting Australia's premier speculative fiction awards," she said. "Canberra has a long history of involvement with science fiction and we're going to do everything we can to make the coming ceremonies match up to that history."

Currently the awards are calling for expressions of interest from potential judges. Information can be found at the Aurealis Awards website www.aurealisawards.com. Judging is open to any Australian with a love for speculative fiction and a willingness to read and judge the best works published this year.

For further information see: 

www.aurealisawards.com

president.conflux@gmail.com

www.conflux.org.au

Once-only Special Offer

With the last ever AurealisXpress e-bulletin hitting In-boxes in April, we're offering all current and past AurealisXpress subscribers a once-only special offer.  If you take out a 2013 Aurealis subscription before 30 April, we’ll give you all ten 2012 Aurealis issues for FREE.  That way you can continue to get the best reviews of Australian and overseas SF books as well as great original Australian short stories, articles and artwork.  Why haven't you hit the link yet?

Aurealis Awards announcement and call

SpecFaction NSW, who have been hosting the Aurealis Awards for the last 3 years, have decided they won't be continuing after this year’s Awards ceremony on Saturday 18 May 2013 at The Independent Theatre in North Sydney. (Book tickets here.) We are looking for either a group to take on the organisation of the Aurealis Awards from May, or one person to take on the role of Aurealis Awards Night Coordinator for 2014 . The group or individual can be based anywhere in Australia. Please email editors@aurealis.com.au if you are interested or would like to know more detail. 

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?

We're back!

Aurealis is back in full swing again after our December/January break.  Aurealis #57 has just been published, and subscribers will be receiving it within the next two days.  We have some surprises in store this year, so hold on for the ride.