Second part, first part here.
The trains came and went,
and in less than a month
the suspicious complaining began—
The wet tourists bring nothing
and they ruin our roadsThe trains are a threat,
the sea can’t be trustedThey’re all non-believers
with no passports or papers
It was a king tide morning on a
beach south of Rio when the very
first train came out of the sea.
Isabel saw it from a swing in the
playground, and she told the
teacher, but no-one believed her
till the train reached the freeway
and the eight am rush.
The spring-summer 2016 issue of The Stray Branch with my petite poem Soft Machines is now in print. That would be autumn-winter in Van Diemen’s land.
Thoughts about dreams—fictional, speculative, factual, speculative fictional.
fish dreams come at sunrise
blowing in on westerlies
they’re caught by fisher folk
with hooks on their kites
strung together and laid out
on the beaches of yesterday
to dry and harden in the sun
When it rains on the water moon, I sip my aqua vitae and watch the droplets trickle down the acrylic. Sometimes I wonder what the wood ducks are up to, or whether I should feed the cat, or whether anything exists at all beyond the plastic.
If not, the tins of salmon in the pantry must be for me.
Marginally more seriously, Charles Payseur of Quick Sip Reviews fame writes shortish reviews of speculative fiction short stories. They’re very handy for busy humans and water fowl, like the wood ducks and I, and he’s just done Fantasy Scroll Magazine Issue 11 including a review of my story The Water Moon.
Issue 11 of Fantasy Scroll Magazine with my totally non-apocalyptic story The Water Moon is now freely available online. Just like water crackers, the moon isn’t made of water, plus it isn’t made of cheese either. But water crackers and cheese go very well with Pinot Grigio, which I may have been drinking when I wrote this piece and which might explain why it isn’t apocalyptic.
The Water Moon appeared in Fantasy Scroll Magazine. FSM started in 2014 with the aim of publishing thought-provoking fantasy and sci fi, and since then they’ve gone from strength to strength. In 2015 they published a paperback anthology of their 2014 stories featuring a number of big name authors, and they produce a podcast of one story each week as well as the bimonthly magazine.
‘The Water Moon’ is in part based on my experiences in South America, and I’d like to think the piece says a little about belief systems and the violent acts that can arise from them. Continue reading
The video shows timelapse photography of the exoplanet gj74 captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope during a period of intense volcanic activity.¹ The planet (aka Aquasol) orbits a star beyond Orion’s Belt, and the underwater eruptions changed it from an ocean world to a mud ball. Continue reading
The ‘Love Hurts’ Anthology from Meerkat Press with my modestly apocalyptic sci fi/fantasy piece Jacinta’s Lovers is now in print.
‘Lighter than Claire’ has appeared in the summer (north of the equator) edition of the Colored Lens and is available at Amazon. It’s also freely available online. The story has various sources—a plate of pasta, ‘Mambo Italiano’ by Flabby and Carla Boni (playing while I was writing), Philip K. Dick’s “A Scanner Darkly,” and the evolution of the species, at least the way it works in my imagination.¹ Continue reading
‘Jacinta’s Lovers’ has appeared in the Love Hurts anthology from Meerkat Press,¹ who are “committed to finding and publishing exceptional, irresistible, unforgettable fiction.” So no holding back there. The anthology is available at Amazon.
‘Jacinta’s Lovers’ is science fiction with a sprinkling of fantasy fairy dust, and the broad inspiration for the story was a collection of works by the Australian poet Peter Porter. I’d planned to quote a line from the magical poem ‘An Australian Garden’ which appeared in The Rest on the Flight—
Fantasy and science fiction are the dominant categories under the broad speculative fiction banner, but what’s the difference between them? I started wondering about that when I re-read Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which was a source for Jacinta’s Lovers.
The Rime is one of my favourite poems, but a couple of verses have always puzzled me—
FIRST VOICE
‘But why drives on that ship so fast,
Without or wave or wind ?’SECOND VOICE
‘The air is cut away before,
And closes from behind.’
‘The Medusa’ appeared in the Canadian In Places Between 2013 collection of short stories from the finalists in the Robyn Herrington Memorial Speculative Fiction Contest. The story took first place in the competition. The contest is run by the Imaginative Fiction Writers Association, who very generously help new writers by providing brief critiques of the submitted stories.
One source for ‘The Medusa’ was the curious myth of the headless mule. Continue reading