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.
A Very Special Treatment
By Daniel Verón
Kurt Buchanan walked at a clip through the town's winter streets with his hands tucked into his coat pockets. The few other citizens out braving the cold looked at him like was a madman, because every few seconds Kurt turned back, as if to make sure that nobody was following him, and then resumed his march — a strange sight in this small town now abandoned by so many who’d left to find work in the bigger cities.
Kurt stopped in front of an old two-storey house, his face darkening as the sun was obscured by thick clouds. An icy wind rattled the dwelling’s windows and flapped a worn sheet hung over the otherwise open entrance. A name could be distinguished on the moving sheet, “Dr. Mark Richmond Psychiatrist."
Against Stupidity
By George Nikolopoulos
"We will put women back in their proper place — in our new shining kitchen-modules and pleasure-domes. The abomination of homosexuality will be eradicated. We'll send immigrants packing back to the netherworlds they came from. We'll build a flickering wall around the planet to keep the alien invaders out."
Thousands of supporter holograms around House Terra cheered and raved as the president-elect of the Earth gave his inauguration speech.
Coming of Night
By Sarah Jane Justice
When we realised that we couldn’t stop people from dying, we focused on how we could remember them.
For some time, countless lives were dedicated to the idea of prolonging the fading existence of humanity. The brightest minds huddled together in laboratories, giving up their own years for the possibility of handing them over to others. With failed result after failed result, the pounding beat of inevitability grew stronger until we could no longer pretend that we didn’t hear it. Whether or not we could bring ourselves to accept it, our ending was marching towards us.
Eye and Larynx
By Nick Lee
Shortly after entering the banker’s eye, the letter opener exited through the back of his head. It embedded itself into the wall behind him. The golden handle vibrated from impact, dripping blood. The body slumped face-first onto the desk. A crunching sound indicated the nose broke.
Beautiful wood, that desktop.
Getting to No. 1
By Shaun A. Saunders
OK, I’ll admit it: as I sat in the back row on the first day of lectures, I was scared. Who wouldn’t be? This was the Fibonacci School of Business, the world’s top executive education provider, and there I was, a mere marketing manager from FabCola, surrounded by a sea of hardnosed vice-presidents, their postures secure, faces smug. They knew it all, their faces said.
At first I did wonder what they were doing here if they did know it all. How silly of me. It quickly became obvious that the puffed shirts in bland suits really wanted to know if someone else knew it all. There were two kinds of vice-presidents, too. The first came from the school of hard knocks, where they did everything themselves, and still had time to engage in extreme sports on the weekends. These guys were tough as nails. They’d walked barefoot twenty miles to school as kids, ate coal dust sandwiches and made their first million selling yesterday’s newspapers to kindly old folk walking past their house.
Ghostriders in the Sky!
By Wes Parish
Yippee-yaiyeh! Yippee-yai-Oh! Ghost riders in the sky!
For some strange reason Morgan Spottiswood kept thinking of those words during the daylong journey it took to escape the bushfires that had just burnt him, and his parents and siblings, out of house and home.
Fires that had leapt from treetop to treetop, flames that had reached for the sky, flames that had kept the waterbombers far away from them until the bushfire had reached them ... but Dad had pushed everybody to leave just hours before the flames had leapt onto their property like a ... a bat out of hell?
Job Search
By David Scholes
I didn’t recognise any of the positions on offer in the job search booth.
Terra-forming Engineer, Change Field Manipulator, Short Tele-Shunt Engineer, Long Distance Teleportation Engineer, Unified Mind Sustainer, Alternate Reality Coordinator, Extra-Dimensional Tour Guide.
Though I could take a guess at what they might involve.
Otherworldly Matters
By Ben F. Blitzer
Conrad thinks he can ignore the mosquito buzzing about his face until he can finish reading the chapter he’s on, but his ill-temper and impatience launches himself into battle. Standing upon their bed, chest heaving, he lashes wildly at the insect with his novel. Mary watches from the doorway, bemused. The movie she’s just finished watching has tired her greatly. She suddenly wishes the protagonist in the romantic comedy she had watched would sweep her off her feet, to take her abroad to someplace else, somewhere safe and loving. Seeing Conrad, however, horsing around and then almost falling off the bed, lifts her spirits. A smile touches her lips.
“If the novel makes you so worked up,” she says, “don’t read it.”
Planet MXCIV
By Matthew Legge
“We’ve been walking for miles!” complained Doctor Zubowski, as he dragged his steps across the rugged surface of Planet MXCIV. Unfortunately, this newly discovered planet’s gravitational field was stronger than Earth’s. His plight wasn’t helped by the cumbersome spacesuit and all of the equipment he and Stichnekov had to carry.
Stichnekov chuckled, stopped walking, and gazed back to where they had begun their trek. They hadn’t come far at all. “We’ve walked a total of 98.4 metres from our space shuttle, to be exact,” he said, checking his navigation beacon for an accurate reading.
Second Man
Ishmael A Soledad
“Might as well.”
Ukko turned.
“If you like. What is it?”
Akka brushed one gloved hand over the engraved panel sending away a gray mist.
Skinwalker Ranch
By Botond Teklesz
A strange bluish shadow rises from a bush and casts its red eyes on me. I feel transfixed to the ground. I cannot breathe. You see, sometimes even air is scarce.
A voice rings in my brain. I am drowning in midair.
“A cigarette maybe, pal?” the voice keeps on mockingly.
Soulmates
By Roger Ley
Martin had never been comfortable being a boy. As a child he hadn’t enjoyed rough and tumble, camping, climbing trees or making campfires. His mother described him as ‘gentle,’ his father rustled his newspaper and tried to ignore him. He just didn’t fit the gender binary. The other boys derided him and occasionally beat him up. He was an easy target, being of medium height and light build. As he grew into his teens, he suffered the taunts of the football oafs, the noisy muscle-heads. He found it easier to spend most of his time alone in his bedroom. Thank God for the internet. He was still interested in girls but it was their makeup, their hairstyles, their nail polish, their clothes, their perfumes, it was all so self-indulgent, so narcissistic. It fascinated him.
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 264
Anna's Mother
by Vicky Chapman
Antitheosis
By Marcus Rockstrom
Human Cruelty
By Steve Bellavia
Jesus the Man
By Eugene Samolin
Morpheus Rising
By Kevin J. Phyland
Myopia
By Malena Salazar Maciá - Translated by Toshiya Kamei
Nothing Unusual Happened on the Way to the Office
Colin L. Howe
Rubicon
By N.M. Cunningham
Shedding
By Deborah Sheldon
Single Journey - Multiple Travellers
By Ed Errington
The Circle of Gods
By Botond Teklesz
The Last Message
By Zac Gilfridus
The Contributors
Daniel Verón started writing at the age of ten, and an early story of his was selected for a UNESCO anthology, but he also spent a lot of time researching "space issues" as he was growing up.
He subsequently formed the Enigma Group of Investigation of UFOs and other Mysteries, which for many years produced radio programs on different topics and today owns collection of sci fi sagas, fantasy and terror stories plus essays on scientific topics and the world of the future.
Daniel also gives talks on the sci fi genre and exhibits books at various book fairs. He was recently credited as the creator of "cosmological sci fi" based on discoveries in the field of quantum physics coupled with philosophical speculations to give an explanation of the origin and end of the universe.
I am a fan of horror movies, architecture, poetry and art. My hobbies include collage, drawing and sometimes building miniature model houses.
I enjoy writing short stories in my spare time with ‘Planet MXCIV’ being my first of this genre.
It has been a fun process writing in this style and I look forward to seeing what I can create in the future.
Sarah Jane Justice is an Adelaide-based fiction writer, poet, musician and spoken word artist.
Among other achievements, she has performed in the National Finals of the Australian Poetry Slam, released two albums of her original music and seen her poetry and prose published in Australia and internationally.
Nick Lee's favourite authors include Frank Herbert and Roald Dahl. He enjoys reading many genres. He tends to write short sentences. He is a fan of Oxford commas and single spaces after periods. He always, however, defers to editors' preferences. Those preferences are likely on display in this brief biography. Nick's creative writing style is influenced, for better or worse, by his experiences writing opinion pieces, business briefs, and academese.
Ben F. Blitzer penned his latest story, “Otherworldly Matters,” shortly after dreaming it in its entirety.
His most recent contributions for AntipodeanSF were “Dear Friends” and “The Darkland Crier.” He lives in Western Australia.
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, ‘The Muslim Prince: What if Diana hadn’t died?’ an alternative reality, techno thriller and ‘The Steampunk Adventures of Harry Lampeter.’ Harry is an irreverent James Bond type of character, an iconoclast and anarchic urban adventurer. Basically, he’s a lot of fun.
Find Roger at: <https://rogerley.co.uk>.
Roger’s Amazon author page: <https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B01KOVZFHM>.
His YouTube playlist: <https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHDmc8dxD57cPaMnsYfuJhQIirRohnaWY>.
I've read and watched sci-fi all my life and I thought it was time to give back instead of just taking.
My stories have appeared in Aphelion, Antipodean SF, Far Cry Magazine, Planet Web Zine, Schlock! Webzine, Short-story.me and Unrealpoloitik!
I have published two short story collections — Hawking Radiation, and Sex and The Single Cosmonaut — and I am currently working on my first novel due for release later this year.
You can connect with me on Twitter <@Ishmael_Soledad> or my blog at <https://ishmael-a-soledad.com/>
George Nikolopoulos is a speculative fiction writer from Athens, Greece, and a member of Codex Writers' Group. His short stories have been published in Galaxy's Edge, Daily Science Fiction, Factor Four, Grievous Angel, Helios Quarterly Magazine, Unsung Stories, Best Vegan SFF, The Year's Best Military & Adventure SF, Bards & Sages Quarterly, Havok, SF Comet, Mad Scientist Journal, Truancy, Digital Fiction QuickFic, The Centropic Oracle, StarShipSofa, 600 Second Saga, Antipodean SF, Manawaker Studio's FFP, Fifty Flashes, 9Tales from Elsewhere, Event Horizon 2017, and many other magazines and anthologies.
Sometimes I can see what others don't.
Sometimes I listen to the silence and Iknow there is way too much of it down here in the countryside.
All the trees grass wooden gates and sleepwalkers are letting me down.
Very rarely I go out to thefront yard in the night and look at the stars. And I can feel in my guts it is allgoing to sink down the drain.
I look at the photo of my nephew whom I have not seen for 5 years.
I look into the mirror and see my white hair at 45.
Then I stare at the cross on the wall and I want to puke.
Somebody has already decided for me in a nice kind of way.
Too many pieces of the puzzle missing.
Wesley Parish is an SF fan from early childhood. Born in PNG, he enjoys reading about humans in strange cultures and circumstances; his favourite SF authors include Ursula Le Guin, Fritz Lieber, Phillip K. Dick, J.G. Ballard and Frank Herbert. He lives in Christchurch, NZ, is an unemployed Java and C programmer, and has recently decided to become a mad ukuleleist, flautist and trombonist, and would love to revert to being the mad fiddler and pedal steel guitarist.. "Where oh where has my little pedal steel got to ... ?"
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.
Shaun Saunders lives at the beachside suburb of Merewether, in Newcastle, NSW. He particularly enjoys Asimov's Foundation universe, and stories from the 'golden age' of SF. He is a regular contributor to AntipodeanSF, and winner of 2003 & 2004 AntiSF awards, and the inaugural 2005 SFSSC. His novel Mallcity 14 has been favourably compared with both 1984 and Brave New World.
AntipodeanSF August 2020
ISSUE 263
Speculative Fiction
Downside-Up
ISSN 1442-0686
Online Since Feb 1998
Download AntiSF E-Book
AntiSF's Narration Team
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.
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>
Geraldine Borella writes adult short stories and stories for children and has been published in anthologies for both. In 2018, one of her children’s short stories placed second in The Buzz Words Short Story Prize and she won an ASA Emerging Writer’s Mentorship. She currently works part-time as a hospital pharmacist and as an online creative writing tutor.
She’s fascinated by stories that expand upon today’s technology, addressing the moral and ethical issues that might arise. Equally, she enjoys the creative freedom that writing for children allows. Right now, she’s writing a young adult novel, reworking a middle grade novel and writing adult short stories when inspiration strikes. She lives with her husband, Tim, in Yungaburra, Far North Queensland and dreams of one day taking a European gap year.
Alistair Lloyd is a Melbourne based writer and narrator who has been consuming good quality science fiction and fantasy most of his life.
You may find him on Twitter as <@mr_al> and online at <alistairlloyd.com>.
Tim Borella has never lost his childhood passion for SF and writing in general and has been lucky enough to have worked most of his life as a pilot — in other words, he’s never properly grown up.
He lives in country Far North Queensland, has won awards for songwriting, and has had various other writing achievements, the most recent being an honourable mention in the 2018 international Literary Taxidermy Short Story Competition.
He also has bachelor degrees in science and teaching, and has completed a couple of as-yet unpublished SF novels. He’d dearly love to spend more time writing, but will have to continue juggling for another couple of years until the kids have fully left the nest.
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.
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>.
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>
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.
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)
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
Most Read Stories
SF Quote
I have been a sore-headed occupant of a file drawer labelled ''Science Fiction'' and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.
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