Speculative Flash Fiction
G'day, greetings, and bonjour. Welcome. 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, get you out there, and land you in places — perhaps with creatures you never expected to imagine — yet won't take hours to read.
It's my pleasure to present you with this month's stories.
Read on...
Nuke.
Woman Apart
By Keech Ballard
A woman walks into a bar, sits down, adjusts her little black dress, and orders a mistletoe margarita.
A man at the end of the bar raises his neat tumbler, filled to the brim with translucent single malt. He confesses that he spent much of his youth in Japanese internment camps and runs through a list of recent troop movements in various parts of the adjoining territories.
Turn the Tables
By Ashley Noel
Max hammered his thumbs on the steering wheel in time to the music. If there was a better song in the world than Highway to Hell, he was yet to hear it. He turned up the radio volume almost blasting AC/DC through the roof, then with adrenaline pumping through his veins, he pressed his foot down harder on the accelerator, exceeding the speed limit by forty kilometres in seconds flat. The road ahead was one long stretch, why take it easy?
The Polishing of a Knob
By Kerrie Noor
“A knob by any other name still requires a hand to work it.”
“February is a month never spoken about on Planet Hy Man,” I said to Bunnie.
Bunnie, a master of multitasking, was spring cleaning and listening, while Mex was sitting on the couch, feet up, trying to get to grips with the Radio Times.
The First Artifact to Reach the End of the Universe
By Haneko Takayama - Translated by Toshiya Kamei
The master craftsman dipped his brush into the ink and let its tip touch the surface of the paper.
“Mass manufacturing can also create incredible, one-of-a-kind paint brushes,” he mumbled. “No, rather, mass producing companies are the ones creating most masterpieces,” he lowered his voice and added in haste.
Read more: The First Artifact to Reach the End of the Universe
The Demise of Major Strom
By Timothy Dwyer
Major Strom brought his craft into low orbit and rolled into entry attitude. He loved the feel of the controller in his hands. He squeezed it firmly, took a deep breath, and fired the reverse thrusters to begin his descent.
Although his primary objective was reconnaissance, he was asked “to initially assess the native inhabitants and draw preliminary conclusions about their developmental capacity.” In other words, if he saw anything notable he should call it to the attention of High Command. In actual fact, there was little they had not already seen from the mother-ship orbiting high above. He was basically a decoy to draw fire from any hidden weaponry the inhabitants might have. He knew it, and High Command knew it, and this gave him an unspoken carte blanche to do pretty much whatever he wanted.
The Broken City
By Michael Casey
Lilly watched the buildings to the west as they began their morning submergence. The sun was steadily approaching, creeping up on the realm’s inhabitants. She turned to gauge how long she had before it arrived. When she looked back the western horizon was just as flat as the eastern; the rooftops of the city were all now flush with the streets.
As she made her way to the bunker an unusual sound caught her attention. It cut softly through the stillness of the desert and gradually grew louder. A camper van was approaching from the east, speeding along the dusty road with the sun in hot pursuit. There was still enough twilight left in the morning so Lilly decided to wait and see who was coming her way.
State of the Art
By Carl Walmsley
Keeping someone alive when they’re hell-bent on destroying their body isn’t easy. But that’s where I come in.
Back in ’82, I met Jim — just after his first coronary; a result of four decades shovelling crap down his throat and acting as though the sofa was sown to his ass. His original heart fluttered weakly and then gave out. Enter yours truly.
Space Train
By Laurie Bell
Through the endless expanse of space a train is traveling. That’s what the humans call it—the Space Train. It’s not a train per se, there are no tracks to guide its way, nevertheless it does have a trainlike look. Each carriage is connected to the previous one via a rubber tube that carries the essentials: air, water, electricity. Beneath each carriage lies the interconnected propulsion system, pulsing with energy in five-second bursts. The train has no stops. Carriages join and depart as it passes populated systems, the tail growing and shrinking over time. The engine room of the train—the head, so to speak—is automated. No driver, no conductor.
On Demand
By Kevin J. Phyland
How I wangled an invite to a party thrown by Howard Kippax I'll never know, but there it was — gilt-edged and as solidly real as the frisson of excitement that ran through me in anticipation.
Kippax was the poster boy for self-made tycoons, larger than life in both physical presence and exploits. Hardly a boy any more, the latest feat of the forty-five year old had been funding an obscure biotech start-up that had come up with some startling gene copying and modification techniques which were set to revolutionise treatment of genetic disease and hinted at seriously marketable longevity treatments.
Night Music
By Connor Orico
How many nights since the Wolves of Woe leapt upon us in lupine lechery and hate? From shadowed crags they found us: my watch faltered and by cold moonlight the vulnerability of our camp was laid bare. I need not recount the terror for it recounts itself in nightmare; my heart cannot bear reliving how my error nearly cost us our lives as we fled to the relative safety of Umbra’s Root, perpetual shadow beneath the mountain. Gúð-wine, my theroid companion and friend, was greatly wounded and here we are in subterranean depths as ancient as the Dionysian drama whose music ruptures my breast to subtend us in resonance.
Morning Garden
By Umiyuri Katsuyama - Translated by Toshiya Kamei
The old woman in her indigo cotton jacket dragged her bent body into the garden shrouded in early morning mist. She spotted a gray piece of paper among the tiger lilies. With her boney, age-stained fingers, she picked up the dew-wet paper. It was a miniature parachute with a piece of wood tied to the end of its string. School Starts, the piece of wood read. On Monday in the Square, continued on the back. Her village had no school when she was a young girl. How she wished she could have gone to school!
Emergency
By Bruce McNair
Frank and Jimmy responded to an emergency at space dock 2. A medical problem, but no further detail.
***
In the spacecraft, the two pilots flopped over in their seats. Both had gaping holes in their heads. Blood and gore spattered most surfaces.
Curiosity Coil
By Myna Chang
I hate rye bread. Those weird little seeds get stuck in my teeth, and then I spend all afternoon trying to suck them out. Too bad I didn’t notice they gave me the wrong sandwich. I’ve already bitten into it, excising a precise half-moon from the top right corner. Guess I’m stuck with it.
The infirmary door slides open and I walk in, chewing unhappily. Someone is sitting at my desk. She looks just like me: same frizzy hair, same rumpled lab coat, same unfortunate sandwich. She’s staring wide-eyed at a bloody cut on her fingertip. Her gaze snaps toward the med bay. Another version of me appears, only this one is older, wrinkled. She points a surgical laser at the “me” at the desk.
Candy Town
By Amy Logan
Sam had to hide his Halloween stash. The tiny Tootsie Rolls, chewy taffy, rainbow tinted chocolate candies, all had to go into hiding. His sister Anne was relentless, after eating her candy she would go on a mission to find his. In a week hers would all be gone. So his candy was in danger.
The hiding place would have to be clever, unusual, private yet accessible. He finally decided on a plastic pencil box that he had left over from school. In a bottom desk drawer, it would be safe. And it was, sort of.
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 270
333 Years
By Susan Cornford
Evan
By Ian Breen
Golf for Beginners
By Joanna Galbraith
HSC (Hancer School Certification)
By Sue Oliver
Incident at the Yarralumla Shops
By Wes Parish
Karen's Secret Story
By Gillian Polack
Luck - A Matter of Perspective
By Brian Catto
Maelstrom
By Kevin J. Phyland
Name Please
By Elwood Scott
Snuggles
By Ashley Noel
The Birthday Party
By Chris Karageorge
The Box
By James Patrik
Noisy Winds
By Binta Ohtaki - translated by Toshiya Kamei
The Hive
By Botond Teklesz
The Senate Inquiry
By Len Baglow
Worksite Stories
by S. F. Lowe
The Contributors
Of Indian origin, Sultana Raza’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Columbia Journal, and The New Verse News, London Grip, Classical Poetry Society, spillwords, Poetry24, Dissident Voice, and The Peacock Journal. Her fiction has received an Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train Review (USA), and has been published in Coldnoon Journal, Szirine, apertura, Entropy, and ensemble (in French). She has read her fiction/poems in India, Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, England, Ireland, the US, and at CoNZealand,
Her creative non-fiction has appeared in countercurrents.org, Litro, impspired, pendemic.ie, Gnarled Oak, Kashmir Times, and A Beautiful Space. Her 100+ articles (on art, theatre, film, and humanitarian issues) have appeared in English and French. An independent scholar, Sultana Raza has presented many papers related to Romanticism (Keats) and Fantasy (Tolkien & GRR Martin) in international conferences.
Timothy Dwyer is an American science-fiction writer living in New Zealand.
He has written a novel (The Emergence) and a number of short stories.
He holds a degree in Electrical Engineering and was a consulting engineer for 25 years, specializing in Instrumentation and Controls.
Before his engineering career he was a professional musician — and he remembers most of it.
He loves cats.
"Carl grew up on a diet of Stephen King and "The Twilight Zone" - all re-told and (slightly) edited by his mum.
Consequently, he has an aversion to clowns, remote hotels and anyone who says they are 'your biggest fan'.
In and around teaching English, he writes stories, plays games and tries to do enough exercise to avoid ending up like the guy in this tale!"
Haneko Takayama is an award-winning Japanese writer. In 2009, her short story “Udon, Kitsune tsuki no” was a runner-up for the Sogen SF Short Story Award.
Her story collection of the same name was a finalist for the Nihon SF Taisho Award in 2014. In 2020, her novel Shuri no uma won the Akutagawa Prize.
Ashley Noel is a writer from Sydney, Australia. She is currently employed in the Early Childhood sector.
As a keen reader, with a quirky imagination she turned her hand to writing ten years ago and is at present searching for an agent to represent her first novel.
Ashley connects with a wide audience on her social media accounts, Medium and Instagram.
She is excited about being published on AntipodeanSF and looks forward to submitting future work.
Kerrie Noor was born in Melbourne Australia in 1960 but has spent most of her adult life in Scotland.
She has, in the past been a regular on Dunoon Community Radio, taught and performed Belly dancing, ‘done’ a little stand up, performed as a story teller and appeared at the Edinburgh Festival.
She has had one radio script performed on BBC Scotland and has been short listed for the Ashram short story award.
She writes both Sci fi comedy and romantic comedy and is about to publish her fourth book in her Planet Hy Man series The Rise Of Manifesto a Sci Fi comedy with a twist.
Connor Orrico is a student and field recordist interested in global health, mental health, and how we make meaning from the stories of person and place we share with each other, themes which are explored in his words in The Collidescope, Burning House Press, hedgerow, and X-Peri, as well as his sounds at Bivouac Recording.
Amy Logan's first work was published on October 29, 1970. It has been a bit of a dry spell since, so she is very excited to have the opportunity to contribute to AntipodeanSF.
She is a lifelong fan of speculative fiction and the short story and has returned to writing the weird tales that she loves.
She lives in Eastern Washington state, not far from the Canadian border with her human family as well as 2 cats, 1 dog, and a llama.
Keech has been writing fiction and poetry for 40 years, and is currently working on a speculative novel of the Afterlife, focusing on Victorian literature, though it is technically set in the near future.
He recently published a short piece of creative nonfiction in Ellipsis Zine.
This is his first SF story to be published. Thanks for listening!
Bruce is an older Australian, living in Adelaide, who enjoys reading and writing, especially short stories and flash fiction.
He has a master’s degree in science, specialising in computer science.
He has over forty years of experience in fields such as software engineering and systems engineering, particularly the development of complex systems.
Michael Casey is a writer from Melbourne, Australia.
He has had short stories featured in publications such as Colp magazine, Fudoki Magazine, Scarlet Leaf Review, Black Scat Review, and Ash Tales, and he has had articles published in Cracked.com, Poplurker, and Nerdbot.
His novels and short stories areavailable through the following link: <https://amazon.com/author/caseymichael>.
Myna Chang writes flash and short stories in a variety of genres.
Her speculative fiction has been featured in Best Indie Speculative Fiction 2020, Daily Science Fiction, Antipodean SF, Mad Scientist Journal, and Twist in Time, among others.
She is the winner of the Lascaux Prize in Creative Nonfiction for 2020.
Read more at <MynaChang.com> or find her on Twitter at <@MynaChang>.
Umiyuri Katsuyama is a multiple-award-winning writer of fantasy and horror, often based on Asian folklore motifs.
A native of Iwate in the far north of Japan, she later moved to Tokyo and studied at Seisen University.
In 2011, she won the Japan Fantasy Novel Award with her novel Sazanami no kuni.
Her most recent novel, Chuushi, ayashii nabe to tabi wo suru, was published in 2018.
Her short fiction has appeared in numerous horror anthologies in Japan.
Toshiya Kamei holds an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Arkansas.
His translations have appeared in venues such as Clarkesworld, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and World Literature Today.
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 and The Tiger's Eye (YA/Fantasy) White Fire (Sci-Fi) and The Good, the Bad and the Undecided (a unique collection of short stories set during the events of White Fire/Sci-Fi).
You can read more of her work on her blog <www.solothefirst.wordpress.com> Look for her on Facebook <www.facebook.com/WriterLaurieBell/> or Twitter: <@LaurienotLori>
Rambles, writing and amusing musings
Smile! laugh out loud! enjoy the following
<www.solothefirst.wordpress.com>
Old enough to just remember the first manned Moon landing, Kevin was so impressed he made science his life.
Retired now from teaching he amuses himself by reading, writing, following his love of weather and correcting people on the internet.
He’s been writing since his teens and hopes he will one day get it right.
He can be found on twitter @KevinPhyland where he goes by the handle of CaptainZero and his work is around the place if you search using google or use the antisf.com.au archive.
AntipodeanSF February 2021
ISSUE 269
Speculative Fiction
Downside-Up
ISSN 1442-0686
Online Since Feb 1998
Download AntiSF E-Book
AntiSF's Narration Team
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>
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 and The Tiger's Eye (YA/Fantasy) White Fire (Sci-Fi) and The Good, the Bad and the Undecided (a unique collection of short stories set during the events of White Fire/Sci-Fi).
You can read more of her work on her blog <www.solothefirst.wordpress.com> Look for her on Facebook <www.facebook.com/WriterLaurieBell/> or Twitter: <@LaurienotLori>
Rambles, writing and amusing musings
Smile! laugh out loud! enjoy the following
<www.solothefirst.wordpress.com>
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.
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)
Although a writer of the baby boom persuasion, Ed has not boomed for quite a while.
He lives with his wife plus a menagerie of non-domesticated — native Australian animals intropical North Queensland.
His writing within the ‘real’ science fiction context of COVID-19 is intermingled by long night sky vigils — searching for pesky aliens intent on maintaining their social distance to the nth degree.
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.
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.
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>.
Sarah Pratt is an avid fiction writer and a Marketing Consultant.
She is currently working on her first novel but loves diving into short stories to bring a little lightness, intrigue or humour to the day.
Her work has appeared in Sponge Magazine and The Commuting Book.
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>.
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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