Aeon Eight Read online




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  Scorpius Digital Publishing

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  Copyright ©2006 by Scorpius Digital Publishing

  First published in 2006, 2006

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  NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

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  www.aeonmagazine.com

  Editors

  Marti McKenna

  Bridget McKenna

  Associate Editor

  L. Blunt Jackson

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  Æon Eight is copyright © 2006, Scorpius Digital Publishing, all rights reserved. Individual columns, articles, and stories are copyright © the authors. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, by any means electronic or mechanical, without prior permission of the publisher, with the exception of brief passages quoted in reviews.

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  Cover art by Marti McKenna

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  Stories

  Echo Beach ... Daniel Marcus

  Playing Dice ... Ron Savage

  All of Me ... Liz Holliday

  Palaces of Force ... Martin McGrath

  Foxwoman ... Stephanie Burgis

  Oxy ... Will McIntosh

  Thinking ... Lawrence M. Schoen

  Poetry

  This Girl on a Train ... Marcie Lynn Tentchoff

  And in the Living Rock, Still She Sings ... Amanda Downum

  Departments

  Signals ... Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Æternum ... The Æon Editors

  Parallax ... Dr. Rob Furey

  Our Authors

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  Eight: Author's Note

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  Author's Note: I wrote this in early 2006 shortly after Robert Sheckley died, then set the essay aside. I was too upset to think clearly, and I worried that the essay made no sense. In the months that followed, we've lost Octavia Butler, David Feintuch, John Morressy, and so many others. Octavia is the only one who made the New York Times because she “transcended” genre (what does that mean, anyway?) with her novel Kindred, and because she was the first science fiction writer (maybe even the first genre writer) to win the McArthur Genius Grant. Not because of her spectacular body of work, although I must say that the Times obit did at least mention what she wrote (because there wasn't enough of it! Dammit, she went too young). The others, Feintuch, Morressy, folks who've had an impact on the sf field, and by extension, literature, didn't even deserve a passing mention.

  So I'm going to let this column stand. See it as a cry from the heart—a view of the ironies of hidden in the snobby side of modern America.

  —KKR

  Have you ever noticed that the New York Times obituary column only recognizes genre writers who have had their written work turned into mass media—primarily movies or television? Unless said writer has repeatedly made the bestseller list, or has ventured outside the genre with a critically acclaimed book (and then all the genre work will be ignored), the Times gives no acknowledgement of that writer's death.

  And what does that say about the so-called newspaper of record? Remember now, this is the newspaper that publishes The New York Times Book Review every Sunday, the one that still strives for “literary” values. The Times is so influential that its secretive bestseller list (secretive because it only uses “select” bookstores to compile it, and you can't for love or money get the list of those stores [although you can bet they're probably not the chain bookstores]) often becomes a part of a publishing contract—in other words, a writer gets a bonus on his advance if his book happens to hit the Times list, not the USA Today list, or the Wall Street Journal list, or something generic like “national bestseller lists.” Just the Times. The New York Times. The paper that was so snobby, that back when I was a lowly reporter, it didn't deign to publish sports news. Nor did it cover television, unless there was something “worthy.” (In the 1980s, it bowed to public pressure—quickly on sports, establishing something too small to be a section, but large enough to include important news, and more slowly on television, adding coverage so that the reader didn't realize the Times television section had grown.)

  Why is this important? Newspapers are, after all, passé. The Times's publisher went on Charlie Rose late last year and tried to defend the paper version of his paper, but even he acknowledged the handwriting on the computer screen—young people get their news digitally, if they get it at all.

  So why am I talking about the Times? Because it still leads the way culturally. If the Times publishes an obit of a famous science fiction writer, CNN, FOX, and all their kith and kin pick up that obit and place it in crawl or give it a brief mention in their longer news programs. Odes to these writers appear in other publications because the paper of record mentioned them. And, ghoulishly, the publishing community will see this as a sign of interest in that now-late writer and will often reissue that writer's work.

  And what irritates me is that the newspaper of record, the holder of our cultural consciousness, that icon of literary snobbery doesn't value genre writers for their words, their characters or their stories. This paper values writers for the very things it mocks: selling a lot of copies of the book (repeatedly hitting the bestseller lists) or for the translation someone else has made of those writers’ works for the large or small screen.

  Perhaps this is becoming more and more important to me because I am losing so many friends to the vagaries of time. I write this at the beginning of 2006, reflecting on a year that took several writer friends, including Robert Sheckley (Times obit [thank you Freejack]), and longtime acquaintances, like J.N. Williamson whom I never met, but corresponded with for years.

  Both Williamson and Sheckley edited. Both of them wrote volumes of work. Both of them had decades-long careers. In their respective fields (science fiction for Sheckley, horror for Williamson), they had great influence both in terms of style and in terms of discovery. Writers emulated them, and they in turn discovered new writers.

  Both men had a large, though differing, impact on literature. Only Sheck made the Times and then, it seemed, not just on the strength of his work, but also because of Freejack, a rather abysmal movie starring Mick Jagger. And that got me thinking of the Times obits I'd read in the past year.

  Mystery writer Ed McBain—amazing, towering figure, spectacular writer, and (from what I hear; I was never lucky enough to meet him) a really nice man. His Times obit prominently mentions The Birds whose screenplay he wrote (as Evan Hunter, his literary pen name) and Hill Street Blues, which he did not write for, but which was shamelessly modeled on his 87th Precinct series.

  Inside the genre, writers like Sheckley and McBain receive excellent treatment as well—marvelous overviews of their careers (see, for example, www.locusmag.com or www.mysteryscene.com). But so do the J.N. Williamsons of the genre. Essayists explore the influences these writers have had on our reading lives and laud these people for the work they've done in changing literature forever.

  If someone is alre
ady covering these lives, why do I go back to the Times? Guess I'm just getting tired of the hypocrisy. If we're going to discuss literary values, and good writing, and long-lasting storytelling, if we're going to laud certain writers and doom others to obscurity, it should be based on the work the writers have done (and the work the editors/reviewers have had the courtesy to read), not on some poorly remembered movie or an obscure connection to television.

  I'm happy that the Times noticed Robert Sheckley. They should have. Bob was a good man, and a great writer, who did a lot for literature.

  I just wish that, along with the socialites and the obscure Wall Street traders, the Times would also notice the J.N. Williamsons of the writing world, who weren't lucky enough to have someone in Hollywood buy their work, but were lucky enough to have an influential life-long career.

  If we're going to discuss literature, folks, let's discuss all of it, not just the stuff that someone noticed as they read the credit lines on late night TV. And if you're going to call yourself the paper of record, then you should truly be a record, and not a reflection of the prejudices of the obituary writers manning what is colloquially known as “the morgue."

  Writers should be known for more than “influencing” Hill Street Blues. They should also be known for the work they actually did, the stories they wrote, and the characters they created.

  They should be known, in other words, for their life's work.

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  Eight: Creating Ourselves

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  When we started buying stories for Æon Eight we began to see a theme arising from our first few choices. “It's about authenticity,” we said of one story, then noticed that the others we had scheduled for this issue dealt with the same concept.

  We don't plan these things.

  Only a few weeks out from our projected publication date, we fit the last story into the table of contents, and it too told of the importance—to yourself and to the world—of being exactly who you are, and following your dream to whatever destiny awaits you. Another theme issue was born, but it's my guess you wouldn't be able to tell from reading the stories, which are as wide in their style, approach, and subject matter as any batch of fiction we've put between Æon's covers yet. More about each of them later, but first a few words about our theme.

  We don't originate our biological lives; for that we can thank our parents, and we should. It's an amazing universe, and I'm personally glad I showed up to be part of it. Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Dad. As children, we're subject to the authority of others, and our lives are not our own. Who can pinpoint the day that changes? But it does change. The child who's been the hostage to parents and educators and a barrage of other influences has an “aha!” moment, or more likely several thousand of them whose accumulated mass becomes a singularity by the time he's 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 (age doesn't matter, for until he begins this journey he will remain a child in some ways), and he begins to go his own way. He packs a lunch and journeys into the dark forest, picking a place where there is no path, for a path is the way someone else has already been.

  It won't be easy. There'll be an arsenal of social weapons pointed at his heart, and signs saying “Go back!” and “Proceed no Further!” and “Don't say I didn't warn you.... “His parents will weep and curse on one side of him, and all that comforting familiarity of the expectations of others will beckon from the other side. He may long for the reassurance of the known: all the things it's assumed he will do and believe and become for the sake of someone else. That path is nearby at first, and clearly marked, and not nearly as dark and scary. He couldn't be blamed for stepping over to it, eating his lunch, and following it back home.

  But if he does not—if he continues creating his own path—he will become the author of his life, and that life will reflect the truth of his being. He'll find and follow his bliss; not his father's, not his mother's, not anyone's but his. Along the way he'll find that all the things he did to impress others with the fine qualities he hoped he had were drapes he had drawn across the faults and inadequacies he feared he had ("Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"). When he finds the courage to confront and dispel those fears, he'll discover an authentic person underneath them who is at least as wonderful as the person he pretended to be, and not afraid.

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  Seven authors and two poets have illuminated parts of that journey for us in this issue of Æon. Daniel Marcus leads the way into the dark forest with a story about a man who takes the plunge into his own life from the end of the world in “Echo Beach.” A physicist looks for his destiny in the wrong corner of the multiverse in Ron Savage's “Playing Dice.” Liz Holliday introduces us to a young woman who's more than the sum of her parts, but who needs the help of a strange visitor to find “All of Me.” Two men with very different visions for saving humanity meet at the crossroads of the world in Martin McGrath's “Palaces of Force.” Stephanie Burgis shows us a man discovering his true self where he would never have looked for it in “Foxwoman.” And rounding out our tales of destiny lost and found is a welcome return appearance by Lawrence M. Schoen ("The Game of Leaf and Smile,” Æon Four) with a look at what happens to the established order of things when we start “Thinking."

  Marci Tentchoff and Amanda Downum confront the light and the dark sides of transformation in two wonderful poems, and our regular columnists grace our pages once again. Kristine Kathryn Rusch asks some hard questions of the “newspaper of record,” and Dr. Rob Furey reveals the mysteries of distance at the large end of the cosmic scale.

  Bringing you this issue has been a genuine journey of self-discovery. We're authentically pleased as punch to present Æon Eight.

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  Echo Beach by Daniel Marcus

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  "One of my favorite 70's bands is Martha and the Muffins, noteworthy for great hooks, tight musicianship, and an appealing, intelligent weirdness. “Echo Beach” was their breakout single. I loved the song (I can still hear the refrain, “Echo Beach, far away in time” in my head), but I could never figure out exactly what or where Echo Beach was. I had to write this story to find out. It should also be noted that this story owes a debt of gratitude to the Silverberg classic, ‘When We Went to See the End of the World.’”

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  IT'S ALWAYS THE LAST DAY OF THE WORLD at Echo Beach. From fifteen miles up, the horizon is visibly bowed. The sun hangs swollen above an oily sea. The coastal range ripples up from the water's edge, bunching together in wattles like the neck of a lizard. Scintilla flash from the ruins of a port city half engulfed.

  The lounge is quiet, but it will start filling up soon. At a table in the middle of the room, an old man plays chess with an automaton. Every now and then, he reaches across the table and slaps the thing on the side of its metal head.

  Near one of the large windows, a lanky, barrel-chested man drinks alone. Coal black skin, melanin-enhanced, tangle of blonde dreads. Circa 22C, a mod from one of the Martian arcologies. Clearly pre-Plague. Close enough to home for me that I want to say something to him, warn him. But what could I say?

  A couple sits at the bar leaning toward one another, their heads touching. It's difficult to say whether they are accelerated canines or regressed humans, but there is something very dog-like in their focused attention to one another. An aura of benign stupidity hangs about them like sweet incense.

  The digital clock above the holo fireplace reads 4:22:00. As I watch, the numbers dissolve and re-form: 4:21:59.

  I check my console, pour a shot of absinthe and a pony of pomegranate juice, set them on a tray, and send it floating toward the Martian.

  I walk down the length of the bar to the couple.

  "Get you anything else?"

  The ma
n looks up at me with watery eyes.

  "No, thank you,” he says.

  "I don't think so,” the woman says at the same time. They look at each other and bark soft laughter. They lean their heads together again

  I decide to leave the old man and the bot alone. As I turn my back I hear a thump as he smacks it again.

  I wipe down the bar, check my stock. Vodka from Ganymede, gin from Hotpoint, malts from Scotland. Scotland. I remember jagged green hills, black rock thrusting into a gray sky, mounds of rubble dotting a fractal coastline testament to the mercurial nature of power. I stood amidst the ruins of the Castle Duncan as a piper wailed defiance and loss to the cradle of the ocean. There was a small suitcase open in front of him. Tourists threw coins.

  I wonder if there's anything left of Scotland now, here at the end of Time. It's a stupid thought, of course. The continents have shifted, the seas have climbed and receded a dozen times. North America is an archipelago stretching from pole to equator; Fiji is the leading edge of a megacontinent; the treasures of continental Europe lie beneath a cold, green sea.

  The world-face changes, the abstract constructions of Man linger ghostlike. If I were to travel to the global coordinates occupied by Castle Duncan circa 20C, could I still hear the echoes of pipes in the salt air? Does Gaia remember?

  The Gate hums quietly. Laughter echoes up from the Foyer. Heads emerge from the spiral staircase set in the floor at the far end of the lounge away from the windows. Party of four; two men, two women. Definitely post-Diaspora; I can't place them on the Continuum. Definitely wealthy. They wear their entitlement like a badge.

  One of them men catches sight of me, nudges his companions, and they all drift in my direction.