Aeon Ten Read online

  Billy Ray's panickin'. He runs into me, knockin’ us both over. Cussin', screamin', I scramble to my feet. Billy's up too, an’ we're runnin', an’ oh Mama the noise an’ the stink an’ the goddam unholy lights turnin’ the night into day, an’ Billy's turned the wrong way, he's headed right into it an’ I jump, I fling myself through the air an’ I'm hittin’ the grass an’ rollin’ an’ I see the Machine hit Billy an’ he jus’ seems to explode like a plastic bag fulla ketchup an’ guts.

  It's over. I'm lyin’ on my side in the grass, pantin'. Jesse Lee's stretchin', yawnin', like it was no big deal. The girls are screamin'; Betty Jean an’ Flozetta cheerin’ an’ jumpin’ up an’ down; Raylene wailin’ like it's the end of the world.

  It's over until next Saturday night, when, by God, we'll do it again. Maybe I'll die. Maybe I won't. It's all jus’ part of the game.

  An’ why, you ask, do we do it?

  Well, what the fuck else do possums have to do?

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  Our Authors

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  Mark Bourne ("The Case of the Detective's Smile") has published short fiction in Asimov's Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and assorted anthologies such as Sherlock Holmes in Orbit, Full Spectrum 5, the Chicks in Chainmail series, and a university textbook of world literature. An erstwhile astronomy and English teacher with a theater background, he has also written and produced work for video, science museums, and multimedia planetariums nationwide. The first collection of his short fiction, Mars Dust & Magic Shows, is available as an eBook from Scorpius Digital Publishing. With his wife Elizabeth, he lives in Seattle, Washington, and at www.markbourne.com.

  Mark's novelette “The Nature of the Beast” appeared in AEon Five.

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  Mark Budz ("The War Inside") is the author of Clade, Crache, and Idolon. A fourth novel, Till Human Voices Wake Us, is forthcoming. Clade and Idolon were finalists for the Philip K. Dick Award. In addition, Clade was honored with a Norton Award (named after Joshua Norton I, self-proclaimed Emperor of the United States of America and Protector of Mexico) for “—extraordinary invention and creativity unhindered by the constraints of paltry reason.” To support his writing and chocolate habit, he maintains a day job as a technical writer. He and his wife, author Marina Fitch, live in the Santa Cruz Mountains. He can be found on the Web at www.markbudz.com/.

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  Photo by Jerry Oltion

  Marina Fitch lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains with her husband, author Mark Budz. She pays the bills by playing with kids. While at work she has been (among other things) a princess, Hermione, Obi Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader, Miss Petunia, and a pirate. While writing, she has been much stranger things.

  Marina is the author of Seventh Heart and The Border, available at fine garage sales everywhere. A collection of her short fiction, Pieces of the Sky, is available through Scorpius Digital. Her short fiction has appeared in F&SF, Asimov's, Pulphouse, The Immortal Unicorn, and Desire Burn. She is currently working on a novel.

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  Dr. Rob Furey ("Parallax") worked on his PhD in Gabon, West Africa, on social spiders. He has returned to his study site several times for his own research, with students, and once as a forest guide for a natural history film crew from the UK. He has faced down cobras, retreated from army ants, and slept on open wooden platforms in African swamps. Later he went to French Amazonia to work on another social spider species. Not only did he spend time with the spiders, but he watched a gunfight between gold prospectors and French army troops while he ate a meal of roasted tapir. Since then Rob has returned to the tropics several times, usually with students. He spent time as a student himself attending Clarion West. He has published a couple of stories in anthologies since then in addition to articles for dusty tomes on arcane spider behavior. He is currently part of the charter faculty at Harrisburg University, the first new private university in Pennsylvania in over 100 years.

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  Howard V. Hendrix ("The Art of Memory") is the author of Lightpaths, Standing Wave, Better Angels, Empty Cities of the Full Moon, The Labyrinth Key, and Spears of God. Howard's short fiction has appeared in many major markets, and an upcoming story will appear in Lou Anders’ Future Shocks anthology (Roc, January 2006). His collection Möbius Highway is published by Scorpius Digital Publishing. Hendrix holds a BS in Biology as well as MA and PhD in English literature, which means he is at times able to manage fish hatcheries or teach literature classes at the nearby state university. He and his wife Laurel go for long backpacking trips in the Sierra Nevada Mountains every summer, which is their avowedly masochistic idea of fun.

  Howard's story “The Self-Healing Sky” appeared in AEon Two, and “Waiting for Citizen Gödel” in AEon Five.

  Visit Howard's website at www.howardvhendrix.com/.

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  Kij Johnson ("Dia Chjermen's Tale: the Delmoni Atrocity") is a writer living in Seattle. Her books include The Fox Woman and Fudoki, and she has also published 30 short stories in four languages. She teaches novel-writing at the Center for the Study of Science Fiction in Lawrence, Kansas, each summer.

  Kij's story “The Knife Birds” appeared in AEon Four.

  Her Web site is www.sff.net/people/kij-johnson/.

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  Photo by Tom Kredo

  Dana William Paxson ("Ex Muro") writes patent applications for a law firm, course mini-lectures for online classes, magazine articles, poetry, and fiction. Four of his stories appeared in Science Fiction Age magazine during its ascendancy in the 1990s. His short fiction collection Neuron Tango was published in 2004. He has acted, sung, and danced in Gilbert and Sullivan productions, created abstract-constructionist works of art, and designed and built monster spreadsheet models of large-scale computer systems. He has studied poetry, astronomy and cosmology, molecular neurobiology, linguistics, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and a few languages. He advanced his mathematics studies with a B.A. in 2005 and an M.A. in in 2006. He teaches courses on Tolkien, da Vinci, and Picasso. Along with more short stories, he is developing and patenting new forms of narrative texts, both fiction and nonfiction. Watching him, his wife is never bored. Neither are his friends.

  Dana's short story “The Buddha Lectures on Cosmology” appeared in AEon Two. Three flash stories: “Appeal,” “The Visitors on the Fourth,"” and “Adrift on the Mare Commutatio,” appeared in AEon Five.

  His website is www.danapaxsonstudio.com/.

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  Carrie Richerson ("The City in Morning")'s short stories have appeared in such magazines as Fantasy & Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, Amazing Stories, Pulphouse, Noctulpa, Rosebud, and in numerous anthologies. Recent appearances include “(With)By Good Intentions” in the Oct/Nov 2006 issue of F&SF and “The Warrior and the King” in Cross Plains Universe, the 2006 World Fantasy Convention anthology. She lives in Austin, Texas, where her writing is supervised by Jeep the Blue-Eyed Wonderdog and four insouciant cats.

  Carrie's story “A Game of Cards” appeared in AEon Four, and her poem “S.T.A.R.-Crossed Lovers” in AEon Six.

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  Kristine Kathryn Rusch ("Signals")'s novels (science fiction, fantasy, mystery/crime, and romance) have bee
n published in 14 countries in 13 different languages. She is the only person in the history of the science fiction field to have won Hugo awards for both editing and fiction. Her short work has been reprinted in six Year's Best collections. She has also been the recipient of the John W. Campbell Award, the Herodotus Award for Best Historical Mystery Novel, the Ellery Queen Reader's Choice Award, the Science Fiction Age Reader's Choice Award, and the Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award, and been nominated for the Locus, Nebula, and Sturgeon awards, and the Asimov's Reader's Choice Award.

  From 1991-1996 Kris was the editor of the prestigious Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Before that, she and Dean Wesley Smith started and ran Pulphouse Publishing, a science fiction and mystery press in Eugene, Oregon. She lives and works on the Oregon Coast.

  Visit Kris's website at www.kristinekathrynrusch.com/.

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  Lorelei Shannon ("Another Saturday Night in Georgia") writes and edits dark fantasy and even darker horror. She is the co-editor of the horror anthology Hours of Darkness, and the author of Vermifuge, and Other Toxic Cocktails, and Rags and Old Iron. Her collaboration with Alan M. Clark and Stephen C. Merritt, The Blood of Father Time, is just out from Five Star Press.

  Lorelei's previous career as a game designer produced (among others) A Puzzle of Flesh (a groundbreaking horror game that saw her interviewed by Cosmopolitan Magazine and banned in Sears stores everywhere). She lives in the woods of western Washington with her husband, Daniel Carver, sons Fenris and Orion, three big, hairy dogs, and an immortal goldfish.

  Lorelei's story “Kingdom Come Kingdom Go” appeared in AEon Two.

  Visit her Website at www.psychenoir.com

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  Lavie Tidhar ("Angels Over Israel: Three Slides") grew up on a kibbutz in Israel, lived in Israel and South Africa, travelled widely in Africa and Asia, and currently lives on an island in the South Pacific. The winner of the 2003 Clarke-Bradbury Prize (awarded by the European Space Agency), Lavie is also the editor of Michael Marshall Smith: The Annotated Bibliography (PS Publishing 2004) and the anthology A Dick & Jane Primer for Adults (The British Fantasy Society, forthcoming 2006), and the author of An Occupation of Angels (www.pendragonpress.co.uk/bookpages/angels.htm) (Pendragon Press, Dec. 2005), a supernatural cold war thriller which James Lovegrove called “...a novella of blistering, ballistic energy and ferocious cleverness” and Adam Roberts called a “...powerfully phantasmagoric fantasy ... Sharp, witty, violent and liable to haunt your dreams.” His stories appear in Sci Fiction, Chizine, Postscripts, Nemonymous, Infinity Plus, The Book of Dark Wisdom, Fortean Bureau and many others, and in translation in seven languages.

  Lavie's story “Midnight Folk” appeared in AEon Six.

  His web site is at www.lavietidhar.co.uk.

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  Our Advertisers

  Blood, Blade, & Thruster—The Magazine of Speculative Fiction & Satire

  The Blood of Father Time, by Alan M. Clark, Stephen C. Merritt, and Lorelei Shannon

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  The Fox Woman and Fudoki, by Kij Johnson

  Idolon, Crache, and Clade, by Mark Budz

  The Internet Review of Science Fiction

  Neuron Tango, by Dana William Paxson

  An Occupation of Angels, by Lavie Tidhar

  Pieces of the Sky, by Marina Fitch

  Rags and Old Iron, by Lorelei Shannon

  Something Rich and Strange, by Carrie Richerson

  Spears of God, by Howard V. Hendrix

  The Paint in my Blood, by Alan M. Clark

  The Retrieval Artists series, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

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  Steel Sky, by Andrew Murphy (Per Aspera Press)

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  Visit www.aeonmagazine.com for information on additional titles by this and other authors.