ASIM issue 55 Read online

  Deborah Kalin is an Australian author based in Melbourne, a city whose temperamental moods suit her very well indeed, even if there is a distinct lack of pterosaurs in the bargain. A student of Clarion South 2005, she is the author of The Binding books (Shadow Queen and Shadow Bound, published by Allen & Unwin), and her short fiction has previously appeared in Postscripts and ASIM. She has short fiction forthcoming in Cemetery Dance magazine, and is currently working on a collection for Twelfth Planet Press. She travels as often as she can afford to, her most notable destinations including Bhutan (where an eight-year-old boy valiantly offered to marry her to save her from the shame of being single at thirty) and Mongolia (where even the nomads had better TVs than she’s ever owned). Deborah’s website can be found at http://deborahkalin.com

  David Knopfler is a singer-songwriter and founder member of Dire Straits. His music credits include several Dire Straits CDs and eleven solo CDs, while his book credits include the poetry anthology Bloodstones and Rhythmic Beasts and also Bluff Your Way in the Rock Music Business. David can be found on Facebook and Myspace or at http://www.knopfler.com/

  Lisa A Koosis is a three-time semi-finalist in Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Award. In 2010 she took second place in Leisure Horror’s Fresh Blood contest for horror novelists. Her short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, including Abyss & Apex, the British-Fantasy-Award-winning Murky Depths, The Poughkeepsie Journal, and Family Circle (as grand prize winner of the 2009 short fiction contest). Lisa lives with her family and a motley crew of four-legged friends, in the United States in New York’s historic Hudson River Valley. You can find her online at www.writingonthinice.blogspot.com

  Gary McCluskey, a graduate of the Joe Kubert School of Art, has been working as an artist for over twenty years doing everything from book covers, comic books, magazine illustrations, rpg artwork, logo design and greeting cards. Back at the end of the last century he self published a comic called Rayne. You can see more of his work at: http://garymccluskey.carbonmade.com/

  Simon Messingham is faintly disreputable. He lives. Simon wrote some books you won’t have read for Doctor Who and some TV comedy shows you won’t have seen. He wrote a feature for the UK Film Council called Goth Holiday that never got made. In 2011, Simon staged a comic remake of The Stud at the Brighton Fringe Festival. His 25 minute blockbuster action comedy House Trafalgar has just been released by Future Sun Films. Check out the amazing website http://www.housetrafalgar.com/ for details of this motion picture epic of Napoleonic Naval warfare. In a house. Simon once won a British Fantasy Society award thing for a proper horror story. Simon smells slightly off. Avoid.

  On the 25th of March, 1942, Richard O’Brien was born Richard Timothy Smith, in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England. In 1952, along with his parents and siblings he moved to New Zealand and there, travelled through puberty and adolescence. It was also there, that he discovered a love for all things populist such as, the hit parade, B. Movies, comics and rock and roll. Returning to England for a year’s working holiday in 1964, he began his career in the world of show-biz entertainment by riding horses in movies. In 1973 his life took a new direction and he found himself to be the author of a work, constructed from his adolescent pleasures, which was eventually entitled The Rocky Horror Show. A movie of which was released in 1975. Since this time he has appeared in movies, written for the stage, film and television, released a highly acclaimed album of original songs, hosted the British Music Industries ‘Brit Awards’, presented a cult game show called The Crystal Maze, and performed as a singer songwriter and stand-up comic to delighted audiences in many countries. He has become a well-loved New Zealand citizen, where, in Hamilton, they have erected a one and half times life-size bronze statue of him, in the role of Riff-Raff, on the site of the Embassy Theatre, where, as a whey faced youth and disaffected teenager, he used to watch the late-night, double-feature movies. He has just turned 70 and still shows no sign of growing old gracefully.

  K J Parker was born long ago and far away, worked as a coin dealer, a dogsbody in an auction house and a lawyer, and has so far published twelve novels, two novellas and a gaggle of short stories. Married to a lawyer and living in the south west of England, K J is a mediocre stockman and forester, a barely competent carpenter, blacksmith and machinist, a two-left-footed fencer, lacklustre archer, utility-grade armourer, accomplished textile worker and crack shot. K J Parker is not K J Parker’s real name. However, if K J Parker were to tell you K J Parker’s real name, it wouldn’t mean anything to you.

  Dan Rabarts is a speculative fiction writer, sometime podcast narrator, occasional sailor of sailing things, and father of two wee miracles in a little house on a hill, under the southern sun. As well as in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, his short fiction has been published or is forthcoming at the Wily Writers podcast and in Bloodstones, an urban horror anthology from Ticonderoga Press. His narrations can be heard on the StarShipSofa, at Tales to Terrify, and on the Wily Writers Podcast. He has twice been shortlisted for a Sir Julius Vogel award. Find him lurking on the web at dan.rabarts.com, or in the dusty corners of the house tapping frantically at a keyboard.

  T A Robinson is an Australian writer based in Melbourne. He hangs out in bookshops, bars and Laundromats, all of which helped inspire the story in this collection. He doesn’t have a talking suit, but he does own a hooded purple-brown cardigan with ponies on it. If you’re in Melbourne and see someone wearing this you should come up and say ‘hi’ once you’ve finished laughing at it.

  Kate Rowe is an Australian singer-songwriter who writes songs about coffee, giant squids, space rabbits, the Parisian catacombs, and so on. She also writes and performs speculative fiction songs under the name The Fildenstar. She’s not sure where this is all going, but wherever it is, it will probably involve lavish costumes and a spacecraft stage set. And a wind machine. Her websites are at< www.katerowe.com and www.thefildenstar.com

  SF Commentary online

  Download your copy of SF Commentary 83 (October 2012) and 84 (November 2012) in PDF format from efanzines.com

  SF Commentary 83 and 84 are available in two formats: portrait-shaped (print version equivalent) or landscape-shaped (widescreen).

  SFC 83 features Guy Salvidge's 35,000-word article about the novels of Philip K Dick plus a vast letter column.

  SFC 84 features Damien Broderick and David Boutland, Ray Wood and Tim Marion, Brian Aldiss and Mark Plummer and others.

  I’m hoping you will download your copy, but if you really must have the print copy, email Bruce Gillespie at [email protected] or write to 5 Howard Street, Greensborough, VIC 3088, Australia. Subscriptions: $100.

  Acknowledgements:

  We would like to express our sincerest thanks to the following contributors:

  Proof Readers:

  Garth Edwards, Jacob Edwards

  Slush Readers:

  Adam Henderson, Amy Gordon, Andrew Barton, Cat Sheely, Chris Bobridge, Devin Jeyathurai, Dirk Flinthart, Doug A Van Belle, Edwina Harvey, Glenn Davies, Hayley Baxter, Helen Truax, Ian Nichols, Jacob Edwards, Laura Bailey, Lea Greenaway, Lucy Zinkiewicz, Mary Pearl, Narelle Bailey, Natalie Maddalena, Nikky Lee, Patty Jansen, Phil Suggars, Rebecca Newton, Robert Dawson, Sally Beasley, Satima Flavell Neist, Stephanie Gunn, Sue Bursztynski, Tom Wells

  Narelle Bailey, Sue Bursztynski, Tom Dullemond, Jacob Edwards, Mark Farrugia, Dirk Flinthart, Amy Gordon, Edwina Harvey, Patty Jansen, David Kernot, Robbie Matthews (Editor-in-Chief), Ian Nichols, Simon Petrie, Robert Phillips, Lucy Zinkiewicz

  Issue 55:

  Editor Jacob Edwards

  Editor-in-chief Robbie Matthews

  Advertising Edwina Harvey

  Art Director Sue Bursztynski

  Layout Simon Petrie

  Poetry Editor Edwina Harvey

  Reviews / Nonfiction Editor Patty Jansen

  Slushwrangling Lucy Zinkiewicz

  Subscriptions David Kernot

  Website David Kernot

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bsp; Cover Art Inna Basman

  Copyright 2012

  Andromeda Spaceways Publishing Co-op Ltd

  c/- Simon Petrie, PO Box 7311, Kaleen ACT 2617, Australia.

  www.andromedaspaceways.com

  Published quarterly by Andromeda Spaceways Publishing Co-op. RRP AUD$12.95. Subscription rates are available from the website.

  Andromeda Spaceways Publishing Co-op actively encourages literary and artistic contributions. Submissions should be made online by emailing:

  [email protected]

  Submission guidelines are available from the website. Please read them.

  ISSN 1446–781X