Aurealis“Forever” by Joe Ford
“Lucy” by Michael Zeit
“You Look a Lot Like Aton Fuller” by A T Sayre
Reviewed by László Szegedi
“Forever” by Joe Ford
The reader is taken to a post-apocalyptic world through the lens of a lonely scavenger. The main point of the story is how he’s affected by this loneliness and how he tries to get in touch with somebody. “…I never found a satisfying ending…” the author says in the “About the story” section, explaining an earlier stage of the text. Unfortunately, even this final form feels unfinished, the protagonist’s decision is not explained, and his later fate is not detailed at all.
“Lucy” by Michael Zeit
This story is a very dramatic narration of a scientific experiment going haywire. The author chose not to detail how and why the events unfolded as they did, concentrating on the dialog between a researcher and the subject of the experiment instead, thus making the tension much stronger. Reading it, I felt as if I was descending to an inevitable end, so I can’t recommend reading it after having a bad day. Nonetheless, it’s written in a sensitive and well constructed way.
“You Look a Lot Like Aton Fuller” by A T Sayre
This tale relates the life story of a clone in a not-so-distant future. This particular clone is related to a crazy billionaire, an Elon Musk-like figure. Although the author tells how his acquaintances react to this relationship in an intriguing way, the pace of the storytelling is slow and rather detailed, like in the old classic SF stories from the ‘50s. Unfortunately, the tone consists of too much science, and not enough soul to make the plot interesting enough for this reader.
László is very happy for the britpop band Oasis being back together.