Aurealis #124, September 2019“Leisure Culture” by Maddison Stoff
Reviewed by Mike Wyant Jr.
“Leisure Culture” by Maddison Stoff is far funnier than a story about the end of humanity should be. It’s set in a far-future world where the Earth has taken on an almost Venusian atmosphere, most of humanity lives in leisure pods—think Ready Player One style, full immersion units—and we’ve encountered alien life, but they’re actually kind of cool. Stoff gives us humanity’s last moments through the eyes of a narrator who doesn’t really see it as any different than what they were doing in the leisure pods.
The story is filled with dark humor amidst criticism of both conservative and liberal governments, notably the rich and powerful in both camps. There’s a rough honesty in the story that really spoke to me, especially when the narrator is eating sushi while the world burns.
Because, honestly, if all of humanity is going to be absorbed into a far-reaching alien consciousness, what else are you going to do?
Overall, it’s an interesting read, just don’t expect a ton of depth.
E H Mann‘s “Nie Among the Tree People” is a story about a narrator fleeing the craziness of a city and stumbling across a village of people turned into trees. In this world, gods walk the earth. In the city, they’re things of circuits and electricity, but in the forests, they’re raw elements of fire and wood. Nie’s story begins when their flight from the city leads them to the tree people. The resulting silence and peace evolves into a life-changing experience for Nie, which ultimately results in Nie “saving” the town and themselves in the process.
The story itself is sweet and simple, once you get a handle on the fact gods exist as elemental forces. For me, Nie represents anyone who feels overwhelmed by modern society and wants to get away from it all, to reconnect with a nature that feels so far away in this day and age.
I can only hope that all of us reconnect as gracefully as them.
“Inheritance” by James Rowland is a speculative fiction story disguised as an art review of a dead artist, Nandi Harris, a woman who wove magic into her paints and made fully immersive art a reality throughout the 20th century.
The writing itself has the stale tone you expect in a scholarly article, though the descriptions and attention to detail within each discussed piece is beautiful and deep. In a way, it feels like the author is attempting to perform their own magic trick here, to create a world within a world like Harris did with her paintings. I think the success of that will be mixed, but for me personally, coming off a recent death in my family, it worked wonderfully. The end message, one so personal, hopeful, and unexpected given the handling of the rest of the content, really resonated with me because of that. It’s a great story for someone going through a tough time. Give it a read, if you can.
Mike Wyant, Jr. is an ex-IT guy, who has finally committed to a writing life out in the Middle of Nowhere, New York.