Aurealis “Song of the Spear” by Madeline Byrne
“The Momentum of a Library Card Between Spaces” by Anthony Sweet
“Autonomous” by Lyle Hopwood
Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf
Ranging from a myth of the past to visions of the future, the stories in this issue offer something for almost all fans of imaginative literature.
“Song of the Spear” by Madeline Byrne alternates between two sections of narrative. In one, a young girl witnesses supernatural beings in the form of women literally weave the doom of men in battle far away. They use parts of the dead bodies of fallen warriors for their work at the loom. In the other section, soldiers encounter a hag who offers to show them their fates. They are not eager to learn what faces them.
The story consists almost entirely of description, with very little in the way of plot. Heavy with metaphor and vivid, grim imagery, it is essentially an extended prose poem. The author’s afterword reveals that the supernatural content of the work comes from Norse and Celtic legends. Readers familiar with these mythologies may find the result of this blending less original than those who are not.
The main character in “The Momentum of a Library Card Between Spaces” by Anthony Sweet is one of the few people with the psychic ability to allow spaceships to travel nearly instantaneously from one place to another. The price he pays is mental contact with an entity that torments him. The man is forced to serve the military in battle against rebels, leaving his wife and young son behind without knowing if he will return. The being suggests that his child is doomed to suffer the same fate. During a raid on a rebel planet, the man struggles to prevent this from happening.
The author creates an interesting combination of space opera and psychological fantasy. (There are hints that the entity is supernatural, and it certainly acts in a demonic fashion.) The story is perhaps a bit too long, with a section describing in detail the man’s journey from home to the spaceship slowing the pace and reducing the tension.
Set in India in the near future, “Autonomous” by Lyle Hopwood features a young man employed by a call center. He works his way up from collecting overdue bills to taking remote control of automated cars when their artificial intelligences cannot deal with unusual situations. Along the way, he becomes bitter and cynical. An action he takes at the end of the story reveals how far he has come from an innocent and naïve new employee.
The author extrapolates the way that so many Indians currently work in such jobs, earning more than many of their fellow citizens but far less than similar workers in other industrialized nations. It powerfully demonstrates how the multinational nature of their work causes them to lose their native culture. The speculative technology in the story is highly plausible, and also serves as an effective metaphor for how the protagonist feels he is losing control of his life.
Victoria Silverwolf will get a new set of eyeglasses soon.