Aurealis #92, July 2016“The Hush Before Dawn” by Peter Cooper
Reviewed by Herbert M. Shaw
“The Hush Before Dawn” by Peter Cooper
A young man wakes up to a devastated world and only one other being to recap the events. As the story jumps between past and present, it becomes apparent that the subject’s consciousness has been digitized and restored as a hologram with all his memories. Fitting that the first story of this issue would be a first-person narrative. While memories and audio/visual sensations can still be processed, Cooper does not discuss how an artificial copy of the human brain will contemplate human desires with no physical form. If the character is able to feel the loss of his father and daughter, what is to become of him when he starts to feel the physical needs such as nourishment and carnal desires? Other than that, the reader is given a simple view of the world after, with an alternate concept of life after.
“Taggant 31” by L.B. Spillers
Not much different from the popular manga limited series of graphic novels Death Note, in which a person with the absolute power to control who dies does just that, and everyone knows what absolute power does. In Spillers’ story, the main character controls robotic drones that fire the title marking agent into the target. He decides to begin to use the poison as a form of population control. Spillers in an interview with Aurealis credits the stories of the Mexican cartel wars as his inspiration for this story, which focuses mainly on cocaine users who fund the drug trade and, indirectly, its associated war.
“Corpse Eater” by Bentley A. Reese
A necromancer’s undead creation finds sentience in the wake of a devastating caravan attack. Reese takes the reader on a very gory romp through a fantasy world where a teenage sorceress of the dead learns the trials of inexperience with a power not fully understood. The most intricate story of this issue touches on the realities of self-awareness in the way a child becomes aware of their own independence from the parent. The title creature’s existence carries the story from its final mission to its ultimate conflict with its mistress and her second, more feral abomination. Reese explores the powers of the supernatural from the perspective of an object rather than subject. Just imagine “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” as told by the broom.