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Aeon Speculative Fiction # 13
01/05/2008 . Source: Rod MacDonald 
e-mag: Price: $ 5.00 (US) download. check out website: www.aeonmagazine.com
'I don't know if 'Aeon' has sufficient punch to make its mark in the electronic magazine world. In fact, I'll be surprised if it is still here in twelve months.' Well, I was wrong! I wrote these words three years ago about issue 2 and the magazine is still here, still going strong. It has reached issue number 13.
'Aeon Speculative Fiction' is available as a $5 download and for this you'll get plenty of fiction, reviews and articles. It was and still is edited by Marti McKenna and Bridget McKenna from Seattle, USA.
So, what's in this issue? There are seven short stories, all to a high literary standard. However, although they are described as speculative, I'm not exactly sure if they all fit into SFCrowsnest's remit. I would say most could be described as social commentaries on the human condition.
Bearing that in mind, this review will indicate the best and the worst of the stories the issue had to offer. Of course, this is only a personal opinion and others may have different reflections.
'The Dam' by Daniel Marcus was quite strange in that it had inter-spaced between the text a recipe for the manufacture of TNT taken from the 'Anarchists Cookbook'. What he was trying to achieve, I do not know. The TNT recipe became tedious and it detracted attention from the story. However, despite trying to be interesting, the story seemed to lose itself in the water it describes and is eventually drowned. This, as you would guess, is my worst rated story.
'Pearl' by Jeffe Kennedy was an excellent story and my favourite of the magazine. 10th generation prisoners are enclosed within a self-contained unit of enormous proportion. It is, apparently, in space. The reason they are imprisoned eventually becomes clear and the status quo is interrupted by the arrival of a man from outside. Schnell, as he is named, is rather an enigmatic character who disturbs the programmed personalities of the prisoners. I am reminded, to some extent, of Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World'. The author said that he got the idea from a dream. This apparently isn't uncommon amongst authors. I think Kennedy gives us enough information in this short story to promise something else of more substantial proportion. A novel, perhaps?
'Parallax', the article series by Dr Rob Furey, has an interesting piece about micro-organisms and super-structures. We do not go through our lives in this universe as individual beings. Rather, we are a complex entity of billions of micro-organisms living within in our three-dimensional frame. Now, who is the boss in this organisation? More to the point, who or what makes up a person. Very good article.
There's lots of other good stuff in this issue. To find out more, simply look up their website. It's not bad value for five dollars and it won't be a waste of paper.
Rod MacDonald
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