Jason Fischer's "for want of a jesusman" is one of my favorite pieces here. It might be called horror, in that it features a violent protagonist, who is a killer himself and who is tortured horrifically during the story. But what fascinated me was the strange setting, apparently some sort of alternate world, inhabited by humans and aliens with glass-like spines and by "witches," who may have something to do with travelling between this world and a world more like ours. Another wild setting is behind Brendan Duffy's "Muleskinner Blues." Benny is the heir to a commercial empire, but against his father's wishes, he is a "muleskinner," tracking down rogue AIs. His father is desperately trying to cheat death, and his mother has long since escaped to virtual reality. Benny, while mourning his dead girlfriend (to the point of using robots as substitutes), also is dealing with his father's disapproval. That's the plot, but the strange future, with fractally expanding suburbs, virtual worlds, and rogue AIs, is what held my interest.

In "Something Better than Death," Lucy Sussex tells a curious romantic story about a woman going to Germany to meet a man, with whom she hopes to make a life, and then encountering another man with whom she swaps variants of the Grimm story "The Four Musicians of Bremen." Finally, Brendan Carson's "Yellow Mary's Lamp" is a dark story set in colonial era Australia, featuring a brutal criminal who is oddly afraid of the title character, on the surface, his downtrodden mistress.

I found this one of the best issues I've seen of Aurealis. There's a nice fantasy/SF/horror mix. The range of tone and style remains very good.