Cleanup on Deck 7
Claire Simpson
Space
John Buchan
Non Fiction
Story Competition
Interview: Charles Stross
Border Crossings - Steve Green
SF Caledonia - Paul F Cockburn
Reviews
Meet the Artists
Friends of Shoreline
Become a Friend of Shoreline
Coming up in Issue 2
Pull up a Log
Come, pull up a log, sit down, warm your extremities by our fire. You've travelled a long way, friend, and you have a long journey ahead. Have we got some stories for you. Our story tellers have travelled a long way too. This is Larry, and he’s got a heartwarming tale of old Japan. Alex there takes us to a distant moon. Colleen—hi Colleen—her story is a little thriller of a piece. Richmond warns you not to muck about with a time machine—you didn’t come via a time machine, did you? Joseph's and Guy’s stories give reality a tweak on the nose while Claire and David, well they take us somewhere else. M Luke McDonnell’s story asks if we really know what’s going on inside our partner’s mind. That old cove over there? That’s John Buchan: he’s got a science fiction story he’s been wanting to re-tell for a long while. Yes you’re right—John is the one who wrote The Thirty Nine Steps.
We’ve also been joined by Charles Stross, to tell us a little bit about his own writing and his thoughts on science fiction. He reminds us that SF isn’t about naively predicting the future: it’s about figuring out what human beings will make of the future. And here’s Steve. He’s sat round many a fire like this over the years, engaging folk with his thoughts. He’s revisiting a Glasgow SF Convention and talking about two films produced 23 years apart. And we can recommend some books to take with you as you journey on.
Mark has also gathered a fine team of artists to join us and they have captured the essence of each story.
These fine folk are why Mark and I decided to set up Shoreline of Infinity: we wanted somewhere to come to read tales with a twist, fables to explore our uncertain future. Of all the fictions, SF is the one of ideas and possibilities, but just as importantly it’s about how we humans can cope—or otherwise—in a world so intense we are pressured into packing our thoughts into 140 letters. The human race has come a long way and we’re at a point now where we should stop, look around, think about where we are and where we want to go before moving on. As Charles Stross also says, one of the functions of fiction is play, to learn how to manage in life.
Science Fiction is a beach where we can build sandcastles of futures and alternative realities, and here at the Shoreline of Infinity, we have plenty of sand.
One day, maybe you’ll tell us your story?
Noel Chidwick, Editor-in-Chief, Shoreline of Infinity.
Edinburgh
June 2015
The Three Stages
of Atsushi
Larry Ivkovich
Sagami Province, Japan
Muromachi period, 1531 CE
Dressed in a faded and tattered mourning kimono, Michiko appeared wrapped as if in a darkened shroud as she knelt before the hokora shrine. For a moment Atsushi hesitated as he walked toward her, a chill running up his back. Is this my wife? he thought. Or some fallen kami?
A warm breeze carried the faint odor of incense as well as Michiko’s whispered words to Atsushi as he shook himself free of the unease he felt. “Great Amaterasu, Ruler of the Plain of Heaven, hear my plea,” Michiko murmured, her eyes closed, her head bowed, her hands clasped in her lap. On the small wooden shrine’s stone base, the candles’ flames wavered in that errant wind. Once again Atsushi had awakened to find Michiko had stolen away in the dawn’s light to make her futile entreaties to the sun goddess.
It was a beautiful, clear morning with the sunrise casting a dazzling light over his and Michiko’s small farm and its surrounding acreage. The flower gardens Michiko tended were full of warm, bright colors and fragrances. The surface of the Sakawa river glittered on the flat horizon like dancing jewels. Such calmness belied the raging waters of last spring season which had overflowed the Sakawa’s banks to wreak great destruction on all around it.
Atsushi’s rice crop was just beginning to come back a year after the flood; the remaining fruit trees showed their first signs of blossoming. With the help of his neighbors and their bakafu landowner, he had rebuilt his small wooden house and, he had hoped, his and Michiko’s lives as well. But it was not to be, it seemed. He stopped a few feet from Michiko who appeared oblivious to his presence, lost in her endless grief and despair.
“Michiko,” he said, his fists clenched at his side as he fought the storm of emotions warring within him. “Please come away from there.”
“Amaterasu, I beg you, let my son be saved,” Michiko continued as if not hearing him. “Let me bring him back from Death’s dominion. I will offer you anything of myself in return.”
