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Aberrant Dreams Issue 8 - Summer 2006
01/10/2006 . Source: Rod MacDonald 
pub: HD-Image. The situation with Aberrant Dreams is slightly confusing in that they produce both an on-line and paper version which don't come out at the same time. At the moment, issue 8 is already available on the Internet whereas issue 7 has just been brought out in magazine format. Buy Aberrant Dreams in the USA - or Buy Aberrant Dreams in the UK  check out: www.hd-image.com/aberrant_dreams/index.htm
The situation with 'Aberrant Dreams' is slightly confusing in that they produce both an on-line and paper version which don't come out at the same time. At the moment, issue 8 is already available on the Internet whereas issue 7 has just been brought out in magazine format and I'm reading. Endeavouring to bring you the latest available, here is the review of issue 8.
Todd Lyles is the artist responsible for the front cover. I don't know much about him but he must be a mature person or someone with an old valve radio or both. The image of a being inside the electric atmosphere of a radio is quite intriguing. Unlike most transistors, valves get very hot, much more so than their modern counterparts, and also operate at high voltages. Transformers are necessary, along with lots of other components, making the inside of valve radio a dangerous place. As a child I can remember opening the back of a radio thinking how hostile an environment it was. Now the artist has placed someone inside it. Is this not an aberrant dream resembling a scene from Irwin Allen's 'Land Of The Giants'?
The creature inside the radio is not a human. She, I think it is female, has horns growing from her head and squats over a river of music. Is this what becomes of us when we enter another realm? Todd Lyles comes from Nashville, Tennessee. Look up his website, www.toddlyles.com, and you may find some interesting stuff. I thought his work entitled 'Ronin' was exceptionally good.
The editorial to issue 8 is worth mentioning. It is about the difficulties of getting published but mentions the failings of authors rather than the publishing houses themselves. Editor-in-chief J. Lonny Harper says, 'The opportunities of man are limited only by his imagination. But so few have imagination that there are ten thousand fiddlers to one composer'. Maybe he is correct.
The feature story is 'Aftergame' by Jason D. Wittman. In the middle of a desert there is a chessboard where the pieces fight out a war to the death. On this vast board, an endless series of conflicts take place but despite the intervention of nanotechnology, the pieces are very much battle-weary. The White King Cyrus is a nasty piece of work, intent on winning the battle at all costs, even to the extent of using poison darts. Eventually, the two Queens make a pact against him to put an end to war or so they think. Despite vanquishing the King, they soon realise that there will never be an end to the war game. It goes on and on forever.
I think Wittman is saying to us that we are confined much in the same way as the pieces on this futuristic chessboard. Maybe this board was set up by aliens or even humans with super-technology to be used as a source of amusement. We, too, are governed by the rules dictated by environment and genetics and play out a similar war game which also has no end. The White Queen's momentarily thought of getting away from the chessboard to see what's out there on the desert beyond only to find it was a futile notion.
Of the other fiction, 'Nobodies And Somebodies' by Eugie Foster seems to be straight out of 'The Twilight Zone'. A psychiatrist sees a woman patient who thinks she is suffering from a compulsive behaviour disorder. House and car in the deep south USA have been invaded by first of all, annoying yellow dust, and secondly, a bunch of useless squatters. It turns out the latter are nobody people, the fate that she herself will meet one day. They are invisible to all the somebody people. Of course, the psychiatrist says goodbye only to find yellow dust on his hand. The woman was never actually there. Now the psychiatrist is doomed to be a nobody person!
'Such As Dreams Are Made Of' from Marie Brennan is another 'Twilight Zone' story. A rich developer wishes to knock down a theatre to make way for a new complex worth millions of dollars. Despite ghostly figures trying to persuade him otherwise, he proceeds but is cursed for his trouble. All his dreams and profits will end up in smoke.
'Under The Radical Sign' is a mathematical short story about the life of -4. This clever and witty piece by Ralph Milne Farley leaves you laughing. It is short and sweet.
The other short stories were equally good. In all, there were eight stories, half of which written by women. I do not imagine there is a deliberate policy to include a certain number of stories by women. It does show however a healthy gender distribution in this genre, something which you don't find in other places around the world where men seem to predominate.
This magazine also has a poetry section. 'The Science Museum' written by Clare Kirwan seems innocuous at first but it grows in intensity to finish on a note of self-reflection which is where you probably didn't want to be. Your own mortality stares you in the face!
Many silences are near extinction.
But we can manufacture them
using the exact wavelengths and frequencies
that echo the weighty absence of sound in space,
and we are close to containing
that final silence
when your own music stops,
and your body ceases whispering.
This is the second edition of 'Aberrant Dreams' that I have reviewed. I think it's a good magazine and one which shows improvement. It's an entertaining read.
Rod MacDonald
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