Animus eMagazine Issue One

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Welcome to issue one of Animus magazine. What you are about to read is a labour of love for all who have been involved in it, from authors and editors to contributors and artists. Some of our stories are set in the distant past, and some in a forseeable future. Some of our reviews are of fantasy books, while some tackle the tougher questions of separating science fact from fiction. However, throughout all of these pieces you can find an abiding love of the genre.

While we don’t exclusively publish Irish authors, we are proud to showcase Irish talent in fantasy and science fiction, genres not often represented in Ireland’s strong literary history. The likes of Feamainn Fola (pronounced ‘famine full-ah’) brings together Irish language, history, seaweed and time travel in a brilliant short story that deftly weaves all these strands and shows the potential of science fiction and fantasy with an Irish twist.

‘Animus’ means spirit, and what we’ve really tried to do with this magazine is capture the spirit of discovery, adventure, and provocation that can be

Editor’s Note

found in science fiction and fantasy. We didn’t want it to just be ‘about’ SFF, but to embody what we thought it meant to us.

The response and support we have gotten since setting up Animus has been amazing, and the quality of submissions really exemplifies the diversity and range of the genres. We hope you enjoy them as much as we have.

Ciara HigginsFounding Editor

Founding Editor: Ciara Higgins

Editor: Rachel Quirke

Cover Illustration: Roslyn O’Carroll

Contents

Foreword 2

Spiders 7

Where Without Walls 17

Halo: Does the Science Hold Up? 25

Review: Dodger 31

Work to Death 35

Review: A Wizard of Earthsea 47

Feamainn Fola 55

Acknowledgements 63

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There is something very singular about Science Fiction. It is the most intellectually and formally ambitious variety of popular fiction. Few commentators have better articulated the significance of Science Fiction in the modern age than J.G. Ballard, who, as far back as 1971, realised that the genre had more to say about the world in which we live in than any other – and that from this “invisible literature” had “sprung the almost intact reality of the Twentieth century”. Ballard also remarked upon the genres increasing ubiquity, in itself an indication, perhaps of the fact that its time had most definitely come. His agent had remarked to him that Science Fiction was “spreading across the world like a cancer. A benign and tolerant cancer, like the culture of beaches. Like green stamps given away at the supermarkets of chance and possibility, science fiction becomes the new currency of an ever-expanding future”. If anything, Ballard’s observation seems even more prescient now than it did back then.

Science Fiction writers very rarely set out to do anything quite so obvious or so crude as to “predict” the future, and yet it has become increasingly obvious that Verne and Wells and Asimov and Clarke not only anticipated, but even, at times, profoundly influenced

Foreword

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the shape of things to come. Long before we became fully aware that the establishment of the internet was the most consequential technological innovation of the late-twentieth century life, authors such as William Gibson, Bruce Sterling and Pat Cadigan were writing novels and short stories which explored the ways in which the information superhighway would begin to change society and humanity. Science Fiction time and again provides us with a framework for thinking about the world in which we live (even someone who has never read Shelley’s novel will know that when the name “Frankenstein” is mentioned in connection with developments in genetics or biomedical science, we are meant to read this real-life development as a “scientists playing God”-style narrative).

Many of the most vociferous fans of the genre will have first read SF in their teens. Science Fiction particularly appeals to readers of this age group because here we find authors grappling with the kinds of philosophical and ethical questions which should occur to any rational, intelligent person who wishes to gain some understanding of his or her place in the world. That this tendency often goes

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hand-in-hand with plots involving elements such as epic space battles, rebellious androids, richly imagined alien worlds and terrifying visions of the dystopian future just makes them all the more engaging and entertaining.

Perhaps more than any other genre, SF encourages us to look at the world around us with fresh eyes, and to consider just how much the immense technological, scientific, and medical changes of the past century have impacted upon who were are, and on who we will become. As a reader, I love Science Fiction because the genre offers up a dazzling array of story types and tropes and narrative possibilities, and because, as well as being intellectually stimulating, it is often immensely entertaining. As an academic, I enjoy discussing Science Fiction with my students because I believe that the genre richly deserves scholarly attention and rewards critical engagement many times over. Philip K. Dick once wrote that, “The very best science fiction ultimately winds up being a collaboration between author and reader, in which both create---and enjoy doing it, [experiencing] the joy of discovery of newness.” Animus magazine will, I hope, help encourage in its readers and contributors

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that same joy of discovery and newness, and in doing so, provide yet further evidence of the genres continuing relevance, significance, and versatility.

Dr Bernice M. Murphy, School of English, Trinity College Dublin

Lecturer in Popular Literature

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It was small enough to hold in the palm of your hand, not that you’d want to. It was dull grey, the underside shiny and sticky with grease. One or two of the cogs were sharp, bright copper, as they had just been replaced.

I turned it over, wound it up, set it down, and watched it stumble and skittle across the floor. It ground to a halt just before the wall, and then clambered up, up, away from me.

Dad said it was better that Emily never found out what happened to the spiders.

“It would have broken her heart, if she knew.”

But she would never find out. Late one night, just under a year ago, we received the automated message that every family dreads.

She had been at a friend’s house. They were all sitting together in the living room, lounging, talking and… her heart stopped. No one knew what to do, none of those idiots thought of calling a doctor or using CPR or even telling their parents. By the time one of them decided to call an ambulance, it was

Spiders

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too late.

She really cared about them. The spiders, I mean. I don’t know why. They were horrible, with their long spindly legs and glossy black eyes. She was fascinated by them, more than that, she really loved them. She was just so sweet like that.

She was probably smart enough to have guessed what was coming. I mean, they had been artificially pollinating for years, and at least bees looked kind of cute… in a fat, fuzzy kind of way. It was only a matter of time before the spiders disappeared as well. Frankly, it was surprising that they held out that long.

I’m scared of the machines. The replacements. The OmniarachnidsTM. The ticking, clacking mechanical spiders that look too much like toys, too cold, too artificial. They are far scarier than the real thing. They are larger, and they have no fear – they would crawl over you if you were in their way. If they stop moving, you have to pick them up, wind them up, and watch them scuttle away.

I’m not sure what Emily would have thought of these replacements, but I like to think that she would hate them just as much as I do.

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“They are an incredibly close match.”

No they’re not.

“People aren’t afraid of the replacements - they look almost elegant.”

So there’s nothing elegant about a whisper-thin arachnid, floating on silk strings? This clunky… thing is somehow more beautiful than the real spiders? What’s so fantastic about these new ones anyway?

“They don’t emit greenhouse gases.”

Maybe you should have thought of that one before.

Emily always used to keep spiders in a row of jam jars on the windowsill. They were never anything remarkable, just the ones that she could find around the house. If anyone found a spider and didn’t let her try to catch it she would throw a tantrum, slamming doors and bursting into tears. Mum refused to get her a tarantula. Still, Emily would treasure the few small brown specimens that lived in her jars - naming them, talking to them, saying goodnight to them all individually, and eventually letting them go.

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Except when her friends came over.

“I don’t want people to think I’m totally weird.”

She would put them in the bottom row of the cupboard and forget about them until long after everyone had gone.

One day she woke up, opened the cupboard, and found that one of them had died from lack of air or food. The jar was all the way at the back, leaning against a pair of high-heeled shoes.

She flushed it down the toilet.

After that, she stopped keeping them altogether. As far as she was concerned, it wasn’t a big deal.

“I still really like spiders, it’s just that I can’t keep every single one I find in my bedroom. Besides, why do you care? You don’t even like them.”

She still kept all of her books about spiders and the photographs she used to take of them. She still wore her necklace with the silver and topaz spider under her shirt; it was her good luck charm. But it just wasn’t the same.

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“I thought you said that only plastic Barbies wear pink dresses.” I pointed out.

“You don’t know what I like and don’t like. And you’re not the boss of me, I can wear whatever I like.”

She was pretty, especially her eyes. Not gorgeous, just pretty. I don’t mean that in a nasty way, I’m just saying that the only way she could have looked as well as she did was to get up two hours before anyone else, use up all of the hot water, and to swear me to secrecy about the eating thing.

I was always afraid of spiders. I used to think that Emily was so brave, picking them up, letting them crawl over her hand, even up her arms. She would laugh and tell me that I was being silly, that just because they looked a bit odd, that didn’t mean that they wanted to hurt you.

“They are really gentle. They don’t want to hurt anyone, they’re just scared. They don’t like it when you scream, because it makes them think that you hate them.”

I doubted that the pesky spider cared what I

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thought.

“She doesn’t hate you.” she crooned to the spider, “No she doesn’t. She’s just a little bit scared.”

We used to go to the park on entirely futile quests to find spiders in the perfectly manicured and maintained grass. Maybe she was just too young to understand, but I remember she was the embodiment of undefeatable optimism. She would crawl, tearing her tights, on the ground while I would hover nearby, nervously nibbling at the edge of my thumb.

Afterwards, we would walk home, dragging our feet. Emily would happily explain exactly why there weren’t any spiders that day: it was too cold, too hot, too windy. The fact that the weather had been regulated for as long as she had been alive didn’t figure into her calculations.

In the fading light of the evening, we would slowly wind our way home and we would talk. I could tell her anything, all of my worries, and she wouldn’t laugh. And not just because I was older. She never seemed overly worried about anything. She would drift through life, like a dandelion seed, eerily confident that everything would work out for the best.

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I could never understand why she liked the spiders, but I hate the mechanical ones even more.

You can hear them, ticking and whirring in the middle of the night. Everyone says they’re harmless, but I swear it sounds like they’re gathering, creeping up on you.

I hear you can swallow spiders in your sleep. Just imagine, waking up one morning, your mouth tasting bitter, like you had swallowed tin.

The worst is when they sneak up on you in the shower. It doesn’t matter if you check beforehand; they can always find a way in: through a vent, a slightly open window, anywhere you had forgotten to look.

I was in the shower when I heard the unmistakeable mechanical ticking, slowly creeping towards me. But then it got caught in a stream of hot, soapy water. It stops, as if it’s somehow aware of the tragic inevitability of the situation. With a barely audible pop, it drops off the wall.

I shrieked (you would too) and stamped on it.

Because I hate it. Because it’s just wrong. It’s not

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real; it’s a sick, sick joke.

My foot’s bleeding, and I haven’t even made a dent. It just sits there, watching me blindly pound it over and over.

I’d like to say that I took no pleasure in it, but I’d be lying.

When my blood ran into the water, forming delicate red blossoms, I realized that it wasn’t just my blood that was leaving, it was everything. All of the hurt and the anger, just gently draining away. Then it stopped working, just for an instant, and I slammed my foot down harder this time. The blood was no longer a thin stream, but still the feeling kept fading away from me, and I felt the pain rushing back in. I had to get it out. I was panting, frantically pumping my leg up and down, vaguely aware that my foot was going to hurt later on. But not now – now, the jolts of electricity sparking up my leg were what made me feel truly alive.

I don’t know why anyone could ever think that killing a spider is wrong, why they act like I’m some sort of monster when one of them dies and I don’t feel sorry.

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Everyone thinks that they’re perfect. They’re so gorgeous and intelligent and talented and… it gets hammered into your head so hard that even you start to believe.

But they’re not. They’re fake, fake… fake.

Tanya Sheehan

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>I

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Enough is enough, he thought. It wasn’t a preposterous proposition. Passion made haste of his pace. He slid his socks along the smooth, clothing-carpeted floor and fell beside a laptop almost lost among the covers of his bed. He opened it, tapping ‘face’ and ‘book’ upon symbol-bearing subtle buttons faster than his taut lips could have woven the word. It loaded. The pixels changed their colours. Then there was her name, her identifier, accompanied by a too tiny picture of her smiling face, lost alongside a list of irrelevants.

Enough is enough, he typed to her.

A pause.

He sprung from his bed to cross the lamp-lit lair for a bottle of water before gravitating back to his computer. Impatient minutes passed. He stared emptily at the furthest possible wall, lost in the lyrics

Where Without Walls

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of some music he’d put on.

What’s wrong now? :P

Retinas snapped to the screen’s glare. Outside it had begun to rain slightly as a siren droned into some corner of the city. He sighed, rapping ravenous fingers on the front of the black plastic of his social device. As cracking dam to pushing river, as captive bird to opening cage, he released long latent sentiments. The close-up blurs the melodrama.

He: Doesn’t all this bother you? Isn’t all this crazy?

She: What’s happened?

Another pause.

He: Nothing’s happened, it’s what’s happen-ing.

Yet another.

She: What’s happen-ing? :P

His hands hovered for a moment.

He: Look at you, look at me, look at everyone we know. We’re in rooms barely big enough for our outstretched arms, we’re slumped in front of screens pretending we’re talking to people when we can’t even

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see their faces, hear their voices, feel their intonation or sense their emotions –

His revolt would indeed have been indiscernible to the onlooker, for his features rested plainly despite his intense intent. Pausing to ponder this, he wondered to what unhealthy haven went emotion when so restricted of its natural outlets.

He stared at the on-screen sentence that informed him she was phrasing. It flickered with her every re-wording. Gary must not have been at hers that night; she never gave much time to replying when he was. He forced himself to imagine her face, bemused as usual by his over-honest outbursts, green eyes squintingly obscured by a left-of-her-lips-lifted smile. His mind raced as it saw her tease dark hair from her face.

She: Sure, it’s not ideal, but that’s just how things are.

A ticking clock somewhere in the still room added to the white symphony the rain made. His posture was square, his hair a short brown snapshot of directionless retreat, his blue eyes seldom blinking in their quiet stare.

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He: I know. But I think I hate it. Screens and walls and chairs and other seats and walls and screens. Why can’t we see each other face to face? - All of us, I mean. The world was never meant to be like this. We were never meant to stay inside and watch the white walls and exchange monochromatic, mostly meaningless lines of thoughtless font and flashes. We watch films, we sing songs, we know novels where people roam around in the wild woods at night with a crowd of close friends and a guitar, singing at the top of their voices, screaming from the top of their lungs, swinging from the top of the trees, diving into the depths of icy water, swimming below the moon and returning to fire and towel. Why don’t we come together and run together, talk together and walk together, joke together and smoke together, drink and dance and draw and dread and dash together, read together and watch together, skip, sit, spin, soak, fall, fear, plot, plan, roll, reap, hunt or hug together. We’re social creatures. We need to gather together to be happy, to be human. It doesn’t have to be all the time, but what we do now is a shadow of that desire – it’s mimicry – it’s like stale bread for want of rich meat, rusty water for want of red wine, a wrapped scarf for want of a friend’s

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embrace, pornography for want of lust, comfort for want of love– a pixelated emoticon for want of a smile.

The words surged, pure and unperturbed, unplanned and unedited, from their subconscious brewing in the brain through the neck, to the chest, by the shoulders, down the arms, to the hands and the fingers to the qwerty keys and the air, through long and thin and vast and stretching wires to a screen to green eyes, squintingly obscured by a left-of- her-lips-lifted, flickering smile. Haven’t we all thought it? She was half way under her bed covers, wearing a loose black jumper which pooled on smudged paper each time she lowered her arm to add lines to her sketching. She chewed small dents into the tail of a yellow pencil as she read the lunatical lucidity. Elsewhere on the computer Gary was writing something or other to her. Her roof too hosted the heaves of the heavens; rain dripped down the windows as she slowly finished re-rereading the tumultuous message and wistfully glanced at what she had been drawing that evening: grey graphitic bodies, buoyant in the motions of colourful celebration. That boy questioned

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everything, that contagious boy.

She did not know how to reply.

He waited with the familiar despair of having over-done. Breathless seconds became still minutes, until the minutes gathered in their fives and tens and twenties and the night soaked up any lingering light. He fought some silence-birthed urge to type an apology for his flourish.

He closed the laptop dejectedly and began to head towards the shower.

His phone shook with the implication of a message. He didn’t hesitate to check it. An image: grey graphitic bodies, buoyant in motions of colourful celebration, wonderfully detailed in all but their intentionally hidden, namelessfaces.

She’d felt it too.

The rain outside intensified, where streaks of silver moonlight made reaches through the clouds. He was still and still smirking. The phone shook again as he stared at the image. He didn’t rush this time. His hopeful imagination saw lips slightly parted, impressed by something he had started, a body set to spring and

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to dress and take to wing. He yearned to read what could only be her sacred second message; a message which for all the wonders hidden in amongst the sometimes stagnant, dark dystopia of a wild and whirling world ought only to forewarn fantasy.

Alright, let’s go.

Æ

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An interstellar war? A cybernetically enhanced super-soldier? Parasitic alien life forms? All centered around mysterious ring-shaped megastructures called Halos. The famous multi-billion dollar science-fiction video game franchise, Halo, follows the experiences of Master Chief and his artificial intelligence companion, Cortana, in epic first person shooter combat.

The Halo installations, of which there are seven, are large habitable rings with their own climates, environments and ecosystems. But is there any real physics to back up these magnificent yet fictional structures?

The first appearance of the halo rings shows us a system with it’s own climate ranging from barren deserts to lush, green forests to picturesque, snowy

Halo: Does the Science Hold Up?

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landscapes. There are also oceans present on these peculiar ringworlds. But let us start with the most basic of basics, none of this could exist without gravity! Any atmosphere would simply leak out into space without some sort of attractive force.

We are told that gravity on the ring is artificially produced by the centrifugal force caused by the rings rotation, but what does that mean exactly? Imagine you are spinning while holding a rope with a rock tied to the other end, the force you feel pulling away from you is a centrifugal force, the faster you spin the greater the force will be. It is this centrifugal force that simulates the effect of gravity on a Halo ring. However let’s consider how fast the ring would need to be spinning in order to achieve a sufficient centrifugal force equivalent to that of earth’s gravitational force.

We are told the diameter of one of the Halo rings is 10,000km, this is comparable to the earth’s diameter of 12,715km. With a diameter that size the ring would need to rotate at a velocity of 7km per second to produce ‘earth-like’ gravity. That’s roughly twenty times faster than the speed of sound. A velocity of this magnitude would bring with it a whole host of problems, such as how would you land on the ring? As

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a result, in the Halo game the ring does not actually spin that fast, we are told it uses some sort of field to artificially generate gravity but no further detail is given.

So what is Halo made of? In the games, analysis of the ring’s composition proves “inconclusive”, implying that the Halos are constructed of science-fictions favourite unknown material, unobtainium. But if a Halo were to be constructed using conventional materials, a light steel alloy would most likely be feasible. Assuming that the ring structure is 50% empty space, a 5000km (half the size of our original 10,000km structure) ring composed of steel alloy at an average density of 7.7 grams per 1 cubic centimeter would result in a total mass of 1.7x1017kg. The amount of material required to build such a ring would be akin to the total material available in our solar system’s asteroid belt.

As seen in the games, Halo installations feature a massive wall on the sides of the structure which, combined with the centrifugal force produced by the ring’s rotation, keep the environment from leaking into space. What appear to be docking ports and windows dot the exterior surface, suggesting

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that a fraction of the ring structure itself is hollow and used for maintenance, habitation, and power generation.

Another important question we need to ask is, where is Halo located? The installation we are considering, in Halo: Combat Evolved, is located in orbit around a gas giant at a geometric position called a Lagrange point.

So let’s assume that the Halo’s position is stable, the structures would have to contend with thousands of meteor and micrometeor impacts which would destabilize or destroy the ring. Thus it would need some sort of protective shield – but there is no evidence of this in the games.

Because of the magnetic environment around the gas giant, a Halo would be exposed to high levels of radiation. On Earth, we are protected from harmful charged particles by our planet’s magnetic field. In Halo’s case, one suggestion is that huge conductive cables could run the circumference of the ring. Once an electrical current is applied through these cables, a protective magnetic environment could be created, capable of sustaining life.

As cool as Halo is, the chances of such a structure

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ever existing are slim to none with the current technology we possess but maybe by 2531 (the year in which Halo is set) we’ll be lucky enough to come across something similar already built by a now extinct, advanced alien race. The universe is a big place.

Slaine Power

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Review: Dodger by Terry

Pratchett

Terry Pratchett’s Dodger is set in a version of Victorian London. While Dodger is not one of the Discworld novels, the landscape of the novel has all the attention to detail and comprehensive world-building that the Discworld series is famous for. Dickensian London, in all its filth and vigour, is so deftly realised that the city becomes a character in its own right. The reader is brought on a journey through the appalling conditions of the poorest parts of London, described in all their teeming squalor, to the houses of the rich and politically powerful.

As with all Pratchett’s novels, Dodger is populated with characters who parody well-known historical and/or literary figures. Charles Dickens, Henry Mayhew (to whom the book is dedicated), Robert Peel, Sweeney Todd and Benjamin Disraeli all make appearances.

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Dodger, the eponymous hero of the tale, is a re-imagining of Charles Dickens’ character from Oliver Twist. Pratchett’s Dodger is a tosher: one who works in the city sewers, sifting through the human detritus, scavenging for coins and other items of value.

The novel begins, as many adventures do, on a dark and stormy night. Dodger comes to the rescue of a young woman, Simplicity, who has being badly beaten. Dickens and Mayhew take Simplicity into their care and charge Dodger with the task of discovering who the young woman is and why people are trying to kill her. Dodger, with the help of his friend Solomon, a re-invented Fagin figure, becomes an almost overnight celebrity as he navigates his way out of the world of drains and sewers and into the political arenas of London and Europe.

In Dodger Pratchett brings to bear all the characteristics of his writing that have made him enormously popular with readers over the years. The strong three-dimensional characterisations, humour, wit and social satire are all present. However, the true success of the novel lies with the immense likability of Dodger. He is a diamond in the rough: intelligent, savvy, and both tough and touchingly vulnerable. In short, he is a

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loveable rogue and the novel is both an entertaining yarn and fascinating exploration of Victorian London.

Joanne Nolan

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Crap. I was going to be late. Who ever heard of the Grim Reaper being late?

I ran up another flight of stairs, passing some guy in a suit who couldn’t see me. Oh sure, they give me invisibility for my first assignment, but the ability to walk through walls? Time travel or teleportation? Oh no, that’s for later, when I’m more ‘experienced’. For now I had to climb the damn stairs like an idiot and I was expected to be there on time.

I reached the top of one flight and turned onto the next one. My runners squeaked as I swung around on the railing. Raindrops dripped from my hair onto my shoulders and clumps of dark, wet hair stuck to my face. With all this exercise I wouldn’t be surprised if I looked like a drowned rat by the time I got to the top, drenched in rain and sweat. I was just grateful I wore my black shirt today.

What happens if Death is late, anyway? I couldn’t be the first rookie that underestimated the time it would take to get to a job… right?

Work to Death

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I started taking the stairs two at a time, getting halfway up another flight before tripping on a step. I banged my knee off the stairs and dropped the scythe to stop myself from face-planting. It clattered back down to the previous landing.

“Shit.” I darted down after it, picked it up and continued my upward climb to failure, swearing profusely.

Why couldn’t they have given me an easier task? Maybe in a hospital, where everything is easily accessible and mapped out? Nope, I had to go to the top floor of a building tall enough to be a skyscraper, that just so happened to have a broken elevator. No wonder this guy was going to die. I was only half way there and my heart felt like it was about to give out.

That would be a great story for the guys: on his first day the Grim Reaper had a heart attack. Or fell to his own death down six flights of stairs because his wet, squeaky runners made him slip.

Finally, I was at the top floor. I paused to get my breath back. I looked at my watch as I panted and leaned against the wall. The digital numbers changed from 12:42 to 12:43 as I watched. Okay, I was only

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two minutes late. That wasn’t so bad, right? This guy couldn’t have done anything too important that would dramatically and irreversibly change the course of the world because he was supposed to be dead for the past 120 seconds. Right?

I was so fired.

I stepped out of the bright stairwell and into a narrow hallway. I looked at the back of my hand where I had scribbled the numbers 729. The closest door had 702 on it. I started running down the hall.

I ran past mustard coloured walls and cheap paintings. Then I ran past them again going the other direction. And then again.

I was going to kill whoever designed this building, with their faulty elevators and their stupid idea to put the room 729 on an easily missed adjacent hallway, all by itself and nowhere near rooms 728 or 730. They were so going to die. I didn’t care if my bosses claimed it was ‘an abuse of power’. No one who had a thought process that illogical deserved to live.

I glanced at my watch again outside room 729, only

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slightly out of breath. Three minutes late. Shit.

I knocked on the door, then cringed and smacked my forehead. Of course the Grim Reaper knocks before he comes in, severs you from the material world and ushers you into the unknown. Because he’s just polite like that. I wondered how the other guys were doing on their first days.

“Come in,” a voice called from inside the room.

I turned the handle and stepped in. It was a typical office. Thousands of rooms existed all over the world that were carbon copies of this one.

A wooden desk commanded my attention once inside. A large, middle-aged man sat behind it and a large, middle-aged bookcase stood behind him. It looked like mahogany, and was filled with dusty books that were as much for decoration as the fake palm tree in the corner, trying to give a false sense of happiness. Artificial light dominated the room, leaving whatever natural light there was to cower around the edges of the windows.

The man looked up from his papers. “What can I help you with?” he asked. At least he hadn’t been on the

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phone with the President or something.

My first thought was that all of his hair seemed to have migrated from the top of his head to the rest of his face. While his mouth was only locatable by guessing where his moustache ended and his beard began, the crown of his head was competing with the room’s light bulb for how bright it could shine.

“Um,” I said professionally. The guy raised his bushy eyebrows.

You would think that they would have told us how to do this. Oh sure, they tell you all the practical stuff: how to swing the scythe, how to open another dimension, how to not cut yourself with your own scythe. But during all that training, no one ever thought to tell us how to bring up the fact that someone was about to die.

I settled for: “Um…I have some news you might not like.”

The man sat back in his chair and waited for me to go on.

“Uh…” Might as well start with introductions. “I’m Death.”

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The man raised his eyebrows again, and then assumed an air of slight annoyance. “I don’t have time for games, young man.” He went back to his papers.

This wasn’t going well. “I really am the Grim Reaper.” I looked around desperately. “I have the scythe.” I gestured with it.

“You’re too late for Halloween.” He glanced at me. “And a little too old for Halloween, I’d say.”

“I…I’m sorry, but….your time is up-“

“Look son,” he said impatiently. “I don’t have time for whatever prank you’re playing. So you can go find someone else to play it on.”

I must not be the first to have this problem. How did the other Deaths convince people that they weren’t kidding? Or did they just hit them over the head with the scythe and explain afterwards?

“I can prove it.” I said. I lifted up the scythe and swung it back.

“Careful with that thing,” warned the man.

I swung the scythe through the air, making that noise metal makes when it flies through space and only finds

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air molecules in the way. But a Grim Reaper’s scythe doesn’t just cut the air molecules. It cuts through them, slicing past them and opening the next world, the Other. A huge portal opened, big enough to swallow a fully grown man and terrify the most audacious of souls.

Or, at least, that’s what’s supposed to happen. This time the scythe settled for just making the whoosh noise.

The guy looked at me. That’s all I’ll say, because everyone knows how he looked at me. Almost everyone has been looked at like that, and no one has enjoyed it. It’s the look that says “You forgot to pay your brain bill today, didn’t you?”

This had to be the worst first day ever.

“Let me try one more time.” I said desperately.

I took a deep breath. I tried to focus on my training but all I could think was ‘Don’t mess up again, for the love of everything good, don’t mess up.’

I shook my head to clear it and took a deep breath. I swung again. Nothing happened. “Oh, come on!” I complained.

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“Look,” the man got up from his chair. “I don’t have time for thi-“

I swung again in a desperate last ditch attempt and, mercifully, this time it worked. The scythe severed the air molecules and opened the other dimension.

The guy stumbled back. “Holy-” He seemed to think that would suffice to summarise the situation.

He stared at the portal. The edges of it looked torn where the scythe had cut through. Looking into it, it reminded me of a 3-D movie. A really advanced one, that made the world around it look flat and fake. It glowed with a light foreign to this world, a kind of dark brightness. Or that’s how the bosses described it anyway. They seemed fond of paradoxical descriptions.

I huffed out a satisfied breath. “See,” I said, gesturing to the portal. “Proof.”

The man stared at the hole in reality that had appeared in the centre of his office. Then he stared at me.

“Wha- how… what’s…?” was his clever response.

“I told you, I’m Death. Your life here is over. It’s time to go.” I was feeling a bit more confident now. Apart

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from being late and the scythe malfunctioning, this was going quite well.

The man had sat back down in his seat, which I didn’t think was a proactive step in the whole concept of ‘time to go’.

The guy seemed to collect himself, and then started shuffling papers around his desk. “Regardless of this development, I’ll need a day to set my affairs in order. Come back in the evening.”

I stared at him. You’ve got to be kidding me. “I don’t think you get it, man. I’m the Grim Reaper. You can’t just tell me to hit the road and come back with an appointment.”

“I don’t have any meetings for the rest of the day. You won’t be required to make an appointment, just come back later.”

I took a deep breath and told myself that it would be unprofessional to throw the scythe out the window. “Look, I’ve had a really bad day, and I have to be someplace else after you. Can’t you just do me a favour and climb in the hole?”

“I’m sorry about your bad day, but I must get this

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report sorted out before I go anywhere.” He continued arranging papers.

I rolled my eyes and tried to cool my rising temper. What did he care? He was going to die! In just a moment it wouldn’t be his problem anymore, and he wouldn’t be mine. I stared at him a short while as he scribbled on his papers. I shrugged and figured the worst that could happen is that I would have a pissed off ghost telling me I should respect my elders.

I lifted the scythe above my head and brought it down over the desk and his shoulders. The man looked up at me. Or, a fuzzy blue version of the man looked up at me. Then he looked down. His old body leaned on the desk. Slumped in its seat, with its head resting on the papers and the pen still in its hand. Like a student falling asleep in class.

The ghost looked at me again, appearing very affronted. “You could have at least left me in a more dignified position.”

I shrugged. “I’m sorry about your unceremonious death, but I had to kill you before I go anywhere else.”

The phantom stood up and adjusted his suit. A suit

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that technically didn’t exist. “Very well. Where will I be going?” he asked, moving toward the portal.

“Uh… trade secret,” I said.

He looked at me. I shrugged. “You know, a ‘for me to know and you to find out’ kind of thing.”

“I take it you don’t know then.”

I exhaled at the air above my head. “Just get in the hole.”

He stepped through and began a part of his journey that I had nothing to with. Thankfully.

After a few tries I managed to close up the portal. For my first assignment I thought that had gone fairly well. Now I was off to the next one.

I glanced at my watch. Aw man, I was going to be late!

Niamh Connaghan

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Review: A Wizard of Earthsea

By Ursula K. Le Guin

As a first review for a magazine that has been gracious enough to host my seemingly self-deprecating but secretly self-righteous ramblings, it seems only fitting to go back to basics and talk about one of the landmark books that ushered me into the cramped, clammy convention hall that so many imagine the fantasy fandom to be.

Now, absolute impartiality as a reviewer is difficult enough without adding opinions formed since childhood into the mix. Tastes change, the mind expands/contracts (your mileage may vary), and sometimes childhood favourites are best left in the

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airy, rosy-tinted chambers of nostalgia where the world is benevolent, Disney is king, and blue crayons are a staple of any healthy diet.

It was with great trepidation that I cracked open my well-worn copy of Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea with the intention of bringing the considerable mental mass gifted by an English degree to bear upon it. Just as a HD viewing of the original ‘Star Wars’ trilogy is enough to leave even the most devout Jedi suffering stop-motion nightmares, so too can the creeping tendrils of cynicism and self-importance strangle all the fun from something that used to entertain and delight.

Coming along somewhere in my heady pre-teen fog between Tolkien and Jordan, Le Guin’s first entry in the series recounts the tale of the wizard Sparrowhawk – intrepid voyager, friend to dragons and one of the most powerful mages ever to have lived in the mythical archipelago that he calls home. This story, however, is of a time before his name is written in myth, when Sparrowhawk is simply the boy Ged, prone less to world-bending deeds of magical prowess as he is to acts of hormone-charged teenage fuck-uperry.

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In a contest of strength with his rival, Ged attempts to summon the dead and inadvertently looses a nameless shadow upon the world, killing his master in the process. Left broken and desiring only to live out his days in solitude, Ged must instead confront the evil that is inextricably connected to him and decide whether he would rather live a hunted life, or risk it as a hunter.

Written as children’s literature, A Wizard of Earthsea still has much to offer for even the most self-important of us. Though certainly a coming-of-age tale, it deals less with coming into power as it does the limits of power, and the need for compassion and humility to temper it. Through Ged, Le Guin’s brand of schoolboy sorcery resonates less with Harry Potter as it might with a pre-pubescent Gandalf; rather than embarking on some mystical Rocky montage towards enlightenment, Ged’s is a tale where our hero falters and fails, and of what must follow.

The story is particularly refreshing in that, rather than hinging on a cataclysmic battle between good and evil, Ged’s danger is a solitary, and thus infinitely more personal one. In the face of this

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danger he is often desperate and cowardly, but his choice to face this fear lest the shadow overcome and work evil through him had plenty to say about the relationship between power and responsibility before Tobey Maguire came along and wept all over it.

The prose is simple and sufficiently atmospheric to lend a mythic quality while remaining accessible to the young audience for whom it is intended. The world-building too is minimalistic, the various lands and reaches of the archipelago diverse enough to lend a satisfying scale to the world without the author indulging in the redundant over-description that can turn features of a market scene into something more akin to Tom Bombadil’s lost shopping lists. That last sentence being a perfect example, really.

The setting of A Wizard of Earthsea is notable also in the departure from medieval myth and romantic conventions, trappings that have come to define the genre in Tolkien’s wake. Far from Anglo-Saxon knights thundering through the countryside with mass epidemics of swooning trailing in their wake, the people of Earthsea are dark-skinned island dwellers who wield oars and fishing lines more comfortably than swords.

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In fact, skill, power and strength at arms have little meaning when it comes to Ged’s final confrontation with the shadow – having been constantly outrun, outfought, and outwitted by his enemy at every turn, it is only in recognizing the shadow as a manifestation of his own potential for corruption and accepting that side of himself that he is able to prevail. Convenient, you might argue, but a refreshing change from ‘the power was inside you all along’ to ‘the soul-devouring evil was inside you all along’.

(There is also a section where Ged philosophizes on intricate notions of life and death before sailing off to dispatch almost an entire horde of dragons in the space of perhaps ten pages, so there’s certainly an inherent balance between deep themes/general murder that should appeal to any well-adjusted ten year old, really.)

To conclude a review that has likely ended up more lengthy than the book itself, Ursula LeGuin’s A Wizard of Earthsea is one of my more memorable early introductions to the fantasy genre, and one that affords me just as much enjoyment to read today as it did a decade ago, due to the author’s

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absolute determination not to condescend. Deep in theme, simple in delivery and subtle in the departure from many tropes that too often seem in-built, A Wizard of Earthsea has much to say on the topics of failure, courage and awareness of the self. And also, dragons.

Ruairí Moore

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“Thief!”

Phoebe didn’t look around to see her accuser – she barely even registered the angry female voice as she quickened her pace, knowing that everything would be alright once she reached the cave. Her footsteps grew ever faster, raven hair falling around her face, tangled with silver hairpins.

“Stop! Trespasser!” The voice rang out again, nearer this time. Phoebe shoved her hair back behind her ear and risked a glance behind her, only to see Níamh, the local chieftain’s daughter, accompanied by a pair of well-armed guards. The guards obviously weren’t taking this mission as seriously as their young mistress, as they lagged an ever-increasing distance behind her. The princess had not noticed this as she ran on, barefoot with her woollen skirts hitched up in one hand and an over-sized sword held awkwardly in the other, golden hair streaming behind her.

Although Níamh was waving her sword haphazardly, she didn’t shout again. She was much closer now, and Phoebe realised with a sinking heart that there was no longer much hope of reaching

Feamainn Fola

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the cave ahead of her pursuer. With all the discretion she could manage whilst running, Phoebe drew a short silver-edged dagger. She gripped it tightly, her knuckles sharply pointed as though trying to break free of the pale skin that enclosed them. With her other hand she hoisted up her skirts, no longer caring whether or not anyone caught a glimpse of the white-spotted black wellingtons she was wearing. Phoebe’s brown leather saddle-bag, hung carefully across her side to hide her dagger’s jewel-encrusted sheath, was banging awkwardly against her right leg. She knew it was slowing her down, but it contained virtually all her possessions - a pair of ripped jeans, a slightly squashed powdered wig, a scrap of money, a neon pink tank top, white silk gloves, a Game Boy Advance, and Níamh’s mother’s precious locket - she couldn’t just abandon it as she ran to safety.

With the rich blue material of her skirts clutched in her right hand, Phoebe piled on the speed, rubber boots pounding rhythmically against the wet sand. To her left, the grey waves crashed violently onto the beach while the rugged green landscape rose steeply on her right. The steel grey storm clouds matched the fiery determination in her eyes as she charged towards a

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damp, dull cave, barely more than a crevice in the cliff-face ahead. The unforgiving seawater pooled across the cave’s floor, but she could still just about make out the blood-red colour of the seaweed she so desperately needed to reach.

Níamh shouted out again, but Phoebe didn’t have enough spare brainpower to even process the words. There was only one thing she could even consider focusing on, the one thing that had the power to keep her alive. She knew that the guards thought they had her cornered and wished desperately that Níamh would give up the frantic chase under the same mistaken belief. No such luck was to be had though, it seemed.

The walls of the cave came ever closer, rising before her, a bleak monstrosity of safety. Moss clung to the walls, stagnant water pooling in the narrow entryway. Spiralling tendrils of deep red seaweed rose from the water in groping handfuls, seeming almost like they were teasing Phoebe as she raced towards them.

It seemed an eternity before Phoebe finally splashed into the cave’s entrance. The harsh, damp smell of

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rot immediately assaulted her nostrils and she bunched her skirts up further in a futile attempt to try to keep herself dry as she bent over slightly to reach the seaweed.

“Stop right there.” Phoebe swore under her breath in a most unladylike manner- she had thought she managed to outrun Níamh. She stood without cutting the seaweed, knowing it was a bad idea, but also knowing that Níamh would have her killed before she managed to eat it. She turned, releasing her skirts so that they swirled around her, slowly turning purple in the reddish water of the cave.

“Why should I?” Phoebe needed to think fast. She had to decide what to do before the guards reached the cave, and she had to make sure that Níamh wouldn’t go blabbing about the properties of the seaweed - ideally, she had to keep her from finding out at all, but that seemed fairly impossible. Níamh took a step forward, her sword slicing through the dark surface of the water.

“You stole my mother’s locket. You were planning on cutting the feamainn fola. That seaweed is cursed, cutting it is a punishable crime in itself.” Níamh’s voice

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was low and threatening, but Phoebe wasn’t afraid of her.

“If the seaweed is cursed, amn’t I doing you a favour by helping to get rid of it?” She was afraid of the guards, who were surely only seconds away, and she was afraid of being captured. Mostly though, she was afraid of death, and the dawning realisation that she would do anything to avoid it. Níamh glared.

“You won’t escape you know. You’re already as good as dead.” Níamh said, standing taller and evidently trying to sound more like the princess she was.

That was it - the decisive moment. Phoebe took a deep breath and pointed at the swirling tendrils of seaweed below her.

“Do you know why people think this seaweed is cursed? It’s because when you eat it, you are transported to another time. But if you watch someone else eat it, it’s like they just disappear into thin air. And for the most part, they don’t come back. But it’s not cursed, honestly, you haven’t lived until you’ve tried it.” Phoebe was taking a huge risk here, she knew. If Níamh didn’t try the seaweed, she

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was in deep water – and not just literally.

“Time travel? You mean you can travel back in time, to change things?” There was more than a slight note of uncertainty in Níamh’s voice – her mother had been killed by a wolf when she was younger – the temptation to go back to save her must have been nearly overwhelming. Not that you got to choose exactly when the feamainn fola brought you to though, even for Phoebe it was hard to control when she ended up, and she had been using it for most of her life. It would be impossible for a beginner to have any influence over it.

“Of course!” Phoebe nodded, “Just decide what year you want to end up in, it brings you right there!”

“And... I could be back before the guards realise I’m gone? I’ll have to take you with me – you’re still being imprisoned, at least.” Níamh glanced over her shoulder. “Quick, what do I do?”

“Let me cut it for you – hold on to my cloak if you want, then you’ll be taken with me if I disappear.” She bent down and quickly cut several stems of the seaweed, their dark red flesh staining her hands. Níamh clutched onto her damp cloak, looking uncertain and

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scared, the oversized sword left propped against the cave wall. Phoebe smiled at her gullibility, took a bite of seaweed before Níamh could stop her, and willed herself desperately into the future.

There was a brief whirlwind of colour and sound before the pair splashed into slightly deeper water than before. Phoebe whirled to face Níamh, who looked woefully disorientated.

“You were right you know.” She said, ignoring the sickening twisting in her stomach. “The feamainn fola is cursed. It needs fresh, young blood in order to grow.” She grabbed Níamh into a headlock, pressing the tip of her dagger gently into the princess’ neck. “I couldn’t do this before, because I knew you’d scream, and those guards would’ve killed me. And I didn’t want to risk word spreading if you saw me disappear – that seaweed’s mine. Because nothing ages us but our passage through time, if I never spend more than a day or two in one era, then I’ll never really age. The feamainn fola will let me live forever.” She pressed the knife harder against Níamh’s throat, forced herself to tolerate the screams and struggling. She had never killed anyone before; usually she just took a pint or two of

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her own blood. But Níamh had left her with no choice.

Phoebe relaxed as she saw the time-proof seaweed get longer and healthier with each drop of blood that fell on it. She dropped Níamh’s lifeless body into the water and pulled herself out of the cave. She ditched her blood-stained skirt and cloak in favour of the jeans from her bag and took a moment to secure the locket around her neck. Phoebe knew it was the sort of thing that would fetch a good price in any era – a safety net of sorts, for even if she didn’t age, she would still need food and lodgings in order to survive. That done, she gave a furtive glance across the span of the beach and blood-soaked water. It was early morning, and she could see nothing but the undulating slopes of the gentle Renaissance landscape. So she took another bite of the seaweed, and soared guiltlessly into the future. She was free.

Síofra Dowling

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For her endless patience and exceptional editorial skills, Rachel Quirke must be thanked as the driving force behind getting these words onto your screen.

Many thanks to Matthew Corbally, Elena Browne and Joanne Nolan for their invaluable guidance and input. Check out Elena and Joanne’s great children’s fiction magazine, which was an inspiration for Animus, at www.tlgmagazine.org.

To Roslyn O’Carroll, thank you for making such an amazing cover out of a half-baked and vague idea that I threw your way.

Likewise, thanks to the talented Chelsea Bonus for helping to create the Animus logo and look. Find her incredible art at www.chelseabonus.com.

Finally, a massive thanks to all the authors and all those who have supported us at our events and through our Facebook and Twitter.

Acknowledgements