Issue 299 Volume 28 October 2024

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Editorial

Dan L. Hollifield

The Senior Editor's usual rants about whatever…

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Serials and Long Fiction

The Goatmen of Aguirra By Joseph Carrabis Sometimes the best way to understand an alien species is to become one of them—at the cost of your own family.

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Short Stories

The Lost and Lonely Dragon Richard Tornello "Unless you have an open mind, it's easy to confuse the hero for the monster…" Best of Frenemies A Mare Inebrium Story Randy Stuart "The pranks will continue until morale improves…"

Mai Way Or The Highway Jonathan Lowe "When anything can happen, something usually does.."

Cheeky Sorbet George Schaade "There was a flash and an explosion, and like magic she was there. It was Cheeky…" The White Artic Owl Timothy Wilkie "As I got close to the break in the ice, I could see it was a big black swirling cavity of death with no way across…"

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Flash Fiction

Flying to a Party Christopher T. Dabrowski

The Day After The Day the Earth Stood Still Rico Salvatore

The Aphelion Flash Fiction Contest

We run a monthly flash fiction contest in the "Fun and Games" folder in Aphelion's forum. In the contest we post a challenge with a specific theme and genre and participants write a flash story based on the challenge guidelines. The contest is a great place to hone your writing skills, meet some fellow writers, receive some feedback, and possibly win a prize. New participants are always welcome. Submissions for the contest are done through the forum. Flash stories from all of our previous contest challenges are archived in the forum as well.

Over 500 stories are included in our archive. To start reading some of these great flash stories, check out either Index 1 or Index 2.

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Poetry and Filk Music

Halloween Ballad by Max Bindi The Ufologist Smokes His Pipe by G. O. Clark Floating by G. Thomas Edwards

Moon and Mars by J. B. Hogan room with a view by Lori R. Lopez Café Exel-Z-ior: A Zombie Zonnet by Juan Manuel Perez

What's In a Name? by Rico Salvatore Samhain Spirit by Gary Shugar October Planet by Meg Smith

Two Moons of Mars by Kenneth Vincent Walker Dancing With an Elephant by Amirah Al Wassif

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Articles and features

Streaming Chat Shows

At the links below you can find archives of the live-streaming chat shows run by the Director of HallowCon and myself. WARNING: Contains Language!

Stupid O'Clock

Showrunner: Joe McKeel

This show is best described as a group of friends hanging out at a science fiction/fandom convention in the hotel lobby/bar and chatting with everyone that walks up. We October even have a guest or two. We start out with no topic. We spend two hours chatting and reading comments. Many times we never know what we will talk about but we cover many topics. Many times a viewer tosses out a comments and we will chase it down the rabbit hole.

But rest assured we had fun and hopefully you do too.

Brought to you by Hallowcon, Stupid O'clock, and Rising Tide Productions.

A late night, after-hours chat show. The guests featured are SF&F writers, artists, musicians, comic book creators, SMOFs, and members of fandom in general.

Usually, It either starts off slow and boring and picks up speed as guests join in, or it continues on at full speed from whatever discussion was in progress on Stupid O'clock when that show ended. This thing can go on for hours once it gets rolling. Guests are welcome to join at any time, but trolls will be punted for field goals. The content is somewhat PG, or even more adult, but is intended to be entertainment for reasonably adult audiences.

Brought to you by Aphelion Webzine, Hallowcon, Stupid O'clock, and Rising Tide Productions.

All music composed and copyrighted by Dan L. Hollifield, 2022.

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