Aphelion Issue 294, Volume 28
May 2024
 
Editorial    
Long Fiction and Serials
Short Stories
Flash Fiction
Poetry
Features
Series
Archives
Submission Guidelines
Contact Us
Forum
Flash Writing Challenge
Forum
Dan's Promo Page
   

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Issue 304 Volume 29 April - May 2025

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Archives Editorial Serials and Long Fiction Poetry and Filk Music Short Stories Flash Fiction Features Series

Editorial

Dan L. Hollifield

The Senior Editor's usual rants about whatever…


Serials and Long Fiction

From famine to fortune! This issue begins not one, but two long serials: Galaxy's Game in ten parts, and Bad Manners in four parts! All at the same low price!




Galaxy's Game, Part 3

Galaxy's Game, Part 4
Gareth D Jones
The protagonist trades gunfire on the first page, so wherever else this story goes, I don't think it will be boring.

Bad Manners, Part 3

Bad Manners, Part 4
Randolph Stuart
A murder mystery in which many of the characters have nursery-rhyme names …

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Short Stories

April 2025

Della
Timothy Wilkie
"She was my partner, then she wasn't, then she was…"

Dreams
Daniel Burnbridge
"To sleep, perchance to dream…"

Meeting Nefertiti?
David Baresch
"What you see is real. Or is it?"

The Comet
Meg Smith
"Comets were just dust and flame and ashes…"

The New World
Ramprasath Rengasamy
"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

May 2025

The Devil’s Food Take
Randolph Stuart
A Writers Challenge II story and a Mare Inebrium Story
"Anything can happen in the Mare Inebrium…"

The Golden Girl
H.L. Dowless
"Somewhere in the darkest recesses of her mental voice, a gentle whisper reassured her that a new time would one day arrive…"

Darkness
John Powers
"We all face our own individual form of darkness…"

The Game Called Destiny
Pastor Nesbitt
"It was all a game, but played for keeps…"

The Dark Witch
Adam Wroot
"Escape is possible, yet the price may be high…"

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Flash Fiction

Nothing Works Unless You Do
Christopher T. Dabrowski

Bookshop Cat
Timbray Shafer


Wall Breach
Alper Ghuchlu

Shards of a New Life
Gareth D. Jones

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

To Tower Again
David Baresch

Something Else Came Through
Gary Davis

Untitled
Alper Ghuchlu

Eternity's Edge
J. B. Hogan

The Council of Clouds
Juan Manuel Perez

Alchemy of Faerie Godmothers
Deborah Sage

Entropy's Dance #3
Rico Salvatore

Fractal Cats
Meg Smith

In the Bowels of a Horse-Shaped Cloud
Stephanie Smith

Judgement Day
Max Bindi

The Space-Indian Song
Juan Manuel Perez

Is it That Too?
Rico Salvatore

At the Centre of Chaos
Stephanie Smith

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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 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 December 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 Hallowcon, Stupid O'clock, and Rising Tide Productions.

Last Man Standing

Showrunner: Dan L. Hollifield

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 Aphelion Webzine, Hallowcon, Stupid O'clock, and Rising Tide Productions.

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

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