It’s a fairly large October issue from Clarkesworld, with four short stories, one novelette, and one novella. As usual, the stories lean more science fiction than fantasy, and deal with people struggling with loss, with grief, with death, and with the prospect of ruination. The stories find characters who have been through Some Shit, and are dealing with that in various ways. Veterans, star ship captains, drug addicts, the narrators and main characters face situations beyond their experience, where they must look into a new frontier, an alien face, and decide what to do next. Some of the reactions are violent, some tender, and all are worth checking out. To the reviews!
It’s another big issue from Clarkesworld, with five short stories (including one Korean translation) and one novelette. And a lot of the stories deal with colonization and death, religion and intolerance. The characters are often faced with people who are different, and must decide how to approach that. With fear and hatred? With distrust? With a hunger for exploitation? At their most hopeful, the stories imagine a future with humans among the stars, embracing a vast community and cooperation. At their bleakest, they reveal people victimized and destroyed by dogma and fear. All in all, though, it’s a rich and complex issue full of big ideas and careful character work. To the reviews!
It’s a full month of fiction and Clarkesworld, with seven stories (six short stories, one novelette), including two different translated pieces (one from Chinese and one from the brand new line of Korean SFF that the publication will be putting out this year). And the pieces by and large focus on the past, and on family, and on trying to recover from the world having gone in some unexpected directions. The characters are looking for people that they cannot find, that are no longer there to be found, and it’s some emotional, rending work, but also full of resilient hope, and audacious survival, and there are tons of moments of tenderness and compassion and love even in settings torn apart by war and violence and loss. And yeah, let’s dive into the reviews!
This is rather a loaded issue of Clarkesworld. With five original stories, two of them translations, it's a bit longer than a normal issue. Plus, the stories themselves aren't by and large short (two of them coming in over 7k). But it's also loaded in the sense that it packs quite the emotional kick. Rare is it that I'm confronted with so many touching stories all in the same issue. So a very good month for the publication, plus a piece of nonfiction that takes an interesting look at the craft of creative writing. Enough talk, though—to the reviews!
