A single novelette and four short stories make for a nicely balanced month at Clarkesworld, where the theme as I can find it is ghosts and hauntings. In very different ways, the characters of these stories are being haunted. By guilt and by the past. By their mistakes and by the memories they leave behind. These are stories of people being confronted with the ways their paths differ from how they hoped. Disaster looms. And yet most of them are able to snatch back from the edge of the abyss something to help them move forward and not fall in. It’s an interesting bunch of stories, so let’s get to the reviews!
Okay, so it’s a very full month of content from Clarkesworld, with five original stories, all but one of them a novelette. And seeing as how many of the stories have something of a slower pace, this is an issue that might take people a while to get through (it certainly took me some time). he good news is that even if some of the stories are a bit slower and more ponderous, they are still very much worth spending some time with. The focus of the issue for me seems to be the aftermath of great harm and what responsibility the individual has in the face of collective cruelty, corruption, and violence. Each of the stories take a run at this core idea in different ways, from looks at the end of the world to more intimate apocalypses, but they are all emotionally resonant and interesting. So let’s get to the reviews!
Four stories anchor Tor dot com’s SFF short fiction offerings this month, and if I had to find a commonality between them I think I would choose a sort of wandering feeling. Or maybe wandering with a purpose. All four tales are a bit on the slower side, pacing-wise, making for some cerebral and rather philosophical stories. About loneliness and desperation. About purpose and meaning and the direction of life. About finding something to be happy with and something to struggle against. The stories all excel at place, at revealing a strange world. The inside of Abraham Lincoln’s head. An abyss that might be an alien portal. A distant world and a town by a haunted city. A busy hotel next to one of the world’s busiest airports. And in these worlds the readers are invited to learn something, to see something, and to take something with them when they go. So to the reviews!
