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!
I think it might be stretching things a bit to say that the February Clarkesworld is Valentine's Day themed. However, there are a number of stories that do a fine job of being romantic at the same time they are action-packed and morally dense. Most of the stories here lean science fictional, but there is fantasy as well, and a 15k genre-bending story that makes the issue a rather heavy one. No new translations this month, but a fine mix of stories that challenge and provoke. About AI and about dragons and about the humanity of everything. So let's get to those reviews!
Two more weeks of Strange Horizons means one story, two poems, and one article that I'm looking at today. As always, there are things that I'm not getting to review for various reasons but definitely go check out all the offerings. For what's here, there's a nice mix of science fictional pieces with poems that evoke much more a natural fantasy, a sense of nurture and humanity. These two aspects of the weeks' offering makes for a nice balance, a serious examination of life and wonder but also an optimism about the future, about the universe. So I should just get to it!
