I’m still chugging along reading my two regular magazines, and there was plenty of short fiction that I’m really excited to talk about this month. Let’s dive in!
Clarkesworld
I usually discuss each issue of Clarkesworld in the order that the stories are listed in the table of contents, but this issue has me mentally organizing it a bit differently. There are three stories that just seem designed to appeal to me in particular (spoiler: they did) and three more that really leaned in to weird or unsettling biology. So this month, I’m going out of order and presenting them the way they’re grouped in my head, starting with the tarvolon bait.
The tarvolon bait did indeed start with the very first story of the issue, The Music Must Always Play by Marissa Lingen. This one jumped out at me from the very first line, “[t]he aliens took a large part of Mankato, Minnesota, with them when they went.” I love first contact stories, and this one combines first contact with a couple other themes I really enjoy. The alien visitation is a tragedy, with no extraterrestrial survivors, and the societal processing of that tragedy combines with the main character dealing with a family member’s cancer treatment to serve as a backdrop to her attempts to piece together linguistic meaning from the remains of the ship. It’s not a story that’s going to wow you with a jaw-dropping moment of convergence, but it does a great job exploring the often-frustrating rhythms of scientific research in the context of large and small-scale tragedies.
Another story that gripped me from the moment I saw the setup was Broken by Laura Williams McCaffrey. It’s a tale told in reverse, starting with a digital warrior plugging back in to what has become her entire world, then slowly peeling back layers from the days she spent dealing with technological failures, and the growing suspicion that the world may not be the way she was led to believe. I love both creative story structures and tales of suppressed information, and this one came together wonderfully.
But perhaps my favorite piece in the entire issue is A Theory of Missing Affections by Renan Bernardo, which blends historical research with a family drama between siblings with vastly different worldviews. One is dedicated to the study of a godlike race that has vanished and left behind a wealth of technology—with a strange proliferation of torture devices—while the other’s religion prevents her from even viewing the technological remnants for fear of gaining an incomplete understanding before the appropriate time. Their largely friendly relationship is put to the test by the closing of a travel gate that threatens to separate them forever if neither agrees to relocate to the other’s home planet. The family drama aspect is engaging, but what makes this stand out is the way the lead’s research project slowly pieces together these mystifying relics into a stunning portrait of a bygone world.
While those three short stories were my highlights of this month’s Clarkesworld, there were three others that were strange or unsettling to various degrees and could easily be favorites for another reader. Perhaps the weirdest of the bunch is one of the two novelettes, Those Who Remember the World by Ben Berman Ghan, which lays out a bizarre, AI-controlled city full of strange biology, one that’s currently dealing with a series of inexplicable murders. The godlike AI brings into being a batlike investigator to get to the bottom of it, kicking off a dizzying plot with plenty of strangeness and a bit of romance—one that feels nothing like your typical procedural. I had a lot of fun with this one, but I suspect that readers with more of a penchant for the weird may find a new favorite here.
A touch less dizzying but even more unsettling is Fish Fear Me, You Need Me by Tiffany Xue. The post-apocalyptic, flooded world concept has been done to death, but it’s soon clear that this one has a grotesque twist: most of humanity has taken to the waters and become indistinguishable from fish. The two characters at the center of the story are two of the only humans left, but one carries a tragic obsession with finding his wife that makes him intensely squeamish about one of the only reliable food sources. It’s not a story that offers a lot of answers, but it sure leaves a lasting impression.
The final story in the issue, A World of Milk and Promises by R H Wesley, also features some transformational weirdness, featuring a mother alone on an alien planet, speaking in second-person to her unborn child about an older sister who in death expanded her body to provide shelter for them both. This one may reveal a bit more about what is happening than some of the others, but it certainly doesn’t tell the reader how to feel about it all, and the perspective of a mother trying to cope with loss is excellent.
The issue’s other short story, Those Who Remember Perfectly by Eric Schwitzgebel is another intriguing one that’s certainly not without its own weirdness, taking place in an assisted living facility and focusing on a device that allows for alteration of memory. It’s a fascinating theme that reminds me a bit of “The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video” by Thomas Ha—one of my favorite novelettes of the year so far—but approached from the opposite angle.
The other novelette in the issue, The Children I Gave You, Oxalaia, by Cirilo Lemos and translated by Thamirys Gênova, tells a science-fictional tale of prejudice and xenophobia, as the Brazilian government attempts to round up alien refugees and send them back to their home planet. There are plenty of complex interpersonal dynamics set against the backdrop of social prejudice and persecution, and it makes for a good read. It’s probably the least memorable of the issue, but there truly isn’t a bad story in the lot—-something has to be the least memorable.
On the nonfiction side, the letter from the editor is a sigh of relief in text form, as Neil Clarke celebrates hitting a subscription goal and a couple Hugo victories, while reiterating that there’s plenty left to do and this is far from a time for complacency. The science article dives into reproductive technology, both the already-available and the far-off, with discussion ranging from gene editing to artificial wombs.
The author interviews feature a pair of familiar names in Aliette de Bodard and A.C. Wise. The former hasn’t totally clicked with me in recent years, and this interview doesn’t inspire me to try her new releases, but it does remind me that I’ve been meaning to circle back to some of her acclaimed short fiction from the early 2010s. The latter I know more as an excellent short fiction reviewer than as an author, and her most recent novella (Out of the Drowning Deep) uses a host of tropes that don’t often appeal to me, and yet she talks about it in such a way that I’m curious to try it anyways.
GigaNotoSaurus
The one longish story in this month’s GigaNotoSaurus was on the shorter side for the publication, coming in just over 5,000 words. Here in the Glittering Black, There is Hope by Monte Lin is a sci-fi tale in which the main characters scrape out a living with long-haul space contracts for wealthy clients who can live 50 years without appearing to age a day. It is in part a story of inequality, spotlighting unfair and out-of-touch behavior that the lead’s patrons still manage to see as magnanimous. But it’s also a story of found family, and the pressures on a group of people who know that every job they take will mean returning to an Earth where their only living acquaintances are those patrons. But while there were some really promising elements here, it’s a story I would’ve liked to see with a little more time for those elements to breathe.
September favorites
- A Theory of Missing Affections by Renan Bernardo (short story, Clarkesworld)
- The Music Must Always Play by Marissa Lingen (short story, Clarkesworld)
- Broken by Laura Williams McCaffrey (short story, Clarkesworld)