Everybody may be posting Best of the Year lists–and don’t get me wrong, I’ll be doing the same later this week–but there are still new stories coming out this month. As always, I read a couple magazines and am here to talk about them. 

Clarkesworld

The December 2024 issue of Clarkesworld had a wonderfully international flavor, with nine stories written by authors from eight different countries. This wasn’t a themed issue or anything, just a display of how much excellent science fiction is being written from around the globe. 

The issue starts with Stranger Seas Than These by L. Chan, an author with a reputation for strange and beautiful stories, but one I’ve sometimes struggled to connect to in the past. But “strange and beautiful” certainly describes this tale of a life-threatening catastrophe on a deep sea dive to study the remains of leviathans worshipped by a significant interplanetary faction. It’s not a story to put a neat bow on everything, but it’s gripping both for the characters and the plot. 

From Across Time by Chisom Umeh features a woman repeatedly watching a video from a time-traveling lover she cannot at all remember, slowly piecing together bits of message to uncover just what was lost—and the ways she can respond. 

The Painted Skin and the Final Stroke by Zhu Yixuan occupies a liminal space between sci-fi and fantasy, with a city overrun by ghosts, at least some of which appear to have technological origin. The narrator is a painter who seeks to be able to capture the soul in a painting—something only human artists are thought to be capable of. But can one paint a soul when one’s subject is a ghost? 

Souljacker by Shari Paul is a tense story of a woman who rents out her body to rich clients seeking experiences they couldn’t have in their own skin, only to find she’s been repeatedly rented by the same person who had ruined her life years before. What follows is an immersive and thrilling tale, with the threat of arrest—or worse—looming over the whole thing. I would’ve liked to see more followup on some of the subplots introduced late in the story, even if the lead’s plot line resolves. This is a good short story, but I think it might’ve made an even better novelette. 

The one actual novelette in the issue is Lucie Loves Neutrons and the Good Samarium by Thoraiya Dyer, simultaneously a scientific research story and one of love and parenthood in a world facing dire water shortages and constant threat of nuclear strikes. While the two stories mutually support each other, the interpersonal plot feels like the main one for most of the way, with the research storyline developing a little bit too quickly in the late stages. 

In my eyes, the biggest highlight of the issue is Driver by Sameem Siddiqui, in which an aging driver laments the cold and ungrateful treatment of so many of his customers, interspersed both with recollections of past acquaintances told in second person to a series of absent interlocutors and with present jobs for a strange customer with confusing instructions. It makes for a disorienting, nonlinear narrative, but the lead’s voice truly stands out, and the slow-developing plot supplements it wonderfully. This one is excellent. 

The other highlight of the issue is The Coffee Machine by Celia Corral-Vázquez, translated by Sue Burke. It’s not as ambitious as “Driver,” but it’s just plain fun, telling of the ill-fated time that campus appliances became self-aware. It’s a lighthearted and farcical tale that’s nearly impossible to read without smiling. 

Life Sentence by Gelian, translated by Blake Stone-Banks, is a Groundhog Day-style time loop story in which an astronaut repeatedly tries to save his lover from being lost in a black hole. While the character focus is not quite as tight, this reminds me of “Souljacker” in the way that it ratchets up the tension very early and keeps it high for the duration of a riveting tale. 

Finally, Retirement Plan by Paul Starkey tells of a longhaul spacer returning home anxious to see how an audacious retirement scheme had developed over his centuries of absence. Mostly a scheming story with a hint of “be careful what you wish for,” it’s a light and entertaining capper to the issue. 

The nonfiction includes a pair of art pieces—an editorial on the various cover artists of Clarkesworld and an interview with decorated genre artist Donato Giancola. Additionally, D.A. Xiaolin Spires completed her two-part series on martial arts in zero gravity, and an interview with author Erin K. Wagner put yet another book on my TBR. 

GigaNotoSaurus 

Like they did last year, GigaNotoSaurus closes out a year of long short fiction with a light, entertaining novelette, in this case Dead reckoning in 6/8 time by Sabrina Vourvoulias. For all that it features a complicated mother/daughter relationship and souls at risk of being lost to the Devil, the focus on community, solidarity, and a whole lot of Mexican folk music—in this case son jarocho, a regional style from the state of Veracruz—make for a thoroughly entertaining comfort read. Make no mistake, there are plenty of tense moments, but this is a less individualistic, more dance-heavy cousin to “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” It’s a ton of fun. 

December Favorites 

• The Coffee Machine by Celia Corral-Vázquez, translated by Sue Burke (short story, Clarkesworld)
• Driver by Sameem Siddiqui (short story, Clarkesworld)
• Dead reckoning in 6/8 time by Sabrina Vourvoulias (novelette, GigaNotoSaurus)