Another month, another review of Clarkesworld and GigaNotoSaurus. April was a great month, with a lot to recommend and no real misses, so let’s get started. 

Clarkesworld

The April 2025 issue of Clarkesworld follows their recent pattern of seven stories with slightly heftier average length than in past years. Both novelettes are around 10,000 words, and more than half the short stories are over 5,000 words, with nothing under 3,500. And with a good mix of new-to-me authors and returning favorites, I was particularly excited about this one. 

It opens with Through These Moments, Darkly by Samantha Murray, a romantic portal tale that distinguishes itself in part by not showing the other side of the portal. On our familiar side is confusion and uncertainty, with the story building not to a stunning science-fictional revelation but instead to the lead sorting through those uncertainties and her own feelings enough to settle on a course of action. 

The Seed by Sheri Singerling tells of a technophobic backwater who has survived large-scale war mostly by being too out-of-the-way for notice. When the lead’s brutish husband finds a piece of intelligent tech and figures to build his reputation on it, she takes it upon herself to stop it—but that may require crossing some lines she’d thought were firm. 

Aegiopolis Testudo by Gordon Li is a leviathan story that would’ve fit perfectly in one of my book club’s themed discussions this spring. The lead’s society is built on the back of a leviathan turtle, whose long lifecycle they only partially understand. The surface conflict here centers on their attempts to respond to an unexpected meeting with another leviathan, but the tale’s focus is an environmental one, with the lead struggling to come to grips with society’s parasitic effects on their shelled sustainer and his participation in it. It’s a story that’s comfortable lingering in ambiguity while still providing the lead a genuine progression. 

The issue’s first novelette, Still Water by Zhang Ran, translated by Andy Dudak, is the tale of a mother raising a child with ALS and of the life her son ultimately lives, with the story split into two timelines, a first-person recounting of the mother’s experience and a second-person account of her son’s. It’s a bit of a slow-burn, as both lives unfold in largely mundane ways, but the two perspectives come together beautifully for a heart-wrenching ending that elevates everything that came before. 

The second novelette, Symbiotic by Carolyn Zhao, is also split across multiple timelines, chaotically switching between the leads learning to live with their minds linked and the monstrous attack that severed the connection. It’s tense and compelling, with plenty of thematic resonance between the storylines, albeit with an ending that left me wanting a little more. 

Thomas Ha has been one of my very favorite short story writers over the past few years, so I was excited to get to In My Country, and I was not disappointed. It feels like the most explicit political commentary I’d seen from Ha, and yet there’s nothing that ties the story directly to our current moment. Instead, it’s a story about an unsettling land—a Ha specialty—with unfettered surveillance and a strict ban on ambiguity, whether in art or politics. The lead is a father who understands some of what’s strange about his country but who only begins to comprehend the depths when his children start to engage in subversive activity. The quiet, understated narrative serves both to highlight the themes of censorship and to provide a sobering contrast with the events happening between the lines. It’s another winner that I’m sure will stick with me all year. 

The issue closes with An Even Greater Cold to Come by Rich Larson, a child-perspective war story featuring a small family escaping bombings in the city by hiding out in a small house in the woods. The lead understands the grim nature of her surroundings enough to bring out every bit of the tale’s darkness, even while she fixates on sibling rivalry and the safety of her dog, remaining totally ignorant to her mother’s desperate plan. It’s a sobering and chillingly effective tale with an unflinching exploration of war through a childish perspective that reminds me a lot of one of my favorites of last year: “The Indomitable Captain Holli.” 

The nonfiction starts with a fascinating but sobering science article on an oft-forgotten effect of climate change: rises in the spread of disease. The editorial offers another peek behind the curtain at Clarke’s attempts to make Clarkesworld the fourth SFF magazine to pay its staff a full salary, detailing the rocky road it’s been before closing with some congratulations for Clarkesworld stories hitting award shortlists. There are two author interviews this month, with Ai Jiang and Natalia Theodoridou. The latter’s debut novel, Sour Cherry, is a bit outside my normal reading wheelhouse but sounds absolutely fascinating. I’m going to try to convince some book club friends to check it out for me and see if they’d recommend. 

GigaNotoSaurus 

The April 2025 GigaNotoSaurus tale is a long novelette, Horror Vacui by A.V. Greene, which is split into two timelines, one featuring the teenage lead stumbling down a secret path to Hell and the second seeing Hell come back to her when she’s in her 30s and trying to care for a toddler. While it’s a long story, I actually would’ve preferred a little more. The parent perspective hits very close to home and pulled me in immediately, but after the climactic scene, the perspective pulled back to a summary of everything that came after. But while I wanted it to slow down a bit at the end, that didn’t stop the story from delivering a great closing punch. 

April Favorites

• “In My Country” by Thomas Ha (short story, Clarkesworld)
• “An Even Greater Cold to Come” by Rich Larson (short story, Clarkesworld)
• “Still Water” by Zhang Ran, translated by Andy Dudak (novelette, Clarkesworld)