Clarkesworld is a monthly on-line magazine edited by Neil Clarke.
Everything is available in HTML from
the magazine's site, and
it can be bought in various other formats.
"The Iridescent Lake" by D.A. Xiaolin Spires has weird alien ice so
precious that sneaking a little bit away in your pockets (in a
high-tech freezer ball) can make your fortune… but for some reason
there's still a public ice rink on it? Interesting ideas but it
doesn't seem to have anything to say.
"How Long the Shadows Cast" by Kenji Yanagawa is a Manic Pixie Dream
Time Traveller story and Yanagawa doesn't even appear to realise it.
And it aggressively cuts off before anything like a resolution of any
of its strands.
"Nine Words for Loneliness in the Language of the Uma'u" by M. L.
Clark has the grief-stricken alien diplomat whose failure to
understand humans is all the humans' fault, and the humans' failure to
understand him is also all the humans' fault, and I just wasn't
interested in his maunderings. Clark has done so much better than
this.
"Optimizing the Path to Enlightenment" by Priya Chand is an
interesting slice of life in a low-impact AI dictatorship, and the
forms rebellion can take. But of course it doesn't go anywhere because
stories with plot and narrative progression are apparently against the
rules.
"Own Goal" by Dennard Dayle has someone dreaming up advertising copy
for the latest orbital kinetic weapon… but like so many of these
things Dayle can't find anywhere to go from there, so just stops.
(Yes, the weapon you wrote the copy for is now being used against your
home… and? Would it have made a blind bit of difference if someone
other than you had written the copy, or if a different but
equally-lethal weapon had been used?)
"Isolation in Fiction and Reality" by Carrie Sessarego looks at some
examples of isolated people but rapidly loses focus.
"The Woman With No Name: A Conversation with John P. Murphy" by Arley
Sorg makes Murphy (of whom I've never heard) sound like Just Another
Writer. Anything distinctive about him isn't mentioned here.
"The Three-Science-Fiction-Author Problem: A Conversation" by Roderick
Leeuwenhart also involves Taiyo Fujii and Xia Jia – none of whom I've
heard of before. It's an interesting conversation of the sort one
might hear at a convention, three people who know nothing about each
other's writing and publishing environments comparing them.
"Editor's Desk: SF/F Fiction Magazines, Pandemic Edition" by Neil
Clarke has lots of observation but only the fuzziest of conclusions.
Nothing here that I liked well enough to nominate. Nothing here that I
even liked. Oh well.
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