Clarkesworld is a monthly on-line magazine edited by Neil Clarke.
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"Artificial People" by Michael Swanwick gives us snapshots from the
life of an AI, constantly repurposed in a vain attempt to make its
inventor even more money. But the repurposing never really seems to
come to anything, and if Swanwick has a point here beyond the trite
(and, being Swanwick, he probably does) I didn't spot it.
"One Time, a Reluctant Traveler" by A. T. Greenblatt is a fantasy
about travelling to the ocean at the top of the mountain, and what you
have to do there, with post-apocalyptic framing; the journey is fine,
but the ending is utter anticlimax.
"Three Stories Conjured from Nothing" by ShakeSpace tells in three
parts the development and self-defence of an error in a conscious
cellular automaton, the attempts by the inhabitants of an artificial
world to work out why their sun (the automaton-machine) is going dark…
and then an almost completely unrelated communication between
cosmic-scale creatures. With a third part that had something to do
with the first two, this might have worked.
"Power to Yield" by Bogi Takács purports to describe someone who's
"asexual and aromantic" while she changes her life in response to
what's very clearly a crush. But I really can't tell whether Takács
did this deliberately or not. Also no conclusion.
"Strange Comfort" by Tegan Moore has someone trying to deal with
bereavement while the mineral-extraction operation on Europa is closed
down round him. It's fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't go very
far.
"The Oddish Gesture of Humans" by Gabriel Calácia deals with two
aliens trying to work out the significance of what, we are meant to
assume, is a human kiss. I suppose it's all right.
"The House That Leapt into Forever" by Beth Goder is quite enjoyably
disorientating, with a "house" on an asteroid that identifies rooms as
"the fiasco room" and "the calcium cupboard", and an inhabitant called
Doom-Has-Come… but it insists on explaining everything, and that's a
shame.
"The Human Genome Disparity" by Douglas F. Dluzen points out just how
much of the research into genetic markers for disease has been done on
European-descended white men, and some of what's being done about it.
"Coffee Prince, Avatar, and Robot Rebellions: A Conversation with
Madeline Ashby" by Arley Sorg makes me rather less likely to read
anything more by Ashby, not that I was before. vN was good in parts
but I just don't find interesting the same things that she does.
"Overthrowing the Royal We: A Conversation with Kate Elliott" by Arley
Sorg on the other hand makes me wonder why I've never read anything by
Elliott.
"Editor's Desk: The Most Science Fictional Worldcon Ever" by Neil
Clarke muses on CoNZealand and how implausible the idea of a virtual
convention would have seemed a few years ago.
Nothing here that I particularly liked, though the Goder came closest.
Nothing here that I even hated.
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