I review Clarkesworld and GigaNotoSaurus each month. If you’re a regular reader, you know that. If you’re new here, those are a couple monthly magazines publishing sci-fi and fantasy short fiction. Either way, let’s get to it. 

Clarkesworld

The August issue of Clarkesworld opens and closes with a pair of short stories, bookending three novelettes making up the issue’s center. It starts with As the Tide Loves the Diver, As the Diver Loves the Tide by Ravn J. Silver, told in second-person to a lead who dives through a virtual world to pull back information from the AI who protects so much of human knowledge in hopes that the post-apocalyptic society won’t rebuild its mistakes. It opens with the lead’s first dive and continues through the course of her life, building a complicated relationship with a narrator who serves as both friend and adversary. 

All the Ruined Doorways of the Moon by Eilis O’Neal stars a woman whose wealthy husband insists she stay at home, perhaps engaging in tasteful hobbies but mostly smoothing the path through his life. She becomes fascinated with the portal-like structures left behind by the mysterious species who had once inhabited their moon, and the more she learns, the more it seems relevant to her life–the air of mystery ties wonderfully into the character portrait. 

The issue’s first novelette, Passenger Pigeons, Dodos, Neanderthals by Jordan Alexander, has the feel of a piece written from a place of bone-deep exasperation, featuring a lead seeking to be a model minority among genetically engineered Martians, only to be overwhelmed by the neverending stream of slights and aggressions coming from the dominant culture. Even a girlfriend who expends no little energy trying to maintain cultural awareness and respect proves to be either pushy or dismissive when her support is most needed. It’s no secret what parts of contemporary life are reflected through the sci-fi lens, and the excellent characterization makes for a compelling story, even when one may predict the places it will go. 

D.A. Xiaolin Spires has been taking on obtrusive technology a good bit lately (I quite enjoyed “Chip”), and she returns to that theme in the novelette Piece de Resistance. It folds the lead’s memories of zorbing and inventing with her father and of dinners with her mother into a story about advertisements with the power to block the recipient from engaging with the physical world until the ad is complete. The themes and the familial elements are all quite solid here, but the bulk of the story is a heist that comes off a bit rushed (though in full disclosure, I’m not a big heist fan even in longform). 

The shortest novelette of the issue, Feed Them on Your Dreams by E. N. Auslender, is a dystopian space tale, with every major element of workers’ lives controlled by the corporations that own them. While this includes a strict prohibition on reproduction, a failure of sterilization produces a child with no obvious role in society. And so he is made the subject of experiments, being raised in isolation by an AI that fosters intellectual development while spinning any lie necessary to discourage contact with the outside world. As genre readers know, such discouragement will eventually fail, and that failure is the key subject of this engaging-but-sobering take on a genre staple. 

Returning to short stories, Y.M. Pang’s The Universal Human Happiness Program considers a sort of benevolent Matrix, with most of humanity living blissfully unaware in virtual reality while a small remnant stays behind in the dismal real world to make sure everything stays running. It’s the latter group that is the focal point here, with a story of philosophical conflict that creates real tension but may ask a few too many questions of the worldbuilding. 

Finally, my favorite entry in this month’s issue, When You Give a Dokkaebi Taco Tuesday by H.H. Pak is told from the perspective of a spirit possessing a cursed broom sent to torment a family for generations. But after immigration takes so much from the recipient, forcing a lifetime of toil disconnected from their homeland, the lead begins to wonder if further cursing is really necessary. It’s a clever tale with an engaging perspective, coming together in a way that reads more optimistic than the premise might suggest. 

Turning to the nonfiction side, the editorial reflects on Clarke’s first trip to Eurocon, where some of the problems were familiar (AI-generated submissions!) and others less so (translation: it’s not just about making everything available in English). The science article takes a look at Saturn and how perception of it—both in sci-fi and in regular science—has changed over the years. As always, there are a pair of interviews, this month with James Patrick Kelly and Carolyn Ives Gilman. I haven’t read a whole lot of either, but what I have read certainly inclines me to read more. 

GigaNotoSaurus 

This month’s longish story in GigaNotoSaurus is still a short story, with Four Sparrows by Angela Hsieh opening with a dead woman clambering free of her physical body and beginning to explore the world as a ghost. Before long, an encounter with someone who can still perceive her ghostly form leads to a tight-knit, no-nonsense mahjong group with an eye toward making a difference in the land of the living.

August Favorites

• When You Give a Dokkaebi Taco Tuesday by H.H. Pak (short story, Clarkesworld)