GigaNotoSaurus is back, and my monthly magazine reading is once again at two. So let’s take a look at the October issues of it and Clarkesworld!
Clarkesworld
It’s always exciting to see a Table of Contents with a bunch of authors you’ve five-starred in the past, and so as much as I appreciate Clarkesworld platforming newer authors and not just chasing the biggest names, I was really looking forward to an issue including stories from Isabel J. Kim, H.H. Pak, Greg Egan, and Carrie Vaughn. But wouldn’t you know it, my favorite of the bunch was from an author I’d never read at greater than flash length.
I don’t know that any author is a guaranteed five-star from me, but Isabel J. Kim is about as close as they come, and Wire Mother opens the issue in that style I find so very engaging. It takes place in a casually horrifying world, where bespoke AI spouses are the rule for people of means and those with less money rent out their bodies to allow those AIs a foothold in the physical world. It follows a neurodivergent teenager whose condition prevents her from connecting emotionally to AIs, but while her condition is fundamental to the plot, it feels a bit underdeveloped. For me, the eye-catching elements are the world and the relationship between the lead and another troubled teenager who plays a major role in shaping her biggest decisions–both are strong enough to drive a compelling narrative, but the central conflict needs more fleshing-out to really hit its full potential. I’d love to read a novelette version of this story.
The Cancer Wolves continues what has become a long-running post-apocalyptic series by Fiona Moore that started with the 2023 story “The Spoil Heap.” Largely, it’s more of what fans have come to expect, with a lot of non-violent problem-solving in a familiar setting, but in this instance, I found it a little trickier than usual to connect to the lead’s primary environmental concerns.
The novelette Crabs Don’t Scream by H.H. Pak has an absolutely enthralling opening but doesn’t keep the same momentum throughout. Make no mistake, it still makes for a good read, with the second-person lead looping through time and their own mind wondering why they can’t keep their nerves when meeting a doomed new love. Ultimately, the plot expands into something much larger-scale that yields a satisfying conclusion yet is a little bit less fascinating than the personal story at its heart.
Greg Egan’s Understudies provides the issue’s extended second novelette, which sees a student concerned with artificial enhancements trying to prove the worth of a small group of unaltered humanity. The setup is compelling enough, but what’s being set up is mostly an extended math competition. I have no doubt the problems are clever, but they leave the reader faced with the decision to skim or stop to solve the puzzles–either way, it shatters the narrative flow.
The issue returns to short stories with Giant Grandmother by Liu Maijia, translated by Blake Stone-Banks. It’s a story of a grandmother and granddaughter reuniting, against the backdrop of an ambitious plan to address genetic aberrations via scientifically-guided evolution into something vastly different from humanity. There’s a family story here that can make you smile, but the core science-fictional premise is less moving and comes across as an odd strategy that may give away more than it gains.
I almost always love Carrie Vaughn’s work, and The Job Interview is yet another that made me smile. Usually, I don’t care much for over-the-top horrible bosses, but. . . well, I read this during a month in which the absurd dysfunction of my country’s government was front-page news, so perhaps I was primed to be more sympathetic to a character working hard under the thumb of bosses who seem to be in turn working their hardest to undercut the efforts of the people getting things done. Or perhaps I just enjoy Vaughn’s writing style. At any rate, this one is over the top, but it delivers some satisfying comeuppance and a little tie-in with some of her other stories that should be fun for long-time fans.
The final piece in the issue, In Luck’s Panoply Clad, I Stand by Phoebe Barton, features an emissary from another planet working for the people of Earth in the wake of nuclear war that has destroyed much of the population and left the remainder struggling for survival. There’s some sobering commentary on bystanding nations offering well wishes while eschewing meaningful support, but the real star here is the lead’s deep-seated survivor’s guilt and the way it affects her confused, often contradictory impulses to lend Earth her strength without taking up too much space. There are opportunities here to explore the contradictions even more thoroughly than the story explicitly does, but the compelling portrait of a broken survivor makes this the highlight of the whole issue.
The nonfiction section includes a fascinating piece on genetic engineering and the attributes of non-human animals (like the famously hardy tardigrades) that would make humanity better adapted to space travel if they could be harnessed. Amusingly, in the mere days between reading the article and posting this review, I have read a sci-fi novel that makes use of that very concept, borrowing from tardigrades to aid human astronauts.
As always, there are a pair of interviews, this time with two prolific authors who have written some absolutely tremendous short fiction: Rich Larson and Ken Liu. And finally, the editorial celebrates nineteen years of Clarkesworld while soliciting opinions about what sort of celebration would best mark next year’s twentieth anniversary.
GigaNotoSaurus
GigaNotoSaurus returns this month with a longish short piece that still does remain a short story (at least by the definitions used by major genre awards), A Good King by Sarah McGill. It’s a fairy tale in which the King chooses the Fox as his queen in exchange for a promise to hold the King’s secrets. What follows is a story that’s both about the developing relationship between King and Fox and the way the broader court treats an outsider placed in a position of power. The fairy tale voice keeps the perspective from feeling quite as close as I tend to prefer, but it still makes for an interesting read.
October Favorites
- In Luck’s Panoply Clad, I Stand by Phoebe Barton (short story, Clarkesworld)