Clarkesworld

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Clarkesworld Magazine, #32, May 2009

By Alvaro Zinos-Amaro ⋅ August 8, 2009

Clarkesworld Magazine has delivered its most dream-like issue with its May offering. Its two stories eschew conventional narrative strategies in favor of world-building, setting and poetic experimentation. Neither completely succeeds in my view, but they’re both rewarding and challenging reads, and more memorable than many other stories out there.
The fact that Clarkesworld continues to find [...]

Clarkesworld Magazine, #31, April 2009

By Alvaro Zinos-Amaro ⋅ May 15, 2009

Clarkesworld Magazine has been nominated for a Hugo award in the category of “Best Semiprozine,” a fact prominently displayed on the website.
Is that a reasonable proposition?
Does it merit your Hugo vote?
Yes, and—well, read the stories and decide for yourself—but read more than just a single issue, as the style and themes vary wildly from month [...]

Clarkesworld Magazine, #30, March 2009

By Alvaro Zinos-Amaro ⋅ March 29, 2009

The third issue of Clarkesworld Magazine this year brings us two well-crafted and thought-provoking stories, as well as a couple of diverting, though slightly underwhelming, non-fiction entries.
Ekaterina Sedia is in fine form in “Herding Vegetable Sheep,” a first-person account by 68-year-old cloud-herder Anita about her strained relationship with her daughter, Petra, and the disappearance of [...]

Clarkesworld Magazine, #29, February 2009

By Alvaro Zinos-Amaro ⋅ February 6, 2009

Clarkesworld Magazine continues to deliver the goods with its second installment of the year. Issue #29, February 2009, contains two helpings of speculative wonder, and though the nonfiction pieces aren’t as stellar as in other recent issues, they’re still well written and informative, and we have three of them.
“The Second Gift Given” by Ken Scholes [...]

Clarkesworld Magazine, #28, January 2009

By Alvaro Zinos-Amaro ⋅ January 15, 2009

The start of 2009 sees Clarkesworld Magazine in excellent shape. Issue #28, January 2009, contains one of the best nonfiction pieces published by the magazine and two memorable fiction offerings.
“Celadon” by Desirina Boskovich tackles, with only surface simplicity, two of my favorite themes in SF, post-colonialism and transcendence, through the exploration of a daughter-mother bond. [...]

Clarkesworld Magazine, #27, December 2008

By Alvaro Zinos-Amaro ⋅ January 2, 2009

As Neil Clarke comments in one of the nonfiction pieces in issue #27, December 2008, of Clarkesworld Magazine, “this is the last issue to feature fiction picked by editor Nick Mamatas.” It is an interesting, somewhat whimsical, “cutesy” issue which Mamatas ends on. The three fiction pieces (as opposed to the normal two) continue the [...]

Clarkesworld Magazine, #26, November 2008

By Alvaro Zinos-Amaro ⋅ November 12, 2008

I concluded my review of last month’s issue by observing that Clarkesworld Magazine seemed to have “shifted away from more boundary-pushing work, with less emphasis on technique and more on conventional story.” The trend continues, at least partway, in issue #26, November 2008.
Mike Resnick and Lezli Robyn bring us “Idle Roomer,” which feels like [...]

Clarkesworld, #24, September 2008

By Scott M. Sandridge ⋅ October 15, 2008

Issue #24 of Clarkesworld Magazine kicks off with “Worm Within” by Cat Rambo, which takes you to a mechanical dystopia where everything from the humans to the insects are now robots except for one character, the last Homo sapien, who narrates the tale. I can forgive the “Where’s Ishmael” in this tale since the [...]

Clarkesworld Magazine, #25, October 2008

By Alvaro Zinos-Amaro ⋅ October 14, 2008

Issue #25, October 2008 of Clarkesworld Magazine kicks off with Jim C. Hines’s “Gift of the Kites.” If not exactly a stellar take-off, it does achieve altitude pretty quickly. At the story’s start, Jesse, twelve years old, is flying a Superman kite with his stepfather, Kentaro, when another kite darkens the sky and changes Jesse’s [...]

Clarkesworld Magazine, #23, August 2008

By Scott M. Sandridge ⋅ August 26, 2008

Clarkesworld tends to publish some pretty strange stories, and like most stories involving the bizarre and surreal, it’s often a hit or miss thing. It either works brilliantly or falls flat, thus it can be a risky experiment. So hats off to all writers who attempt such tales and to magazines like Clarkesworld that publish [...]

Clarkesworld Magazine, #22, July 2008

By Scott M. Sandridge ⋅ July 22, 2008

The first story in issue #22 of Clarkesworld Magazine, “When the Gentlemen Go By” by Margaret Ronald, is rooted in the classic tradition of dark fairy tales before the Disneyfication that occurred in the 20th century. It has all the time-tested elements: deep, personal, dark, and disturbing, while providing a small ray of hope [...]

Clarkesworld Magazine, #21, June 2008

By Scott M. Sandridge ⋅ July 1, 2008

In the June 2008 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine, “Clockwork Chickadee” by Mary Robinette Kowal is a morality lesson coached in a tale involving talking toys. In many ways it’s about greed and arrogance versus cleverness and cunning where the protagonist (a clockwork chickadee) wins the day by exploiting the pride and greed of her opponent. [...]

Clarkesworld Magazine, #20, May 2008

By Scott M. Sandridge ⋅ May 28, 2008

“A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antartica” by Catherynne M. Valente was a very difficult read. I had a hard time figuring out what the story was even about until after I was halfway through, and the temptation to skip whole paragraphs accumulated as I read. If anything, read this to see why it’s so [...]

Clarkesworld #19, April 2008

By Scott M. Sandridge ⋅ April 22, 2008

Clarkesworld Magazine is a good magazine to read, despite it having only two fiction stories in each issue. If there ever comes a day when I read a fiction magazine and discover that each issue comprises only one fiction story, then something tells me I won’t be surprised.
In the April, 2008, issue, Jeffrey Ford picks [...]

Clarkesworld, March 2008

By Ben Payne ⋅ April 15, 2008

“The Sky That Wraps the World Round, Past the Blue and Into the Black” by Jay Lake opens the March, 2008, issue of Clarkesworld. It deals with a man who has sold his life to a gangster on a distant planet as part of his self-imposed penance for losing a mysterious alien artifact, as well [...]

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