Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 197, February 2023

by Neil Clarke (Editor), Yukimi Ogawa, Samantha Murray

FICTION
- The Portrait of a Survivor, Observed from the Water BY YUKIMI OGAWA
- Somewhere, It's About to Be Spring BY SAMANTHA MURRAY
- Larva Pupa Imago BY ERIC SCHWITZGEBEL
- An Ode to Stardust BY R. P. SAND
- Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition BY GU SHI, TRANSLATED BY EMILY JIN
- Silo, Sweet Silo BY JAMES CASTLES
- Going Time BY AMAL SINGH

NON-FICTION
- The Expanding Repertoire of the Gene BY DOUGLAS F. DLUZEN
- Nonexistent People in Worlds Unobserved: A Conversation with Kelly Barnhill BY ARLEY SORG
- Joy and Wonder: A Conversation with Ian McDonald BY ARLEY SORG

Editor's Desk: 2022 Readers' Poll Finalists BY NEIL CLARKE

COVER ART
Harvest II
BY ARTHUR HAAS

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fantasy

208 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 1, 2023

About the author

Neil Clarke is best known as the editor and publisher of the Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning Clarkesworld Magazine. Launched in October 2006, the online magazine has been a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine four times (winning three times), the World Fantasy Award four times (winning once), and the British Fantasy Award once (winning once). Neil is also a ten-time finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Editor Short Form (winning once in 2022), three-time winner of the Chesley Award for Best Art Director, and a recipient of the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award. In the fifteen years since Clarkesworld Magazine launched, numerous stories that he has published have been nominated for or won the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Sturgeon, Locus, BSFA, Shirley Jackson, WSFA Small Press, and Stoker Awards.

Additionally, Neil edits  Forever —a digital-only, reprint science fiction magazine he launched in 2015. His anthologies include: Upgraded, Galactic Empires, Touchable Unreality, More Human than Human, The Final Frontier, Not One of Us,  The Eagle has Landed, , and the Best Science Fiction of the Year series. His next anthology, The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Seven will published in early 2023.

He currently lives in New Jersey with his wife and two sons.

Reviews

[Hirondelle (not getting notifications)]

I only read of this edition, Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition by Gu Shi, translated by Emily Jin, which is nominated for this year's Hugo Awards in the novelette category.
I have complained before of stories with nice prose but lacking ideas or ambition, and I have been interested for a while in reading SF/F, which has not been written in English. And here we have this, big ideas (how society would change with cryosleep and some rather ambitious timelines for space exploration), and my reaction is meh. Ok. Be careful what you wish because you might get it.

This is a history of the future, narrating events related to the widespread social use of cryosleep, and it's all related to Chinese inventions, Chinese scientists, or foreign scientists of Chinese ancestry. It's chinese centric in a way that AmericanSF does not seem US-centric and I am neither american nor chinese and some things look very parochial to me...) and adding a personal, emotional (or at least, it tries to be) twist to the story. The author seems to self-insert herself by name into the story as the creator of an idea to be used in space exploration, make of that what you will.

And it is not a good story - usual disclaimer, just my humble opinon and what do I know, eh? But you can not convince me this is good. The ideas are a kind of mess, never really going deep, for example not addressing concepts like what happens to the economy if it loses significant workforce or how expensive it would be to pay for cryosleep of one sleeper per year (space beneath Bern? And who watches over the sleepers on swiss salaries?) and the economics portrayed seem naive (buy gold! what happens if everybody buys gold and goes to sleep?). Space exploration also kind of naive ("Its mission is to send two thousand astronauts to the faraway three-body galaxy. As per our original plan, the entire crew will go into cryosleep aboard the spaceship for nine hundred years". WHAT? Galaxy? A reference to the three body problem? A galaxy less than 900 light years away?). And can we please get into the Yellowstone eruption, it seems more interesting than the soppy stuff about revealing whatever about paperthin characters. It tries to compare geometry and the diagonals of cubes and squares to biological restriction on cryosleep life and I think it is because "time, the 4th dimension" (natch, haven't you heard it? But not really) I totally do not get why cell biology would be limited by something similar to euclidean geometry in such a way.
The characters all felt flat, and maybe this is a cultural or different-literature thing, but it seems like I was supposed to care about them just because I was told something of their life stories, without anything of their personalities showing through. They were names on paper with their CVs being told, that is it.

The translation, while I am grateful for it for giving me a chance to check for myself and translating chinese sf/f is likely just a labour of love, was uh, odd, a bit confusing sometimes, and some idiomatic expressions just seemed off, old fashioned mid west american perhaps in one case. The prose was a bit clumsy, to me, particularly when compared to me reading the original english-language stories that are the other Hugo finalists (comparing this translator and Nghi Vo's prose is a memorable mismatch).

So, my least favourite of the novelette finalists, so far (one more to go) and rather a letdown.
In this field of 2023 published (in English) histories of the future and published in Clarkesworld magazine, I was reminded instead of how much I liked Timoty:an Oral History by Michael Swanwick in Clarkesworld ISSUE 205 – OCTOBER 2023 which I liked so much better, felt more provocative, and had a far deeper understanding of how humans tick. But I am really bad at matching judgments with shortlists hivemind.

[Silvana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating and review only for Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition by Gu Shi laoshi, translated by Emily Jin.

Gu Shi is one of my favorite Chinese Scifi writers and she scores big again with this evocative piece on technology, humanity, and immortality. It is always a great feeling when you read something that makes you think, "oh this is why I love speculative fiction! and things that could be in the future!"

A nominee for Best Novelette category for 2024 Hugo Awards. Read the story here: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/gu_0...

[Brok3n · Rating 2 out of 5]

A confusing novelette

In this issue of Clarkeworld I read only the story "Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition", by Gu Shi, translated from the Chinese by Emily Jin. It is a finalist for the 2024 Best Novelette Hugo Award. It's a confusing and difficult-to-follow future historical pseudodocumentary, concerned mostly with the consequences of widely available cold sleep. There's also a mother-daughter story tacked on -- it transpires that the author of the first edition, one Xiao Miao, was the daughter of the author of the introduction to the second edition.

It was kind of hard work to read and to believe, and I never enjoyed it.

The translation felt a little awkward to me. I do not read Chinese, so I can't compare the English version to the original. However, we have sentences like these,

The results indicated that Xiao Miao has advanced stage lung cancer. She was only twenty years old.

That intrusion of the present-tense "has" feels quite wrong to me, something a native English speaker would be unlikely to say.

Sad to say, this was a miss for me.

Blog review.

[Bonnie McDaniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a print subscriber to this magazine. There are two outstanding stories in this issue that have made my list of my favorite stories so far this year. Those are "Somewhere, It's About To Be Spring" by Samantha Murray and "Silo, Sweet Silo" by James Castles.

"Somewhere, It's About To Be Spring" will break your heart. The opening lines:

Lacuna knew winter. Winter was the vast distances between the stars. Winter was the cold of space.

Lacuna, our protagonist, is an AI, her ship's "multicore computer" who just named herself 5.39 hours ago. We gradually find that Lacuna and her crew had stopped to investigate an "orphan planet" in the depths of space, and in doing so was hit by an asteroid that killed her crew. She has drifted alone for an uncounted amount of time. But the dust brought back from the rogue planet, released into the ship's interior by the collision, has been spreading into the ship's systems, including Lacuna's core processors. Something about this dust has awakened Lacuna and the other robots aboard the ship to sentience, and for thousands of years following the death of the human crew, Lacuna drifts through the cosmos, using the ship's shuttles--her newfound "children"--to explore. This is a lovely story about an artificial intelligence awakening to love and founding a family.

The other standout story in the issue, "Silo, Sweet Silo," covers similar themes, with a different setting. The opening lines:

A silo is a good home. It is snug, secure, and shielded. It maintains optimal temperature and humidity. The walls are all perfectly equidistant from my fuselage. This pleases me.

A silo is a good home. But it is wrong that it is still my home. I failed. My siblings soared, while all I did was watch. Now I am alone. Now I am useless.

In just two short paragraphs, the mood is set and the protagonist's character is established: TK is a missile of war left in its silo after a malfunction stopped its launch during World War III. It has maintained the silo ever since. But a group of humans comes knocking, looking for shelter in a post-apocalyptic hellscape, and TK lets them in. It is conflicted--it is a war machine, after all, and does not know what to do now that the war is over and it has lost its purpose.

This story is about change, and reconciling oneself to a changed past and a new future, and a vessel of war learning that it does not have to fight and die. Of course, the tragic ending is that after it has learned this, it has to fight anyway to protect its newfound human friends:

I tremble. I vibrate. I thrum with energy. The fire beneath me is an unquenchable torrent. I lift from my cradle and punch the sky. I am exultant.

My mind sheds layers as it splits from BaseComm's data banks. I retreat to my core. I lose capacity, sacrificing thought, as I become leaner, simpler and honed; as I become what I was always meant to be.

It is not a long flight. But it is enough. It is perfect.

I do not fail.

The author's note indicates that this is his first published story. Holy crap, if he can do this right out of the gate, he has a bright future ahead of him.

The issue's other stories don't quite rise to this level of quality, but are well worth reading. The ending of "An Ode to Stardust," by R.P. Sand, didn't really work for me, but the overall narrative, about the captain of a mining moon coming to realize just how her workers, an alien species called the Esslugai, came to be there; and "Larva Pupa Imago," by Eric Switzgebel, about the lifecycles of intelligent butterflies, are worth your time. "Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition," by Gu Shi, translated by Emily Jin, has more of a hard-science edge as it tackles the ramifications to society from a single technological advance: the perfection of cryosleep. "Going Time," by Amal Singh, has a bit of a horror and "Soylent Green"-style implication to it; it's not explicitly spelled out, but it's obvious, or at least I thought so.

There are author interviews (with Kelly Barnhill and Ian McDonald) and an article about genetics that gets more than a little into the CRISPR weeds but is interesting nevertheless. Altogether, this is a superior issue of the magazine. It also illustrates editor Neil Clarke's prowess at picking stories, for which he was rewarded last year with the 2022 Hugo Award for Best Editor, Short Form.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Youtube Review: https://youtu.be/3XdQKLIR5lk

I really liked:
Larva Pupa Imago BY ERIC SCHWITZGEBEL
An Ode to Stardust BY R. P. SAND
Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition BY GU SHI, TRANSLATED BY EMILY JIN

[Kam Yung Soh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good issue of Clarkesworld, with fascinating stories by Samantha Murray, Eric Schwitzgebel, R. P. Sand and Gu Shi.

- “The Portrait of a Survivor, Observed from the Water” by Yukimi Ogawa: on a beach, a ‘person’ watches over a collection of artefacts and collects debris that are (deliberately?) released by a derelict ship. It is only towards the end that the purpose of collection of debris and the nature of person is revealed.

- “Somewhere, It’s About to Be Spring” by Samantha Murray: the computer on a spaceship, which has lost its crew, begins to find a new purpose. And it may have something to do with samples that were taken earlier by the crew from a lonely planet found in space that may harbour life.

- “Larva Pupa Imago” by Eric Schwitzgebel: a fascinating tale set in a world where insect larvae (and other animals) are self-aware and can exchange memories and thoughts with each other via fluids. We follow the life of one particular larva as he grows up, gains knowledge of the world, and prepares for one final flight as an adult to pass on his genes and his memories to another.

- “An Ode to Stardust” by R. P. Sand: the story starts with a new station manager on a moon who lives with chronic pain, whom he hides from all, getting to know the alien species that mines an important mineral on the behalf of man. As the story progresses, he gets to know the aliens better and becomes their friend. But a trip to another moon to show off his improved mining processes as a result of the friendship results in an unexpected revelation that changes the situation and makes him willing to defy his supervisors to let the aliens achieve their goal.

- “Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition” by Gu Shi, translated by Emily Jin: a story about an introduction in a book about a new form of technology that enables people to hibernate for years and the effect that has on society as a whole and on individuals who have to make and break relationships and people go into and out of sleep at different times for different reasons.

- “Silo, Sweet Silo” by James Castles: after a war, one remaining missile in a silo lets some survivors in for shelter. Together, the intelligent missile and the survivors begin to make a home out of the silo, until the time comes when the missile has to fulfil its mission.

- “Going Time” by Amal Singh: in a future where people wait to go on to a better life while eating processed food bars, one person is suddenly confronted with food from the past, discovered by her daughter. Now she has to choose whether to try it or to stick to the life she now knows.

[Ryan Berger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good issue.

"Somewhere, It's About to be Spring" by Samantha Murray is heartbreaking even if it's a semi-familiar story (even with another story in this collection!)

"Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition" by Gu Shi reminds me a bit of another Clarkesworld classic: I'm Feeling Lucky. Similar themes of wanting to simply just put the world and living off and letting other people cure the diseases, take care of the world, and participate in life and then resume when it works for them. A mind bending, well written exploration of cryosleep and how it can be a double edged sword. Shades of Foundation in how it paints time and human history as a long, winding tapestry we find ourselves on the surface of.

"Silo, Sweet Silo" by James Castles is a sweet, simple story about a group of survivors after the end of the world who befriend a sentient missile, begging to fly. Great use of POV.

"Going Time" by Amal Singh was a great button to this issue. A fun cult-of-personality story about food and authenticity.

[Norman Cook · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition” by Gu Shi, translated by Emily Jen
2024 Hugo Award finalist - Best Novelette

The conceit of this story is that it's an introduction to a book about the growing technology of cryosleep, enabling people to hibernate for years, whether because they have terminal illnesses or simply to skip time. The theme of the story is how cryosleep affects society as a whole, using individual case studies to illustrate the conclusions. Because of the style of the story, it reads (as the author clearly intended) as dry and clinical, with very little overt emotion, although some emotion does leak through. The story raises a number of questions about the cryosleep procedure, questions that we will probably face when cryosleep becomes real. I was confused by one character sometimes being referred to as Fang Miao and sometimes as Xiao Miao, even within the same paragraph--is this a translation error (if so, why didn't the editor catch it?) or is this intentional, and I missed something?

I did not read any of the other stories in this issue.

[Shana Darabie · Rating 3 out of 5]

More a 3.5

Somewhere It's About to Be Spring, Sweet Silo and Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition were five star stories. Sadly, I didn't really connect with the other stories.

[Corrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clarkesworld Magazine issue #197 (February, 2023). You can read the stories online or listen to the podcast, hosted and narrated by the lovely Kate Baker https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/prio...

Consider supporting them on Patreon.

Onwards with more high quality sci-fi offerings:

The Portrait of a Survivor, Observed from the Water by Yukimi Ogawa
Somewhere, It’s About to be Spring by Samantha Murray
Larva Pupa Imago by Eric Schwitzgebel
An Ode to Stardust by R.P. Sand
Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition by Gu Shi
Going Time by Amal Singh
and Silo, Sweet Silo by James Castles

All stories were exceptional and very diverse, I really liked Somewhere, It’s About to be Spring by Samantha Murray and Larva Pupa Imago by Eric Schwitzgebel.

(I didn’t read the three non-fiction offerings).

Themes: sci-fi, fantasy, space opera, dystopian, AI, aliens.

4 Stars

[Marco · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a review of Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition by Gu Shi. Every year I read all the finalists of the most prestigious science fiction awards (at least in the English speaking world): the Hugo awards. This story is a finalist in the Novelette category.
I had never previously read or heard of this author, hence I really did not know what to expect. It turns out this is one of the strongest among the Hugo finalists in the Novelette category, and quite a remarkable story. The story is set in the near future, when a technology has enabled humans to hibernate for long periods of time. The first half is a very hard science fiction exploration of the many legal and ethical implication of the technology. The second part moves away (seamlessly) from hard science fiction to a more emotionally powerful exploration of the implications of the technology on human lives.
This is a great read that I recommend to everyone. I hope more work by this author will be translated into a language I can read.

[Valentine · Rating 5 out of 5]

My total rating for this issue came to 4.36/5 stars, but I rounded it up to 5, purely for how much I loved 'An Ode to Stardust' by R.P. Sand and 'Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition' by Gu Shi. This is so far one of the best issues of Clarkesworld I've read, with all the stories scoring very high (according to my own subjective ranking ofc). The only story I wasn't wild about was 'Going Time' by Amal Singh, but it definitely wasn't bad by any means.
Really glad I started this Clarkesworld reading spree :>

[A.J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for the 2024 Hugos
Story - “Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition” - 3 stars
There's kind of a story in here. Structurally, this is kind of weird. It's supposed to be the introduction to a book, but mostly it feels like something else. The first part of the story, maybe the first 2/3 or so, is really a summary of the book, not really an introduction. This is to lay the world-building groundwork for the real story. The last 1/3 is the real story, and you need most of the first part to understand it. I see what the author was trying to do, but it just didn't come together for me.

[Kathryn Atreides · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition.

4.5 stars!

This story is a fascinating look at the all the moral and ethical implications that come into play when cryo-sleep is invented and starts to be used to "pause" the disease state of a terminally ill patient until medicine can advance further. A lot of sci-fi that involves cryo-sleep is quite surface level, while this story takes a deep dive into the whole concept.

It lost half a star because I don't think it reads like an introduction to a book when it's supposed to.

[Pau Lethani · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review of Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition by Gu Shi.

Hmm the idea is very interesting, I loved everything related to the speculation of cryosleep. But I didn't connect with the fiction story I'm afraid.

[Astrid · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've only read "Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition", which was amazing.

[Kab · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition" by Gu Shi ★★★★

[Dolorosa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating is for the Gu Shi short story; I haven’t read anything else.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating is for “Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition”, Gu Shi /〈2181序曲〉再版导言, 顾适 translated by Emily Jin, nominee for Best Novelette at the Hugos 2024

[Zoe]

Hugo award finalist for best novelette:
“Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition”, Gu Shi /〈2181序曲〉再版导言, 顾适 translated by Emily Jin (liked!)

[Thia Reads A Lot]

A good issue

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

For Samantha Murray's 'Somewhere, It's About to Be Spring'. This was super cute, and I want a full-length novel with the characters.