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Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 208, January 2024
Clarkesworld is a Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning science fiction and fantasy magazine. Each month we bring you a mix of fiction, articles, interviews and art.Our January 2024 issue (#208) fiction by Aimee Ogden ("Nothing of Value"), Cécile Cristofari ("Down the Waterfall"), Alexandra Munck ("Binomial Nomenclature and the Mother of Happiness"), Chi Hui ("Stars Don't Dream"), E.N. Auslender ("Just Another Cat in a Box"), Marie Vibbert ("Rail Meat"), C. M. Fields ("You Dream of the Hive"), Priya Chand ("You Cannot Grow in Salted Earth").Non-fiction includes an article by Julie Novakova, interviews with Seth Dickinson and Caitlin R. Kiernan, and an editorial by Neil Clarke.
146 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2024
6 people are currently reading
7 people want to read
About the author
Neil Clarke
401 books402 followersNeil 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 23, 2024
An interesting issue with good stories by Cécile Cristofari, Alexandra Munck, Chi Hui and E.N. Auslender.
- "Nothing of Value" by Aimee Ogden: in a future when people travel to worlds by beaming information about themselves to be recreated at the destination, one person goes to Mars to meet her former lover during student times. But times have changed, and the meeting does not go well. But forgetting the meeting may just be one transport away.
- "Down the Waterfall" by Cécile Cristofari: a woman discovers the secret of time travel and uses it to try to get back to a certain day, when she missed the poetry recital of a beloved friend, for a special reason.
- "Binomial Nomenclature and the Mother of Happiness" by Alexandra Munck: in an alternate Earth, two moons made of virtually invisible 'sonder matter' are discovered. One researcher designs virtual glasses that can see the matter, and discovers it all around people and emanating from them. Further investigations reveal different shapes being emitted by people with different emotional moods. This may turn out to be a way to discover the reason a talking elephant attempts a shocking act that, unusually, may be related to a particular Shakespeare play.
- "Stars Don't Dream" by Chi Hui, translated by John Chu: an interesting story about individuals coming together to collectively launch an interesting mission in space, at a time when humanity have retreated into virtual environments. The individuals won't live to see the end of the mission, but the story shows what happens far, far in the future.
- "Just Another Cat in a Box" by E.N. Auslender: a morbid story of a man who wakes up, knowing he has been created out of matter, into an unexpected world that has changed beyond recognition. What he discovers will be the reason for the world to be in that state, and what he must eventually do if a future version of him is to have a chance to, maybe, save the world.
- "Rail Meat" by Marie Vibbert: a thief gatecrashes a party for the wealthy, hoping to steal some treasures. Instead, she meets a fellow thief. They start a relationship while planning a heist of a wealthy yacht racer; but only if they can work to get the racer to win, in a yacht race at the edge of space, where one of them may have to make a leap of faith to achieve victory.
- "You Dream of the Hive" by C. M. Fields: a woman is 'pulled' out of a Hive Mine and sent for rehabilitation. But she only yearns to rejoin the Hive, and may have the means to do so via an implant which is yet to be removed.
- "You Cannot Grow in Salted Earth" by Priya Chand: a person makes a journey to a distant world, only to return home, for there are no more worlds that could be claimed.
- "Nothing of Value" by Aimee Ogden: in a future when people travel to worlds by beaming information about themselves to be recreated at the destination, one person goes to Mars to meet her former lover during student times. But times have changed, and the meeting does not go well. But forgetting the meeting may just be one transport away.
- "Down the Waterfall" by Cécile Cristofari: a woman discovers the secret of time travel and uses it to try to get back to a certain day, when she missed the poetry recital of a beloved friend, for a special reason.
- "Binomial Nomenclature and the Mother of Happiness" by Alexandra Munck: in an alternate Earth, two moons made of virtually invisible 'sonder matter' are discovered. One researcher designs virtual glasses that can see the matter, and discovers it all around people and emanating from them. Further investigations reveal different shapes being emitted by people with different emotional moods. This may turn out to be a way to discover the reason a talking elephant attempts a shocking act that, unusually, may be related to a particular Shakespeare play.
- "Stars Don't Dream" by Chi Hui, translated by John Chu: an interesting story about individuals coming together to collectively launch an interesting mission in space, at a time when humanity have retreated into virtual environments. The individuals won't live to see the end of the mission, but the story shows what happens far, far in the future.
- "Just Another Cat in a Box" by E.N. Auslender: a morbid story of a man who wakes up, knowing he has been created out of matter, into an unexpected world that has changed beyond recognition. What he discovers will be the reason for the world to be in that state, and what he must eventually do if a future version of him is to have a chance to, maybe, save the world.
- "Rail Meat" by Marie Vibbert: a thief gatecrashes a party for the wealthy, hoping to steal some treasures. Instead, she meets a fellow thief. They start a relationship while planning a heist of a wealthy yacht racer; but only if they can work to get the racer to win, in a yacht race at the edge of space, where one of them may have to make a leap of faith to achieve victory.
- "You Dream of the Hive" by C. M. Fields: a woman is 'pulled' out of a Hive Mine and sent for rehabilitation. But she only yearns to rejoin the Hive, and may have the means to do so via an implant which is yet to be removed.
- "You Cannot Grow in Salted Earth" by Priya Chand: a person makes a journey to a distant world, only to return home, for there are no more worlds that could be claimed.
August 2, 2024
You Cannot Grow in Salted Earth
by Priya Chand ⭐⭐⭐
I wanted this to go deeper then it did. I... have a lot of thoughts that I'm not sure are actually related to this short-story in particular, or if I'm just reading more into it than the author intended.
I might read more short-stories from the issue, we shall see...
Read for free here: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/chan...
I wanted this to go deeper then it did. I... have a lot of thoughts that I'm not sure are actually related to this short-story in particular, or if I'm just reading more into it than the author intended.
I might read more short-stories from the issue, we shall see...
Read for free here: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/chan...
March 1, 2024
The January issue of Clarkesworld Magazine is excellent, with five outstanding stories. (It also has a cute, warm and fuzzy cover, with the robot holding the little girl's hand. Suitable for Christmas.)
"Nothing of Value" by Aimee Ogden starts us out, a short and creepy little story about a future version of space travel, Skip2, that copies a person's DNA and memories and sends their information to other planets to be reprinted into a fresh new body. This story confronts the fact that such technology murders the traveler each time they step through it:
A version of me would die, I argued. But then a version would live, too, and nothing of value was actually lost. An exact copy with the same feelings and memories, the same bad habits, and the same favorite coffee cup. Everyone was doing it--they wouldn't be, if it wasn't totally fine. The corporations would have shut it down so they wouldn't get sued. The International Supervisory Board review had said that there was nothing unsafe or unreasonable about Skip2 travel.
Our protagonist is attempting to meet up with their old lover on Mars and rekindle their relationship, ten years after they broke apart. They don't get back together, as the core disagreement between them is over the narrator's usage of the Skip2 technology. But the further you get into this story, the more sinister the subtext becomes. I didn't realize this until the second time I read it through, but this story is really about the horrifying implications of its central concept. When an individual's information is sent ahead to print into a new body, the previous one is destroyed:
Your smile retracts. "You mean because of the lockdown? I saw it on the 'scape."
"They caught the shell pretty fast--only twenty minutes or so before they could get it back into the recycler. 'Lockdown' is a strong word for twenty minutes." I snort. "That's barely enough time for a post-print stretch to make sure all my parts came through right."
So the "shell" is the previous person, murdered to make room for the new one. This technological shift contributes to the dehumanization of people in this future, and creates a cultural schism between the people who use Skip2 and those who don't, as reflected in the conflict between the narrator and their lover.
This story is unsettling as all get-out, and packs a terrifying punch for its short length. You won't soon forget it.
"Down the Waterfall," by Cecile Cristofari, is a time travel story that doesn't fall into the usual time-travel tropes. The protagonist doesn't want to change the past--she just wants to briefly travel down "the road not taken," and visit a person who died all too soon.
Her smile wavers. As much as she enjoys these meetings, she finds herself unnerved, at times, when strands of her mind wander in directions she doesn't mean to explore--another life, another rivulet of time, where this friendship of theirs would have taken a different form. She thinks of her husband and takes another sip of her coffee.
This is a quiet, lovely, bittersweet little story.
"Stars Don't Dream," by Chi Hui, translated by John Chu, was published in a Chinese SF magazine in 2022 and translated into English for this issue. The Chinese authors I've read in the past are often pretty thin on characterization, but thankfully that isn't the case with this story. This tells of a future where space exploration has been abandoned, and everyone on Earth spends their time in a virtual reality "dream tower" while their physical bodies are being cared for and carted around in robots. In this future, even babies are conceived in artificial wombs and cared for by robots. One of the characters is the one human who has contact with these babies:
These infants will eventually grow up. They will be sent to live by the side of every parent who ordered them. By then, they will no longer cry and scream. They will have been weaned, raised to be obedient, clever, and to satisfy others. What some parents order for their baby is the whole growth period service. For their entire lives, these babies never live by their parents’ side. They are weaned at the nursery, then are sent to youth camps all across the United States. There, robot instructors keep them company. The instructors have built-in expert knowledge of one hundred fifty kinds of child-rearing actions. This is sufficient to raise the babies to adulthood.
This future is kind of horrifying as well, even if it turns out hopeful at the end. This story's characters mount an expedition to Venus that ends up introducing life into the planet's poisonous atmosphere, which gives rise to intelligent life thousands of years later. (This story's timeline spans three hundred million years.) The entire theme of the story is while the universe and stars are cold and uncaring and don't dream, the life that arises does; and as that intelligent life states:
"Let's toast to possibilities," he says. "A toast to the universe that does not dream."
They all raise their glasses. Starlight ripples through each glass.
"To possibilities!"
This story, like a lot of Chinese fiction I've read, has an old-fashioned retro feel to it, with a great deal of classic "sensawunda."
"Rail Meat," by Marie Vibbert, is a yacht race with a twist--the yachts are skimming the stratosphere. Our protagonist, Ernestine, a thief, grifter and con artist, signs on to the races as "living ballast." This is another short, action-packed story, where the other main character, Rico, who joins the yacht races to win the heart of a millionaire yacht owner, discovers attaining his heart's desire may not be such a good thing after all.
Finally, we have "You Dream of the Hive," by C.M. Fields, another story that is not long but packs a helluva punch. This story uses the uncommon and tricky second-person narration in its depiction of a person trapped by an interdimensional hive mind, just rescued--and who wants to go back. For Star Trek fans, it's comparable to a drone wishing to return to the Borg:
Entering the Hive was like slipping into a warm bath, like listening to a church organ the size of a moon, like watching a starburst in a trillion colors, all at once. It was the embrace of ten thousand arms enfolding you into a community knit like the neurons in your brain. You did not understand the language of the Hive at first, but it gave you all you needed.
Like the best of the other stories in this issue, this story also has an edge of horror: more subtle than "Nothing of Value," to be sure, but just as unsettling in its final lines.
All in all, an outstanding issue of Clarkesworld. Issues like these are why I've been a subscriber for years now.
"Nothing of Value" by Aimee Ogden starts us out, a short and creepy little story about a future version of space travel, Skip2, that copies a person's DNA and memories and sends their information to other planets to be reprinted into a fresh new body. This story confronts the fact that such technology murders the traveler each time they step through it:
A version of me would die, I argued. But then a version would live, too, and nothing of value was actually lost. An exact copy with the same feelings and memories, the same bad habits, and the same favorite coffee cup. Everyone was doing it--they wouldn't be, if it wasn't totally fine. The corporations would have shut it down so they wouldn't get sued. The International Supervisory Board review had said that there was nothing unsafe or unreasonable about Skip2 travel.
Our protagonist is attempting to meet up with their old lover on Mars and rekindle their relationship, ten years after they broke apart. They don't get back together, as the core disagreement between them is over the narrator's usage of the Skip2 technology. But the further you get into this story, the more sinister the subtext becomes. I didn't realize this until the second time I read it through, but this story is really about the horrifying implications of its central concept. When an individual's information is sent ahead to print into a new body, the previous one is destroyed:
Your smile retracts. "You mean because of the lockdown? I saw it on the 'scape."
"They caught the shell pretty fast--only twenty minutes or so before they could get it back into the recycler. 'Lockdown' is a strong word for twenty minutes." I snort. "That's barely enough time for a post-print stretch to make sure all my parts came through right."
So the "shell" is the previous person, murdered to make room for the new one. This technological shift contributes to the dehumanization of people in this future, and creates a cultural schism between the people who use Skip2 and those who don't, as reflected in the conflict between the narrator and their lover.
This story is unsettling as all get-out, and packs a terrifying punch for its short length. You won't soon forget it.
"Down the Waterfall," by Cecile Cristofari, is a time travel story that doesn't fall into the usual time-travel tropes. The protagonist doesn't want to change the past--she just wants to briefly travel down "the road not taken," and visit a person who died all too soon.
Her smile wavers. As much as she enjoys these meetings, she finds herself unnerved, at times, when strands of her mind wander in directions she doesn't mean to explore--another life, another rivulet of time, where this friendship of theirs would have taken a different form. She thinks of her husband and takes another sip of her coffee.
This is a quiet, lovely, bittersweet little story.
"Stars Don't Dream," by Chi Hui, translated by John Chu, was published in a Chinese SF magazine in 2022 and translated into English for this issue. The Chinese authors I've read in the past are often pretty thin on characterization, but thankfully that isn't the case with this story. This tells of a future where space exploration has been abandoned, and everyone on Earth spends their time in a virtual reality "dream tower" while their physical bodies are being cared for and carted around in robots. In this future, even babies are conceived in artificial wombs and cared for by robots. One of the characters is the one human who has contact with these babies:
These infants will eventually grow up. They will be sent to live by the side of every parent who ordered them. By then, they will no longer cry and scream. They will have been weaned, raised to be obedient, clever, and to satisfy others. What some parents order for their baby is the whole growth period service. For their entire lives, these babies never live by their parents’ side. They are weaned at the nursery, then are sent to youth camps all across the United States. There, robot instructors keep them company. The instructors have built-in expert knowledge of one hundred fifty kinds of child-rearing actions. This is sufficient to raise the babies to adulthood.
This future is kind of horrifying as well, even if it turns out hopeful at the end. This story's characters mount an expedition to Venus that ends up introducing life into the planet's poisonous atmosphere, which gives rise to intelligent life thousands of years later. (This story's timeline spans three hundred million years.) The entire theme of the story is while the universe and stars are cold and uncaring and don't dream, the life that arises does; and as that intelligent life states:
"Let's toast to possibilities," he says. "A toast to the universe that does not dream."
They all raise their glasses. Starlight ripples through each glass.
"To possibilities!"
This story, like a lot of Chinese fiction I've read, has an old-fashioned retro feel to it, with a great deal of classic "sensawunda."
"Rail Meat," by Marie Vibbert, is a yacht race with a twist--the yachts are skimming the stratosphere. Our protagonist, Ernestine, a thief, grifter and con artist, signs on to the races as "living ballast." This is another short, action-packed story, where the other main character, Rico, who joins the yacht races to win the heart of a millionaire yacht owner, discovers attaining his heart's desire may not be such a good thing after all.
Finally, we have "You Dream of the Hive," by C.M. Fields, another story that is not long but packs a helluva punch. This story uses the uncommon and tricky second-person narration in its depiction of a person trapped by an interdimensional hive mind, just rescued--and who wants to go back. For Star Trek fans, it's comparable to a drone wishing to return to the Borg:
Entering the Hive was like slipping into a warm bath, like listening to a church organ the size of a moon, like watching a starburst in a trillion colors, all at once. It was the embrace of ten thousand arms enfolding you into a community knit like the neurons in your brain. You did not understand the language of the Hive at first, but it gave you all you needed.
Like the best of the other stories in this issue, this story also has an edge of horror: more subtle than "Nothing of Value," to be sure, but just as unsettling in its final lines.
All in all, an outstanding issue of Clarkesworld. Issues like these are why I've been a subscriber for years now.
April 19, 2024
It was a nice issue, with both nice and meh stories. There weren't any outstanding, 5 star ones, though.
"Nothing of Value” by Aimee Ogden - Humanity has invented teleportation, so now you can jump around the solar system. This is a story about both the impact of technology and very human emotional dead ends. 4 stars.
“Down the Waterfall” by Cécile Cristofari - Yet another take on time travel, roads not taken and moments you wished you had had. Very poetic, but it left me cold. 3.5 stars.
“Binomial Nomenclature and the Mother of Happiness” by Alexandra Munck - An engineer makes a machine that lets you see physical manifestations of emotions. I liked the world building and the characters. 4.2 stars.
“Stars Don’t Dream” by Chi Hui - Maybe it’s a dystopia, maybe it’s a utopia. Anyway, everyone is in the metaverse. Space exploration, what space exploration? But some people dream… Very nice hard sci-fi! 4 stars.
”Just Another Cat in a Box” by E.N. Auslender - Someone is trapped on post-apocalyptic planet, different versions of the protagonist awake one after another. It was pretty bleak and I did not like it. 2.5 stars.
“Rail Meat” by Marie Vibbert - Two con artists in a world it would be interesting to see more of. Very enjoyable! 4.3 stars.
“You Dream of the Hive” by C.M. Fields - what kind of existence do you want? The regular human one or… something else? Interesting! 3.9 stars.
”You Cannot Grow in Salted Earth” by Priya Chand - space exploration that had gone wrong. It felt more like a fragment than a story. 3 stars
"Nothing of Value” by Aimee Ogden - Humanity has invented teleportation, so now you can jump around the solar system. This is a story about both the impact of technology and very human emotional dead ends. 4 stars.
“Down the Waterfall” by Cécile Cristofari - Yet another take on time travel, roads not taken and moments you wished you had had. Very poetic, but it left me cold. 3.5 stars.
“Binomial Nomenclature and the Mother of Happiness” by Alexandra Munck - An engineer makes a machine that lets you see physical manifestations of emotions. I liked the world building and the characters. 4.2 stars.
“Stars Don’t Dream” by Chi Hui - Maybe it’s a dystopia, maybe it’s a utopia. Anyway, everyone is in the metaverse. Space exploration, what space exploration? But some people dream… Very nice hard sci-fi! 4 stars.
”Just Another Cat in a Box” by E.N. Auslender - Someone is trapped on post-apocalyptic planet, different versions of the protagonist awake one after another. It was pretty bleak and I did not like it. 2.5 stars.
“Rail Meat” by Marie Vibbert - Two con artists in a world it would be interesting to see more of. Very enjoyable! 4.3 stars.
“You Dream of the Hive” by C.M. Fields - what kind of existence do you want? The regular human one or… something else? Interesting! 3.9 stars.
”You Cannot Grow in Salted Earth” by Priya Chand - space exploration that had gone wrong. It felt more like a fragment than a story. 3 stars
April 18, 2024
Clarkesworld Magazine issue #208 (January, 2024). 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:
Nothing of Value by Aimee Ogden
Down the Waterfall by Cécile Cristofari
Binomial Nomenclature and the Mother of Happiness by Alexandra Munck
stars Don’t Dream by Chi Hui
Just Another Cat in the Box by E. N. Auslender
Rail Meat by marie Vibbert
You Dream of the Hive by Marie Vibbert
and You Cannot Grow in Salted Earth by Priya Chand
All stories were exceptional and very diverse, I really liked Nothing of Value by Aimee Ogden and Binomial Nomenclature and the Mother of Happiness by Alexandra Munck .
(I didn’t read the three non-fiction offerings).
Themes: sci-fi, fantasy, space opera, dystopian, AI, aliens.
4 Stars
Consider supporting them on Patreon.
Onwards with more high quality sci-fi offerings:
Nothing of Value by Aimee Ogden
Down the Waterfall by Cécile Cristofari
Binomial Nomenclature and the Mother of Happiness by Alexandra Munck
stars Don’t Dream by Chi Hui
Just Another Cat in the Box by E. N. Auslender
Rail Meat by marie Vibbert
You Dream of the Hive by Marie Vibbert
and You Cannot Grow in Salted Earth by Priya Chand
All stories were exceptional and very diverse, I really liked Nothing of Value by Aimee Ogden and Binomial Nomenclature and the Mother of Happiness by Alexandra Munck .
(I didn’t read the three non-fiction offerings).
Themes: sci-fi, fantasy, space opera, dystopian, AI, aliens.
4 Stars
June 17, 2025
This is the first CW I've read cover to cover. All the stories here were at least solid, if not always my style. Standouts for me were "Nothing of Value" by Aimee Ogden, "Rail Meat" by Marie Vibbert, and "You Cannot Grow in Salted Earth" by Priya Chand.
I'm super behind on my subscription, but I have many more issues loaded up and ready to go, so will be reading more!
I'm super behind on my subscription, but I have many more issues loaded up and ready to go, so will be reading more!
January 16, 2024
Putting them into tiers, the A+ stories were Binomial Nomenclature and the Mother of Happiness and Just Another Cat in a Box. The former is about obsessing over a new way of visualizing emotions after tragedy, and the latter a dark exploration of a single post-apocalyptic concept on an infinite timescale.
Stories that get a regular A are You Dream of the Hive, Stars Don’t Dream, and Rail Meat. Those are about escaping a collective, Borg-like society from someone who doesn’t want to escape, a group of specialists coming together for a moonshot (or Venus-shot) dream, and a romance between futuristic thieves.
Finally, the still good B stories are Nothing of Value, a teleportation tragedy, Down the Waterfall, a poetic time-travel story, and You Cannot Grow in Salted Earth, a brief story about the young’s desire to explore space when earth is drained of resources.
Stories that get a regular A are You Dream of the Hive, Stars Don’t Dream, and Rail Meat. Those are about escaping a collective, Borg-like society from someone who doesn’t want to escape, a group of specialists coming together for a moonshot (or Venus-shot) dream, and a romance between futuristic thieves.
Finally, the still good B stories are Nothing of Value, a teleportation tragedy, Down the Waterfall, a poetic time-travel story, and You Cannot Grow in Salted Earth, a brief story about the young’s desire to explore space when earth is drained of resources.
February 4, 2024
A very strong issue - the standout for me was the Ogden story, and next the Fields, but at least half the issue was above average.
August 4, 2025
Read "You Cannot Grow in Salted Earth" by Priya Chand
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews