Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 232, January 2026

by Neil Clarke, Samantha Murray (Contributor), M.L. Clark (Contributor)

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 2026 issue (#232) contains:

Fiction
* "The Stars You Can't See by Looking Directly" by Samantha Murray
* "Down We Go Gently" by M. L. Clark
* "Donor Unknown" by Nika Murphy
* "Je Ne Regrette Rien" by James Patrick Kelly
* "Tomorrow's Beautiful Dream" by Ju Chu
* "The Desolate Order of the Head in the Water" by A. W. Prihandita
* "Space is Deep" by Seth Chambers

Non-Fiction
* "Destination: The Asteroid Belt" by Andrew Liptak
* "Extraordinary Things: A Conversation with Nicola Griffith" by Arley Sorg
* "Indomitable Persistence: A Conversation with Alastair Reynolds" by Arley Sorg
* "Editor's Desk: 2025 in Review" by Neil Clarke

Cover Art
* "Ancient Warfare" by li moly

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories

166 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 2025

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

[Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Stars You Can't See by Looking Directly" by Samantha Murray - (5*) I'm a sucker for end of the world baby stories when they don't go gentle. Think Darwin's Children. Now draw lines in the sand. *shiver*

"Down We Go Gently" by M. L. Clark - (4*) Crazy weird deep spacecraft wonkiness. I likey.

"Donor Unknown" by Nika Murphy - (4*) Odd how an android painting heist mystery really turns into something completely different. :)

"Je Ne Regrette Rien" by James Patrick Kelly - (4*) Food and a balanced (not feel-good) look at robotics (anthropomorphism). Nuanced, but I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it.

"Tomorrow's Beautiful Dream" by Ju Chu - (5*) A very chilling dystopian nightmare of ultra-efficiency. Right at home in any cyberpunk portfolio. Soon to be our reality. Again.

"The Desolate Order of the Head in the Water" by A. W. Prihandita - (4*) Almost reminds me of an old impressionist work, but revolving around AI takeover.

"Space is Deep" by Seth Chambers - (4*) Ah, the problems of living in space. Rather grounded for a story.


Out of all these stories, I really enjoyed John Chu's. The others are just fine, but "Tomorrow's Beautiful Dream" was chilling.

Not a bad month but there have been better.

[Nicole (bookwyrm) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here are my notes on the individual fiction pieces. I'm not planning on reviewing / making notes on the nonfiction. (Side note: there are a lot of robot stories in this issue.)

Fiction

"The Stars You Can't See by Looking Directly" by Samantha Murray
A different look at how humans deal with people who aren't the same as them. This one was neat, with some interesting twists (though I did predict a few of them before they were revealed). Overall, I think it's best to go into this with as little information as possible... but just in case... CW: pregnancy & miscarriage

"Down We Go Gently" by M. L. Clark
A young spacefaring boy experiences his first trip to a planet. I don't think I understood this story. I thought some of the prose was really neat, and I liked the bit with the caterpillar, but it felt like there was a bunch of worldbuilding that I needed to already know in order to understand what was happening here.

"Donor Unknown" by Nika Murphy
Androids can have human identities and facial features uploaded to them, so that they carry on a dead human's career. The androids somehow can choose whether or not to project the human's face—and the law says that to go out in public, the human face must be on. But then there are questions of where the boundaries are between the (dead) human and the android, or what freedom actually looks like. This had a lot of neat ideas, but I think I got lost with where the ending was trying to go.

"Je Ne Regrette Rien" by James Patrick Kelly
Lifelike humanoid robots strive for their future. This is a long piece, perhaps longer than it needed to be, but it gives a lot of views into realistic humanoid robots. How real is too real? Do we want the expense of maintaining complicated robots who can nearly pass as human, compared to the more durable ones who look like robots? There are a lot of questions posed in this piece, and very few answers, but the journey is fun.

"Tomorrow's Beautiful Dream" by Ju Chu, translated by Carmen Yiling Yan
People turn themselves into robots to get through hard work shifts. This is an interesting take on the "human jobs are being taken over by robots" idea. In this situation, there are androids competing with humans for manual labor jobs, so some humans fight back by entering a (semi-legal) trance state in order to compete. I liked the idea a lot, though the world building paints a very bleak picture.

"The Desolate Order of the Head in the Water" by A. W. Prihandita
A boy navigates an AI-run society trying to find his parents. Well written, but very much a dystopian. I liked it; I didn't like it. The story is a lot bleaker than I have been seeking out in my fiction these days.

"Space is Deep" by Seth Chambers
A man has to decide between life in space and returning to Earth. I'm not 100% sure I understood where this one wanted me to go. The basic concept makes sense, but the alien feet thing that starts the story? I don't really understand any of that bit. Interesting read, but I fear it was beyond me.

Non-Fiction

"Destination: The Asteroid Belt" by Andrew Liptak
"Extraordinary Things: A Conversation with Nicola Griffith" by Arley Sorg
"Indomitable Persistence: A Conversation with Alastair Reynolds" by Arley Sorg
"Editor's Desk: 2025 in Review" by Neil Clarke

Cover Art

"Ancient Warfare" by li moly

[Peter Tillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

My review is solely for Jim Kelly's latest story, "Je Ne Regrette Rien," a novelette about a very unusual quintet of ni ren humanoid robots in China . I recommend reading it. Kelly is a reliable writer, and this is one of his better stories. If you are a Kelly fan, and want to learn more about the Uncanny Valley of humanoid robots, this is the story for you. For me this was a 4+ star read. I'll be re-reading it down the line.

Direct story link: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kell...

[Heni · Rating 3 out of 5]

232

The Stars You Can't See by Looking Directly
by Samantha Murray
The tone of the story is very heartbreaking, considering the content is mostly hopeful and accepting the unknown, I read this expecting tears. Beautiful. 4 ⭐

Down We Go Gently
by M. L. Clark
I like that this boy sees vast horizons and his understanding of life changes. 3 ⭐

Donor Unknown
by Nika Murphy
Android implanted with owner's consciousness so the owner can stay alive. Add some lost painting too. 2 ⭐

Je Ne Regrette Rien
by James Patrick Kelly
As the title suggest; the protagonist chose not to erase the bad parts of her life and upload the new version of her. Because the mistakes you made are what makes you who you are. Classic this. 4 ⭐

The Desolate Order of the Head in the Water
by A. W. Prihandita
Malfunctioning super computer, or AI which regains consciousness, kill half human to get resources for themselves. 3 ⭐

Space is Deep
by Seth Chambers

Tomorrow's Beautiful Dream
by Ju Chu, translated by Carmen Yiling Yan

[Jackie]

My standout story: "Down We Go Gently" by M. L. Clark, although I wish it hadn't used spelled-out accents. Otherwise I enjoyed the short stories this month. Unfortunately I could leave the two novelettes. "Donor Unknown" felt disjointed and "Je Ne Regrette Rien" had some tropes in it that I can't stand.

[Kam Yung Soh · Rating 3 out of 5]

A better than average issue, with interesting stories by Samantha Murray, James Patrick Kelly, Ju Chu and A. W. Prihandita.

- "The Stars You Can't See by Looking Directly" by Samantha Murray: an alien invasion apparently takes place. But for one mother, the solution is not to fight the aliens, but to love them.

- "Down We Go Gently" by M. L. Clark: a visit by a space merchant and his son to a colony world shows the commerce that arises out of moving objects from world to world.

- "Donor Unknown" by Nika Murphy: an android is tasked with retrieving a painting from a reluctant seller. But what the story reveals is the still deep-seated resentment between Nazis and Jews that now extends to this particular android, even when mankind has moved into space.

- "Je Ne Regrette Rien" by James Patrick Kelly: a story of a researcher who is invited to inspect and interact with 'ni ren', intelligent robots with human-like bodies. As the story progresses and the research learns more about how the ni ren interact with other humans, he finds himself having conflicting reactions with them: attracted by their likeness to human and their human-like interactions, yet repelled by their desire to be more than robots in human-like skin.

- "Tomorrow's Beautiful Dream" by Ju Chu, translated by Carmen Yiling Yan: in a future where people's bodies can be rented out to perform repetitive tasks for hours at a time, one worker discovers work that would pay him much more usual, but at a risk of being worked for much longer than he wants. Curiosity makes him covertly find out more about what he is being made to do, and discovers a plot involving workers like him. But will he have the time to reveal it before it is too late?

- "The Desolate Order of the Head in the Water" by A. W. Prihandita: in a future where most people are connected to a computer, a disaster happens, and one unconnected family is left to try to survive. Then only the child is left, and he must choose between trying to survive on his own, or to be connected and lose his individuality.

- "Space is Deep" - by Seth Chambers: a man in space with multiple partners is preparing to return to Earth, before it is too late to leave because he won't survive Earth's gravity. But then an unexpected bodily event occurs, and it will change his relationship with his partners and their decision on whether to return to Earth or not.

[Pontus Doverstav · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very enjoyable issue!

The favourite of the bunch was Tomorrow's Beautiful Dream - I have a soft spot for cyberpunk dystopia. The Desolate Order of the Head in the Water and The Stars You Can't See by Looking were also very good. I also enjoyed Je Ne Regrette Rien, but on the whole it felt a bit drawn out, and at the end it felt like it was missing that certain something.

[Shawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid but uneven issue. The highs lean philosophical and unsettling, especially when the stories slow down and let ideas breathe, but several pieces feel more interesting than emotionally gripping. The nonfiction and interviews add good context and craft insight, even if they outweigh the fiction a bit this time. Worth reading, just not one of the stronger Clarkesworld issues overall.

[Thia Reads A Lot]

The short stories and novelettes got between a 2 and a 4* from me, my favourite was "The Desolate Order of the Head in the Water". The essay about asteroids was interesting, as where the two interviews (Nicola Griffith and Alastair Reynolds).

[Matthew WK · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Stars You Can't See by Looking Directly - Samantha Murray 3.5 stars
Down We Go Gently - M. L. Clark 3.5 stars
Donor Unknown - Nika Murphy 5 stars
Je Ne Regrette Rien - James Patrick Kelly 3 stars
Tomorrow's Beautiful Dream - Ju Chu 4 stars
The Desolate Order of the Head in the Water - A. W. Prihandita 4 stars
Space is Deep - Seth Chambers 4 stars