Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 241, October 2026

by Neil Clarke (Editor), Alex T. Singer (Contributor), Fiona Moore (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 October 2026 issue (#241) contains:

Fiction
• "A Vintage Kind of Death" by Alex T. Singer
• "The Mari Lwyd" by Fiona Moore
• "How Does One Person Kill a Mountain?" by Shi Heiyao
• "The Job" by Elizabeth Bear
• "Five Bottles in Memory of the Winemaker Petronius Finch" by Louis Inglis Hall
• "Roams the Planet of Our Grief" by Natalia Theodoridou
• "The Rice Paper Bleed" by Tia Tashiro

Non-Fiction
• "Dragonflies and Spaceship Design" by Gunnar De Winter
• "Afrocommunitarian Philosophy and Aliens: A Conversation with Wole Talabi" by Arley Sorg
• "Unlearning Helplessness: A Conversation with Yoon Ha Lee" by Arley Sorg
• "Editor's Desk: In Our Twenties" by Neil Clarke

Cover Art
• "Labyrinths of Azarax" by Marcel Deneuve

235 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 2026

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

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Personal favorite this month was How Does One Person Kill a Mountain by Shi Heiyao. Close seconds were The Job by Elizabeth Bear and Five Bottles in Memory of the Winemaker Petronius Finch.

[Kam Yung Soh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good issue, with some interesting stories by Shi Heiyao, Elizabeth Bear, Louis Inglis Hall and Tia Tashiro.

- "A Vintage Kind of Death" by Alex T. Singer: in the future, a machine intelligence downloads into the recreation of a human body to live out the day of the person's death following a recorded script. But its action occasionally goes off script when it gets partnered with another downloaded intelligence that wants to do more than just follow the scripted lives of people long gone.

- "The Mari Lwyd" by Fiona Moore: set in the author's series set after the fall of civilisation, this one has the character and her robot searching some mining tunnels for a possible ghost, which turns out to be another robot. Failing to coax the robot out, she then runs into pirates that are terrorising the area. It is here that the robot gets to help her out, acting as a ghost.

- "How Does One Person Kill a Mountain?" by Shi Heiyao, translated by Andy Dudak: set in Africa, it involves an alien creature that is literally the size of a mountain. One person, who holds the mountain responsible for the death of his father, and for the misfortunes of the local people in the area, wants to kill it. But it turns out the creature has other plans, and maybe a way to convince the man to create a better future for him and the area.

- "The Job" by Elizabeth Bear: two persons are transformed into whales to explore an aquatic world for minerals under the sea. The job is boring, the findings are few, and one explorer just wants to find the minerals and get the job over so she can return home and, hopefully, make up with her partner who has left her. But the finding of intelligent octopods, and being abandoned by the survey company, gradually changes her perspective of the planet. As when she grows fond of the octopods, she finds herself defending it with her life against the returning humans who want to exploit it.

- "Five Bottles in Memory of the Winemaker Petronius Finch" by Louis Inglis Hall: a disturbing story of a winemaker who has learned the art of distilling humans into wine. Now, the son leads a tour of some of the wine created, including one that has never been tasted.

- "Roams the Planet of Our Grief" by Natalia Theodoridou: a passing planet harbours the cries of people who have died in unknown circumstances. Their cries are heard by some people who now seek to pass on their messages to their loved ones. The story follows one person who performs the duty, to the detriment of his relationship with others.

- "The Rice Paper Bleed" by Tia Tashiro: an old lady complains that her environment keeps changing around her and only she notices it. The only constant is the stream of westerns that she watches on TV. Then one night, she discovers the reason for the changes and the person who may be causing the changes in order to feed on her. But she is determined to fight back.

[Shyan · Rating 4 out of 5]

DNA divined like tea leaves, matching bones to bereaved.

A weighty collection, musty with seasonal cobwebs which peer down odd alleys, shimmering with alien insights into how we may grow to cope with death and aging when the relativistic experience of these phenomena become artifically extended, distorted, corrupted.

Alex T. Singer’s A Vintage Kind of Death opens with such a bizarre and funny premise, Louis Inglis Hall’s Five Bottles in Memory of the Winemaker Petronius Finch hits you with heady dark thematic notes that grips you in the middle, and Elizabeth Bear’s The Job immerses you in an emotional weight that justifies this story’s novella-class length.

I enjoyed Shi Heiyao’s How Does One Person Kill a Mountain?, translated by Andy Dudak, in part because of the novelty of seeing modes of writing common in “Chinese sci-fi” (whatever that means) applied to a narrative in Malawi. The fishy imagery and word choice is also superb, with big props to both the original author and translator.

My favorite story by far in this collection however is Natalia Theodoridou’s Roams the Planet of Our Grief . Unique storytelling that knifes you at an angle you don’t expect, leaving you with dark glimmers of distant stars to ponder.

I haven’t lost anyone. Not to death, anyway. Only to life.