Status Updates From Clarkesworld Magazine, Issu...

The nonfiction pieces were nice--an article about babies and fertility and genes, and two interviews with Aliette de Bodard & A.C. Wise, and Neil Clarke feeling much better about the magazine's future with the new subscribers.

The Children I Gave You, Oxalaia - Lemos: Alternate history, where Venusian refugees huddle in Brazilian favelas.

Those Who Remember the World - Ghan: Strange AI/biological city, and there's a murder.

A Theory of Missing Affections - Bernardo: One sister explores alien torture devices, which may not be.

A World of Milk and Promises - Wesley: A lone human survivor on an alien planet has a new understanding of it.

The Music Must Always Play - Lingen: A linguist and a UFO, while her dad is dying.

Fish Fear Me, You Need Me - Xue: I don't want to eat any fish.

Broken - Williams McCaffrey: Reverse order, lots of questions, interesting.

How to Remember Perfectly - Schwitzgebel: Shaping memories with your new lover in the old folks' home.

milk & promises - 5 stars - absolutely fantastic. best story in the volume. short, effective, impactful. true weirdness in the best way, heartfelt and heart-wrenching. cruelty beyond predator and prey, glory and sorrow of the circle of life. scavenger's reign vibes.

missing affection - 4.5 stars - worldbuilding, writing, understandable interpersonal conflict, dead aliens that still matter. it's got everything. emotion versus logic, dogmatic beliefs colliding, the wisdom of others' viewpoints. enjoyed the indirect comparison/contrast to be drawn bw the MC and the aliens. fascinating. tl;dr I really liked this one

those who remember - 1 star, dnf - got 80% in and got so bored I skipped ahead. did not like the writing (not sure if it was typos or if the intentionally ungrammatical structures with dropped words were on purpose, but either way, no thanks). long, rambling, winding, self-obsessed. wants to be annihilation. interesting idea of a living city but not an execution I enjoyed.

lots of typos in this volume... missing quotation marks, inappropriate apostrophes. oops!

oxalia - 3.5 stars - outstanding worldbuilding and great writing hampered by confused storytelling. needed to be a full short story, I think, bc there's a lot to say here and not a lot of time to say it. beautifully, intrinsically alien; I would have read many more pages. gave me district 9 vibes in the best way. alas! had such high hopes!

"Stepping in the mud was the least of her problems, except when she had to step in it." ha...

remember - 3 stars - kind of a funny read after 1982, actually. memory control, the malleability of the past, suffering as inescapable in the context of human connection - "welcome to reality." my biggest issue was I couldn't buy into the POV of that of an older individual near death. felt like any old mid-50s narrator writing about any old time period.

broken - 3.5 stars - a little predictable, a little repetitive, but I appreciated the backwards storytelling gambit, the worldbuilding, and Flyer's twitchy characterization. fun read with a lot of unanswered questions (compliment)

fish fear me - 4 stars - really interesting little character study with neat worldbuilding and clean writing. loneliness and connection after the end of the world. closest thing to romance I've enjoyed across these volumes so far, so kudos.

music must always play - 3 stars - REALLY wanted to like this, as a linguist by training who would lose her mind if she got the chance the MC in this one gets. however, what it has to say about human nature is confused and poorly presented, and I found the characterization bland. the writing itself is Just Okay. wanted more aliens than I got :(