Thia Reads A Lot’s Reviews > Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 239, August 2026 > Status Update

What We Want to Leave Behind: A Conversation with Carolyn Ives Gilman good interview. I wouldn't have known from the cover that Testament was a SF mystery. I might check it out.

The Minds and Bodies of Robots: A Conversation with James Patrick Kelly Good interview. I will check out his most-recent collection, sounds interesting!

The Universal Human Happiness Program: 3* Zishun is considering waking up all the Dreamers, but ultimately decides not to, but his dissatisfied colleague does it in his stead. Very Matrix-like

Destination: Saturn: good essay with many references to other works of SF

Feed Them on Your Dreams: 4* A child is unexpectedly born to a woman slave ("sailer") who was immune to the sterilization drugs given to her. The Library raises the child, Vacule, and make a weird puppet of his mother. Vacule is brilliant, makes a new engine and ship design, but he wants to go outside. Upon finding out his mother isn't alive, he learns he has no personhood outside the lab and can't leave.

A woman "borrows" an interruptor to share a meal with her aging mother without ads. She also made interruptor lenses at the end, to shield her mother who seems to come out of her shell more. Interesting world. Eerie.

Editor's Desk: A European Adventure and More good, interesting that the conventions in Europe talk more about translations, but that makes sense

All the Ruined Doorways of the Moon: 3* Anna and her husband move into a bigger house with a folly shaped like an Ethran archway. She goes to a lecture about the archways, then meets the professor who gave the lecture. She wants to go back to college, but her husband won't let her. Then she goes through the arch in her garden, which is a real ruin hidden as a fake.

Passenger Pigeons, Dodos, Neanderthals: 3* Teri is the second human to go to Mars after the Collapse (since the original humans mutated on Mars). They treat her like something to be studied. It's hard on her.

As the Tide Loves the Diver, As the Diver Loves the Tide: 4* The Net blocked off humanity from its knowledge (the Decline). Divers are trying to retrieve information. It forms a relationship with one diver, who sacrifices herself to allow her daughter to get the blueprints for the diving machines. Interseting POV