Clarkesworld

Clarkesworld Issue 221 edited by Neil Clarke

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Book 12 of 2025: Clarkesworld Issue 221 edited by Neil Clarke: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

My favorites this month were “King of the Castle” by Fiona Moore and “The Hanging Tower of Babel” by Wang Zhenzhen, translated by Carmen Yiling Yan.

Also, this is the fourth consecutive story by Fiona Moore, all in the same world and with the same central characters (particularly Morag and her repurposed security robot Seamus), that has ended up as one of my favorites when they appear in Clarkesworld. She’s writing the kind of post-apocalyptic stores that really resonate for me, where the immediate post-apocalyptic part and all associated Bad Things That Happen have already happened, and society has moved on to finding ways to reconnect and rebuild. Post-post-apocalyptic, I suppose. Much more my style of story than the standard post-apocalyptic tale of people trapped in bad situations and having to cope with horrible things happening to them.

The stories I’ve read (I haven’t yet dug to see if there are more in this world) are:

Me holding Clarkesworld 221 on my iPad.

Clarkesworld Issue 219 edited by Neil Clarke

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Book 2 of 2025: Clarkesworld Issue 219, edited by Neil Clarke. ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Favorites in this issue were “Souljacker” by Shari Paul, “Driver” by Sameem Siddiqui, and “The Coffee Machine” by Celia Corral-Vásquez.

I realized last week that somehow I got a month behind with my Clarkesworld reading, so this is actually the December issue, and the January issue is coming up next.

Me holding Clarkesworld 219 on my iPad.

Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 218 edited by Neil Clarke

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70/2024 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Favorites this month were “LuvHome™” by Resa Nelson, “Luminous Glass, Vibrant Seeds” by D.A. Xiaolin Spires, “Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being” by A. W. Prihandita, and “Unquiet Graves” by Michael Swanwick.

Me holding Clarkesworld 218 on my iPad