Review: Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 140
EricMesa
- 2 minutes read - 405 words
Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 140 by Neil Clarke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A nice balanced collection. My favorite was Cold Comfort. Below are my per story reviews and/or thoughts.
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A Vastness: A very interesting story of what we do when we’re so driven, we are willing to risk everything. And a great ending that was very unexpected. It felt a bit shorter than these usually are, so it was extra neat to have it work so well.
Not Now: A story about how messed up the media can be and how uncaring about those they’re covering. It focuses specially on how it can tear families apart.
Fleeing Oslyge: a war narrative about the psychology of attackers and victims by making the attackers aliens. Pretty harrowing and really makes me think even more about the consequences of war.
Farewell, Doraemon: A pretty deep story about growing up in the middle of nowhere, consequences of actions, and relationships. It takes place in China so the details are different, but it definitely has a lot of similar themes to American stories of going from the sticks to the big city and back. The SF elements are somewhat tangential to most of the story. So if you read it without wondering when it’s going to get SF, you’ll get more out of it.
Cold comfort: A story about a scientist willing to do what it takes to get their anti-climate change research to work. Had a surprisingly neat ending.
In panic town, on the backward moon: an alternate universe detective story on Mars. Fun prose and style.
Metallic mayhem in the movies: a history of Mecha in film and tv
Spies, radios, and the afterlife: The conversation goes a number is interesting places: what it’s like to be a bilingual author and have your work translated by someone else, the odd situation in the 1917 Russian revolution, and the afterlife.
Another word: Chinese Science fiction going abroad: a survey of the history of the translation of Chinese Science fiction. What I thought was interesting considering the size of China was how long it took Chinese SF to be translated and published outside of China. And after that it’s crazy how long it took to snowball in popularity.
Editor’s desk: a look at how Neil is working to increase the author pool for clarkesworld to be more diverse across national boundaries and other dimensions.