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(SF Hibernation) Du Ruofei sleeps
until the future can heal his rare disorder. At first he really likes it, but
the more he learns about 2322, the more uneasy he gets.
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(Chinese SF) A blackmailer forces
Helena to make entire fake steaks for him or else he’ll tell the authorities
about her business printing fake beef for shady restaurants. She’s never
tried to make a whole steak though.
Other
Reviews RSR
Mini-Review [4] Recommended By: RSR:4 SFRevu:4 GDozois:5 RHorton:5 JStrahan JMcGregor:5 CPayseur
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(Planetary Adventure) Azuki travels to
Goliath to bring the ashes of his dead girlfriend home. Exporting human
remains is illegal, so he gets help from some poachers.
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(SF) Feng Su wakes up after 40 years
of hibernation, but things aren’t exactly what she expected.
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(SF) Nick and Charlie live in
Antarctica where the alien “Masters” are engineering improved forms of
humanity.
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(Virtual Reality) Sonia used to be a
fan of the <i>Labyrinthiad</i> until they killed off her favorite
character. Now she sneaks online and kills other people’s favorites.
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(Planetary Exploration) In the methane
oceans of Titan, Bishop and her crew try to figure out what happened to
another ship which seems to have been crushed by a giant alien vessel.
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(Far-Future SF) A group of uploaded
intelligences on a space probe debates how to handle the discovery of a
habitable planet.
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(Near-Future SF) Mara desperately
wants to join the Newbodies, but they put her on the waiting list. There’s
got to be another way in . . .
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(Post-Apocalypse) In a remote
scientific outpost , Andrew and his wife survived the plague that killed most
of the world. Now they have to decide whether to join other survivors.
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(Surreal SF) A priesthood of
mathematicians has kept the planet Cemar safe, but things have been safe for
so long that some people think the priestesses themselves are the bigger
danger.
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(SF Horror) A community of survivors
waits in an abandoned stadium surrounded by a giant forest that slowly sucks
their memories away, but they still remember the soldiers who are fighting
for them.
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Falling in Love with Martians and Machines by Josh Pearce Time: 27m (Novelette)
Issue: Clarkesworld 135
(Near-Future SF) Chromium Jim and Babe
work their way north to Alaska by winning rocket-powered drag races along the
way.
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(SF) Hunting an ex-ruler who committed
genocide, Beadith ends up stranded on an island with him and a strange
psychoactive moss.
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(AI) The narrator’s therapy includes
some cute little robots that help cheer her up.
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(Post-Apocalypse) Just before a
chemstorm strikes, Salpe encounters two demons between her community and the
bee hives. They don’t act like the demons in the stories, though.
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(SF) Two survivors on a space station
try to figure out why Earth has stopped communicating.
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(Near-Future SF) Inside a reverse
stasis bubble, a work crew can take six months to build a new interchange
while no time passes outside. No one’s quite sure what can happen if
something goes wrong, though.
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(Post Apocalypse) The four teens are
the last people left in their town, and they hold a prom night every few
days—while trying to ignore that crack in the sky.
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Justice Systems in Quantum Parallel Probabilities by
Lettie Prell Time: 09m (ShortStory)
Issue: Clarkesworld 124
(Alternate Reality) As Cole awaits
sentencing, his mind visits parallel worlds with very different rules for
crime and punishment.
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(Surreal SF) In which we learn that
even in the very far future, long-distance relationships are hard to
maintain.
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(Post-Apocalypse) Even though she’s
just a little girl, Aneko keeps looking for a way to escape the slavers who
ambushed her mother’s coach and captured her.
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Left of Bang: Preemptive Self-Actualization for
Autonomous Systems by Vajra Chandrasekera
Time: 03m (ShortStory) Issue: Clarkesworld 127
(Android SF) Robot goes through
rigorous training to fight assassins.
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(Epic SF) An alien intelligence,
exiled to our solar system, passes the time by interacting with the Earth.
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Milla by Lorenzo Crescentini2 and Emanuela Valentini1 Time: 09m (ShortStory) Issue: Clarkesworld 124
(SF) As Marek surveys Shiva, the most
Earth-like planet yet discovered, he chats with an AI named “Milla,” the sole
survivor of a long vanished civilization.
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(SF) The narrator suffers a near-fatal
car accident, but new technology lets him be productive again.
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My Dear, Like the Sky and Stars and Sun by Julia K. Patt Time: 25m (Novelette)
Issue: Clarkesworld 129
(Near-Future SF) Elspeth offers body
mods from traditional tattoos all the way to high-tech things with active
programming. A mystery girl with special requests turns her world upside
down.
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(Post-Apocalypse) The world is
gradually being destroyed by what seems like an alien plague that attacks
people and software alike. Caitlin lives in a seaside Scottish town, nursing
her dying lover.
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Pan-Humanism: Hope and Pragmatics
by Jess Barber and Sara
Saab Time: 40m (Novelette) Issue: Clarkesworld 132
(Climate SF) This story follows Amir
and Mani’s careers starting when they’re teenagers in water-starved Beirut.
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(Hard SF) In which the end of the
world is brought to you by plastics.
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(Transhuman) Zhen-Juan suffered a data
theft that not only stole her memories, it stole everyone else’s memories of
her too.
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(Post-Human) Jin is a mercenary hired
to protect archeologists investigating an ancient ship built by the extinct
human race.
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(Near-Future SF) At the end of his
life, Maury Hong considers making an “image” of himself so his friends and
relatives can still talk to him after he’s gone.
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(SF Adventure) Riva vows to find the
spirit of his dead father, lost in space somewhere, and lay him to rest on
their home planet with the gods of their ancestors.
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(SF) Expelled from Tortz and separated
from her alien lover, Askriti has fled to her homeworld, where she has to
submit to a ceremony before they’ll consider her human again.
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Some Remarks on the Reproductive Strategy of the Common Octopus
by Bogi Takács
Time: 11m (ShortStory) Issue: Clarkesworld 127
(Far-Future SF) An uplifted octopus
finds a mysterious capsule in the water and wonders if one of the
long-vanished humans might be inside it.
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(Near-Future SF) A “sasquatch” is
pregnant, and that’s a big problem.
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(SF) Liaison Rulii must travel into a
war zone to find a missing human linguist whom his king wants to meet in just
three days.
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(Post-Apocalypse) Alois wants to go
back to the university—not spend the rest of his life guarding an old bridge.
Even if it does talk to him about the world before the collapse.
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(SF Horror) As Nigredo, discovered
observing, flees from a torture chamber, we learn about girls who were sold
to men who tortured them to death.
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(Hard SF) Things look bad for the
repair crew, come to fix an unresponsive space ship. Their AI expert is all
doped up, mourning his sister who died in transit, and the AI isn’t
broken—it’s insane.
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The Last Boat-Builder in Ballyvoloon by Finbarr O'Reilly1 Time: 19m (ShortStory) Issue: Clarkesworld 133
(SF Horror) Meant to clear plastic
from the sea, the artificial “squids” have put the oceans off-limits to
humanity. Not everyone takes that lying down.
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(Generation Ship) Captain Yánnis needs
to get the ship moving again, and then God gives him a message.
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(SF) Lillian grew up poor, but soon
she’ll be one of the first astronauts to traverse a wormhole. Memories of her
father keep haunting her, though.
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(Near-Future SF) A TV show features a
person and a therapist, and the audience tries to guess whether the therapist
is human or an AI.
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(SF Adventure) Mac’s team drills
tunnels that will connect the big Martian bases together. He came to Mars to
run away from his problems on Earth, but some problems come with you.
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(Fairy Tale) The king programs a robot
to lie even more than he does, hoping to change his reputation as the biggest
liar in the kingdom.
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(SF Adventure) The ship hadn’t
activated Bot 9 in a long time—it’s an unstable model—but in a desperate
situation it needs all its resources. And how much trouble can it get into
hunting down a rat?
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(SF) A young woman reacts to the news
that our universe is just a simulation by making wild choices that her family
has to deal with.
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(Hard SF) An international conspiracy
of scientists struggles to save climate data from governments trying to hide
or falsify it.
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(SF Adventure) A tractor beam crashes
Amrita on a forbidden planet that she just <i>had</i> to check
out. Since no one is supposed to get close to it, she may have a long wait.
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(Mutants) A government agent secretly
watches Ryx (age 10) and Hector (age 19) because they both have dangerous
“variant” abilities.
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(SF) The starship wakes her up 32
years too soon, and the only other person awake is a really strange guy.
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(SF) With her knowledge of topology,
Lilian uses lasers to make vat-grown meat look real. Then one day her design
is so intricate that it causes the meat to become sentient.
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(Near-Future SF) Each sleep takes
Artemus two years closer to his goal, but he wakes up weak and starving after
each one, and he doesn’t need nosey neighbors bothering him while he
recovers.
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Waiting Out the End of the World in Patty's Place Cafe
by Naomi Kritzer Time: 13m (ShortStory)
Issue: Clarkesworld 126
(Apocalyptic) The narrator wants to
spend the last hours before the asteroid strike with her parents, but she
runs out of gas in the middle of South Dakota.
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(Colony SF) People who don’t like
living underground in the colony can live inside giant “whales” that float
high in the planet’s atmosphere. That’s usually pretty safe.
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(Military SF) Four international teams
develop combat robots to stage a fight on Mars—televised live, of course.
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Wednesday, January 3, 2018
2017 Clarkesworld Magazine
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