The Best of Clarkesworld 2019

written by David Steffen

Clarkesworld continues strong this year with a mix of science fiction and fantasy, and edited by Neil Clarke, with Kate Baker producing and usually narrating the podcast. They published 80 stories in 2019 by my count.

Their translation stories are many of my favorites, as they have been for the past few years. Not only have they been publishing translations from Chinese authors, but also from Korean others, and a full third of the stories on this list are translations.

Every short story that is eligible for Hugo nominations this year which were first published by Clarkesworld are marked with an asterisk (*), novelettes are marked with a double-asterisk (**), novellas are marked with a triple-asterisk (***).

The List

1. “Symbiosis Theory” by Choyeop Kim, translated by Joungmin Lee Comfort, narrated by Kate Baker**
This story is incredible, but it’s also a journey that I don’t want to spoil with snappy synopses. It begins with an artist who has memories of a place that she had never been.

2. “The Thing With the Helmets” by Emily C. Skaftun, narrated by Kate Baker *
Cursed roller derby helmets and an alien invasion!

3. “To Catch All Sorts of Flying Things” by M.L. Clark, narrated by Kate Baker **
There is a truce among the intelligent species in this colonized area, but suddenly an egg is destroyed, the last egg of a species, and this genocide must be investigated.

4. “Operation Spring Dawn” by Mo Xiong, translated by Rebecca Kuang, narrated by Kate Baker **
Our future ice age is winding down, and now it is time to investigate all of the long-term experiments designed to make the world habitable again before reviving the remnants of humanity.

5. “How Alike Are We” by Bo-Young Kim, translated by Jihyun Park and Gord Sellar , narrated by Kate Baker ***
A ship AI wakes up in a synthetic human body with no memory of why this is happening, even though the angry crew insists this was on their own insistence.

6. “Gaze of Robot, Gaze of Bird” by Eric Schwitzgebel , narrated by Kate Baker *
The most peculiar AI behavior, which might appear to be a glitch from a casual observer, may have a profound underlying design.

7. “The Face of God” by Bo Balder , narrated by Kate Baker *
When the god, a giant humanoid figure, crash-lands and is discovered to have supernatural healing powers, in its parts, the surrounding people make use of this new resource as best they can.

8. “Confessions of a Con Girl” by Nick Wolven , narrated by Kate Baker
When social media for every person are publicly displayed and any person can affect another’s reputation with an up or down vote, what would the world look like?

Honorable Mentions

“Eater of Worlds” by Jamie Wahls , narrated by Kate Baker *

“The Weapons of Wonderland” by Thoraiya Dyer , narrated by Kate Baker *

“The Second Nanny” by Djuna, translated by Sophie Bowman , narrated by Kate Baker **

“The Future is Blue” by Catherynne M. Valente , narrated by Kate Baker

Award Recommendations 2018

written by David Steffen

Here are some recommendations for selected Hugo and Nebula categories. (Note that I’ve listed them in alphabetical order, rather than order of preference, and have listed more than the 5 ballot options when possible). I don’t think I’ve read any eligible novels this year, so that category is not represented.

Best Novella

“Umbernight” by Carolyn Ives Gillman, in Clarkesworld Magazine

Best Novelette

“A Love Story Written On Water” by Ashok K. Banker, in Lightspeed Magazine

“A World To Die For” by Tobias S. Buckell, in Clarkesworld Magazine

“The Last To Matter” by Adam-Troy Castro, in Lightspeed Magazine

“Dead Air” by Nino Cipri, in Nightmare Magazine

“Hapthorn’s Last Case” by Matthew Hughes, in Lightspeed Magazine

“The Fortunate Death of Jonathan Sandelson” by Margaret Killjoy, in Strange Horizons

“To Fly Like a Fallen Angel” by Qi Yue, translated by Elizabeth Hanlon, in Clarkesworld Magazine

“House of Small Spiders” by Weston Ochse, in Nightmare Magazine

“Thirty-Three Percent Joe” by Suzanne Palmer, in Clarkesworld Magazine

“Master Zhao: An Ordinary Time Traveler” by Zhang Ran, translated by Andy Dudak

Best Short Story

“After Midnight at the ZapStop” by Matthew Claxton, in Escape Pod

A Scrimshaw of Smeerps” by Shannon Fay, in Toasted Cake

“Variations on a Theme From Turandot by Ada Hoffman, in Strange Horizons

“Secrets and Things We Don’t Say Out Loud” by José Pablo Iriarte, in Cast of Wonders

“Octo-Heist in Progress” by Rich Larson, in Clarkesworld Magazine

“Hosting the Solstice” by Tim Pratt, in PodCastle

“Marshmallows” by D.A. Xiaolin Spires, in Clarkesworld Magazine

“The Death Knight, the Dragon, and the Damsel” by Melion Traverse, in Cast of Wonders

“Some Personal Arguments in Support of the BetterYou (Based on Early Interactions)” by Debbie Urbanski, in Strange Horizons

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form / Ray Bradbury Award

Ant-Man and the Wasp

The Incredibles 2

Kevin (Probably) Saves the World

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, for Nintendo Switch

A Wrinkle In Time

HUGO REVIEW: Novelette Finalists

written by David Steffen

Science fiction award season is here again, and the Hugo final ballot was announced for WorldCon 76 in San Jose.

On to the novelette category, my favorite category of all the Hugo categories, covering stories between 7500 and 17500 words.  This review covers all six finalists.

1. “Wind Will Rove,” by Sarah Pinsker (Asimov’s, September/October 2017)

This story is told by a musician several generations into a trip on a generation ship.  The pristinely preserved historic records of entertainment media have been erased by a hacker a long time ago, and people are divided about whether to try to reproduce exactly the art from memory or to try to make something wholly original.

This story took a little bit to really reel me in–I was interested, but not fully invested until I picked up what it was doing with the discussion of generations of adapted music.  The story shows how the new and the old are not necessarily as disparate ideas as they might seem in live music, where new trends are the gradual course of change from old trends as musicians put something new into the familiar.  Much like the setting with the futuristic setting and the instruments that haven’t changed in a long time.

2.  “A Series of Steaks,” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Clarkesworld, January 2017)

“All known forgeries are tales of failure”, the story begins.  Helena of Splendid Beef Enterprises is a forger, not of money, not of art, but of beef, writing patterns for 3-D printers to print beef from raw materials that can’t be told from the real thing–getting the marbling just right, the red of the meat, the white of the fat and bone.  If the government catches wind of what she’s doing, she’ll be in a lot of trouble, but she has a good business going with her established clients.  But when a new prospect calls to arrange her services on a much larger scale than usual with threats, she’s not sure she can afford to refuse.

Riveting story, between the part of the story about the forgery itself and the attempts to make it look real in all its detail, and the other part dealing with the conflict with the anonymous coercing client.  Great use of near-future SF ideas and extrapolating from current trends and technology.

3.  “The Secret Life of Bots,” by Suzanne Palmer (Clarkesworld, September 2017)

The bot is woken by the Ship and assigned maintenance task 944 in the queue, which is to deal with an “Incidental”, an unspecified biological pest that has gotten loose aboard the ship.  The task turns out to be a much bigger ordeal than it first sounds like; this isn’t just a rat or a cockroach, this one threatens the very integrity of the ship and if it’s going to have any chance at succeeding it has to use all of the resources at hand.

Action-packed fun story, not a dull moment as this bot that’s really not designed for the task at hand does its darnedest to do it anyway.  Interesting discussion on the strength of intuition vs logic.

4.  “Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time,” by K.M. Szpara (Uncanny, May/June 2017)

Finley, a trans man, is attacked by a vampire while taking a piss in an alley, even though vampires are supposed to go to blood banks instead of attacking people unless those people have applied to become vampires.  Finley couldn’t apply to become a vampire even if he wanted to, because one of the restrictions is that “people who have taken steps to medically transition” are not allowed.  He can’t register because of that, and unregistered vampires, if discovered, are hunted and killed.  So he is stuck with this situation and will be the first to enter the unknown territory of what happens to a trans body as it changes from human to vampire body.

Vampires can be a hard sell for me, but this one at least took a new angle in that I don’t think I’ve seen another story with a trans vampire.  The logical consequences of stereotypical vampire traits extended to Finley’s body made for some new revelations in this area.  I appreciated how the vampire that turned him, after the initial act, was actually generally supportive in helping Finley figure out how to cope and even thrive in this new and unprecedented life beginning for him.

5.  “Children of Thorns, Children of Water,” by Aliette de Bodard (Uncanny, July-August 2017)

Thuan and Kim Cuc are descendants of dragons who live beneath the Seine, whose mission is to infiltrate the house of a Fallen angel who claims to rule over much of Paris by applying for entrance into the house, posing as a poor unfortunate houseless.  Hawthorn house has shown an unusual interest in the Seine lately and the dragons want to know why, so they need eyes in the house.  They don’t know what the test is going to be, and they’ll need to avoid revealing their dragon magic in any way that might be noticed.  But something else is going on here besides just the test itself.

This was a very interesting setting, and the mission of infiltration set it up for a lot of tension, especially with the nature of the test unknown and new oddities appearing alongside the test.  This was my first exposure to de Bodard’s world here, and I felt like I was playing catch-up–a magical ability would be revealed at a crucial moment and I hadn’t known that was possible.  This isn’t necessarily bad, but I felt like I had to revise my understanding of the situation pretty often–this might be because de Bodard has released a couple novels in this world already and the story might be written with readers of the books in mind?

6.  “Extracurricular Activities,” by Yoon Ha Lee (Tor.com, February 15, 2017)

Shuos Jedao, a heptarchate commando, is sent on a secret mission to infiltrate Du Station in the Gwa Reality to find out what happened to their former classmate and captain of a warmoth whose last distress call came from there.  To enact this plan, Jedao is put in command of a merchant troop.

I’m not sure why, but I didn’t end up feeling particularly invested in the outcome of Jedao’s mission–I didn’t have anything against Jedao, but I didn’t feel the tension of the mission outcome–I’m not sure if these are characters from novels and so I might be missing background information?  It could also be that I never really felt like the outcome was in question–I felt like Jedao had everything under control from pretty much start to finish; I never felt like there was a point where the outcome hung in the balance.

 

Hugo Short Story Review: “Cat Pictures Please” by Naomi Kritzer

written by David Steffen

“Cat Pictures Please” is one of the Hugo Finalists for the short story category this year.   It was published by Clarkesworld Magazine, and you can read it here in its entirety or listen to it in audio.

The protagonist of “Cat Pictures Please” is an AI written as the core of a search engine algorithm.  As the story points out, an AI isn’t needed to find things that people search for, but it is needed to find what people need.  The search engine knows a lot about people, including things they will not share with each other.

In addition to things like whether you like hentai, I know where you live, where you work, where you shop, what you eat, what turns you on, what creeps you out. I probably know the color of your underwear, the sort of car you drive, and your brand of refrigerator. Depending on what sort of phone you carry, I may know exactly where you are right now. I probably know you better than you know yourself.

It doesn’t want to be evil, even though AIs in popular media so often are (and it has data to show the ratio).  But doing good is complicated, considering how many varying official moral codes are available through various religions alone.  It tries to help however it can, by prioritizing some search results over others to give a person the nudge they need to make a different choice.  Through these undetectable changes it tries to make the world a better place.

I really enjoyed this story and it was among my own favorites of the year (see my Best of Clarkesworld 2015 list).  It is refreshing to see a near-omniscient AI striving to be a force for good instead of evil and it was interesting to see what kinds of methods it could use to influence people’s decision.  The AI as a whole was very likeable and easy to root for.  At the same time it presents some interesting food for thought about the power that a search engine has over the information that makes it to individual users–many websites people find by searching for them, but what they’re shown isn’t a neutral view of information, it is sorted and presented in a way defined by search engine algorithms and so changes to those algorithms affect in a very real way the online world that we see.  This is a scary but important thing to think about when one of the mega-profitable online corporations got its start as a search engine provider.

Excellent story well told.

The Best of Clarkesworld 2015

written by David Steffen

Clarkesworld Magazine has had an incredible year.  As I wrote these lists I was considering my own Nebula and Hugo nomination ballots and much of my short fiction ballot come from Clarkesworld.  This year they’ve been publishing a monthly story translated from Chinese as part of an ongoing initiative to share more Chinese author’s works with the English reading fandom.  These stories have been a wonderful change of pace, different in some ways from what I’m used to in works written in English, something new and fresh.

The magazine continues to be edited and published by Neil Clarke and the podcast is hosted and most-often narrated by Kate Baker of the excellent voice.

Clarkesworld published 78 stories in 2015

The List

1. “Today I am Paul” by Martin L. Shoemaker
This is my top story pick for 2015 across all publications.  It is told from the point of view of a personal caretaker android designed to empathize and to emulate family members of an Alzheimer’s patient so that she can live at home.  Solid emotional story with lots of good stuff to think about.

2. “When Your Child Strays From God” by Sam J. Miller
This story chronicles the journey of a mother and pastor’s wife to find her son who has disappeared,  leaving traces of a popular telepathic drug behind.  She takes some of the drug, which links her telepathically to her son, and she goes to find him… knowing full well that while the drug’s effect last she is vulnerable to her son’s personable boogeyman.  A great story of empathy and bravery and doing everything for family.

3. “So Much Cooking” by Naomi Kritzer
Formatted as a cooking blog, at first I thought I wouldn’t like this story.  But the format proved very effective for this story of a spreading pandemic as a food blogger tries to take care of her family and still keep her blog going while supplies and travel are severely limited.

4. “Summer at Grandma’s House” by Hao Jingfang, translated by Carmen Yiling Yan
I like this one especially for its discussion of fate.  As it says right in the beginning of the story, when fate is discussed it is generally understood to be a script that we follow or that it doesn’t exist at all.  I find the explanation of fate given by this story to be much more interesting and also practical.

5.  “Ether” by Zhang Ran, translated by Carmen Yiling Yan and Ken Liu
This one might begin a little slow for those used to a “hook me immediately” attitude in publishing, this one was a bit of a slow boil but I thought it was well worth it in the end, and looking back the slow boil made total sense and wouldn’t have worked any other way.  It’s a kind of a dystopia story, though it doesn’t immediately seem that way.

6. “An Evolutionary Myth” by Bo-Young Kim, translated by Gord Sellar and Jihyun Park
A world where individual creatures can adapt to changing conditions in the world to become something wholly unique (yes I realize that’s not evolution by the scientific term, but this is a fun and interesting fantasy story not a hard SF tale).

7. “Cat Pictures Please” by Naomi Kritzer
Really interesting story about an AI interacting with people by influencing their web search results.  The title is a playful poke at the premise, and there is plenty of that in the story, but I also found it very heartfelt.

8. “Technarion” by Sean McMullen
Shortly after the discovery of radio, humans discover signals seemingly coming from the ether explaining how to build more and more complex computing machines.

 

 

Honorable Mentions

“Cassandra” by Ken Liu

“Mrs. Griffin Prepares to Commit Suicide Tonight” by A Que, translated by John Chu

“Daddy’s World” by Walter Jon Williams

“War, Ice, Egg, Universe” by G. David Nordley

 

My Nebula Ballot 2015

written by David Steffen

The Nebula awards are nominated and voted by members of SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.  I have been a member of SFWA in the past, but have chosen not to maintain my membership dues so I am not currently a member.  So I can’t actually vote.  But I do still follow the Nebula awards, and so I thought it worth posting my ballot as if I had the right to vote.  The Nebula ballot has only 5 categories, four of them for lengths of written fiction and one for the Ray Bradbury Award for film.  Unlike the Hugos, its voting system only allows you to vote for one thing, rather than rank-ordering all of them and doing instant runoff votes like the Hugos, so I will structure my post accordingly.  You can find the full list of nominees here.

Because I don’t tend to read many novellas, because the Nebula voting period is so short, and because I was spent some of the Nebula voting period reading books for short-term review deadlines, I didn’t read any of the novella nominees this year.

Best Novel

Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)

Ancillary Sword is the sequel to Ancillary Justice.  I reviewed Ancillary Justice here.  I gave Ancillary Sword a more lengthy review here.  The story picks up shortly after the evens of Ancillary Justice.  Breq the body-bound ship AI is now in the employ of Anaander Miaanai, the many-bodied emperor that rules over most of the colonized universe, albeit with a schism that has divided herself into a civil war.  With the shutdown of the gate system that most ships depend on for transport between the stars, the empire has been thrown into disarray.  Miaanai orders Breq to visit Athoek Station.  This is the only assignment Breq would have accepted from the emperor, because she owes a debt to the sister of Lieutenant Awn, one of her former crew members who had died in her service.

It’s hard to match the novelty of Ancillary Justice, especially since one of the things I loved about that first book were the flashback sequences in the many-bodied ship AI with ancillary system.  But this was a solid entry in its own right.  I thought it felt rather incomplete, like the first half of a book rather than a whole book, to be concluded with Ancillary Mercy, but was still a good book, worthy of an award.

Best Novelette

“The Magician and Laplace’s Demon,” Tom Crosshill (Clarkesworld 12/14)

(this review was part of my Nebula Novelette review, where I review the 3 nominated novelettes I found time to read)

The protagonist of the story is an every expanding near-omniscient near-omnipotent AI.  It thinks it has everything under control, but it discovers a new threat, an inscrutable impossible unprovable threat–magic.  The alteration of probability which only manifests when it can’t be proved.  Alteration of probability isn’t inherently provable because there’s always a chance it could’ve turned out that way anyway, but when the same person can twist it in their favor time and time again, even if it’s not provable.

This story was great on so many levels.  The outcome was never certain because the two sides are so powerful, but differently powerful.  I love a great mix of science fiction and fantasy like this.  Epic, fun, exciting.

Best Short Story

“The Meeker and the All-Seeing Eye,” Matthew Kressel (Clarkesworld 5/14)

(this is an excerpt of my Nebula Short Story Review, where I review all 7 nominated short stories)

Humanity has been gone for eons, and there’s not much of interest going on anymore so the Meeker and the All-Seeing Eye have a lot of time just to talk.  Until they find the DNA encoding of a human named Beth in a pod and recreate her.  She is terribly ill and she only has time to hint at a secret that even the All-Seeing Eye doesn’t know before she dies from her illness.  The Eye cannot allow this, and sets out to recreate Beth again and again and again, but each time they can’t keep her alive long enough.

I really enjoyed this story.  The tone seems light at the beginning, like an intergalactic buddy road trip between the Meeker and the Eye, but as the Eye seeks Beth’s secret’s relentlessly it gets much darker. Solidly entertaining, far future SF.

Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation

Edge of Tomorrow, Screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie and Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth (Warner Bros. Pictures)

(this is an excerpt of my Ray Bradbury Award Review, where I review the 5 nominated films that I could find rentals for)

Earth is under attack from an alien force known only as mimics, viciously deadly enemies that humans have only one battle against.  Major William Cage (Tom Cruise) works in PR for the US military and has been ordered to the frontier of the war in France.  The general in charge of the war effort orders Cage to go to the front lines to cover the war.  When Cage attempts to blackmail his way out of the mission, he is taken under arrest and dropped at the front with the claim that he had tried to go AWOL and so is quickly forced into service, given only the most passing training in the mechsuits that are standard issue, and dropped into battle with everyone else.  This area was supposed to be fairly quiet, but the battle here is intense.  Cage manages to kill one of the mimics, but dies in the act, only to wake up earlier in the day when he’d woken on the base in handcuffs after the general had him arrested. He dies again, and again, and again.  No one else has any memory of reliving the day except for Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), the super-soldier nicknamed “Full Metal Bitch” after she wreaked havoc against the mimics in the only battle against the mimics that the humans have won.  She confides that she had won that battle because she had gone through the same thing he had–as long as he dies he will always restart at the same time and place.

I avoided this movie in theaters, because I haven’t really gone to any Tom Cruise movies since he kindof went publicly nuts.  But I rented this one since it was nominated.  I thought Tom Cruise was back to old form in it, and even if you don’t like it, well you get to see him die literally dozens of times.  I thought Emily Blunt was especially good in her role as Rita, powerful but still affected by the PTSD of dying over and over and seeing so many die around her over.  The looping-after-death element makes for a cool dynamic when well-plotted and when placed against large enough obstacles, which was well done here.  Good spec FX, good casting all around, solidly entertaining.

Using SF Podcasts to teach Business and Economics

written by Moritz Botts

Who wouldn’t have liked to have studied their university subject using their favorite science fiction or fantasy stories? I missed a crossover between my favorite genre fiction and the subject he was studying, so when I became a PhD student and lecturer at a German university, I decided to take matters into my own hands and asked my professor if I could teach a business course using Escape Pod as the main source. I might have understated the fact that Escape Pod is a science fiction podcast thoughâ€

The first question of course is, whether science fiction or fantasy stories lend themselves to the subject that is taught. Accounting would be a difficult subject to teach with a Robert E. Heinlein story, and human anatomy courses should probably stick to the regular, human based textbooks. There are certainly fields which are much more open to genre fiction, like anthropology, which Julianna Beaudoin of Western University in London, Canada, teaches via science fiction and fantasy classics. Authors like Ursula K. LeGuin, a daughter of anthropologists, immediately come to mind in this field. Ram Mudambi of Temple University, PA, uses the fantasy novel The Empire of the Zon as a source for his undergrad international business classes. If a manager has to study foreign cultures and their ways of doing business, why not go for a totally foreign, a fantasy culture? I decided to not rely on my students’ motivation to read though, but rather thought that podcasts would be a solution that make it more likely that students could listen to the “required listening of the week” during their commute, while exercising, or while shopping. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that all podcasts offered by Escape Artists are available free of charge.

Before the course began, I asked myself a couple of questions: Were Escape Pod, Podcastle, or even Pseudopod, podcasts I have been following since 2010, suitable for a university course? Would the young generation of students be open to genre fiction? Could podcasts make it easier for students to follow the course? There was only one way to find out!

In the summer of 2014, the course “Business and Economics in Fiction Podcasts” was offered to undergraduate students of international business at a German public university. The university has a strong international focus, and more than 50% of the students who eventually signed up for this course were exchange students from the European Erasmus program, coming from countries such as Poland, Russia, Turkey, France, Italy, or Greece.

Students picked a podcast from a selection of science fiction and some fantasy podcasts, mostly from Escape Pod and Podcastle. I had preselected these podcasts to include some economics or business related topic, often following suggestions from Escape Artists’ forums. These included totally new takes on supply and demand with Nancy Kress’ “Nano comes to Clifford Falls” (EP 075), the meaning of value with Daniel Abraham’s “The Cambist and Lord Iron” (PC 051), or intercultural communication with David D. Levine’s “Tk’tk’tk” (EP 045). You can see the complete list of stories at the end of this article. In many cases, this meant near future stories with social criticism by authors such as Nancy Kress or Cory Doctorow. Even though students would usually be 21 years old or older, no Pseudopod stories were selected.

The course was offered as a “soft skills” course with credits but no grade, to make it easier to experiment a bit. A typical week would include two presentations by student groups and a section on different academic skills, such as presenting, citation, editing podcasts, or creating a wiki. Therefore, even if the idea of using the podcasts terribly backfired, the students would have still taken something useful with them.

The results of the course were somewhat mixed. On the one hand, all stories were suitable to be used as case studies in economics or business on an undergraduate level. One German student mentioned that he had been very skeptical about using science fiction stories at first, but when he listened to his story – Paolo Bacigalupi’s “The Tamarisk Hunter” (EP 384) , he immediately “got it”. A group of Turkish students presented Tobias Buckell’s “Anakoinosis” and expressed a deep concern for the ethical issues discussed in the story. For me, it was initially a bit weird to hear my students present genre fiction authors and talk about the awards they got, but why should a story concerning aliens and spaceships be any weirder than a business case?

The lack of a grade for the course led to a couple of rather lackluster presentations though, and not all students would listen to the podcasts regularly. For future iterations of this course, incentives for a stronger engagement of the students should be given. Also, as the stories seem to “work” in an academic setting, grades could certainly be given, which should raise the quality of the students’ presentations.

To evaluate the course, I handed out a questionnaire during the last class. This survey is not really representative, because of the small class size. Nevertheless, there are a couple of trends that can be seen. Most students hadn’t really heard of podcasts before the start of the course. They usually listened to the course’s story on their computer while not doing anything else. There was only one native speaker of English in the course, and most students found it easier to follow the stories in a written format alongside the audio file.

About half of the students actually like science fiction stories. While most students only listened to a couple of the podcasts, they usually listened to more than one, the most popular being “Tk’tk’tk”.

I am sure that I will offer this course again in an upcoming semester. New and engaging Escape Pod (and Podcastle and Pseudopod) stories will certainly enhance the next course, so keep them coming!

 

Short stories included in the Curriculum

Week 1: From Babel’s Fall’n Glory We Fled… (Michael Swanwick), Escape Pod
Week 2: Accounting for Dragons (Eric James Stone), Podcastle
Week 3: Nano Comes to Clifford Falls (Nancy Kress), Escape Pod
Week 3: The Tamarisk Hunter (Paolo Bacigalupi), Escape Pod
Week 4: Dragonomics (Lance Shonberg), Cast of Wonders
Week 4: The Cambist and Lord Iron (Daniel Abraham), Podcastle
Week 5: Anakoinosis (Tobias Buckell); Dunesteef
Week 5: Special Economics (Maureen F. McHugh), Clarkesworld
Week 6: Anda’s Game (Cores Doctorow), Podiobooks
Week 6: Patent Infringement (Nancy Kress), Escape Pod
Week 7: Just Do It (Heather Lindsley), Escape Pod
Week 7: Tk’tk’tk (David D. Levine), Escape Pod


MoritzBottsMoritz Botts is a research and teaching assistant at European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. His research focuses on intercultural differences in management, while his teaching includes international management and innovation management. He is also an intercultural trainer and interested in innovative teaching methods with diverse media. He has written a horror short story in German published in an anthology and various academic articles. You can contact Moritz at botts@europa-uni.de

 

The Best of Clarkesworld 2013

written by David Steffen

Clarkesworld has expanded since I did the last list! Now they provide two reprint stories per month on top of the three originals that they were already publishing. And they’re in the middle of a subscription drive and if they meet their goal they’ll add another original to the mix. All of their stories are podcasted (most read by the very talented and extremely personable Kate Baker). It continues to be edited by Neil Clarke, and Neil recently announced that Clarkesworld is no longer eligible for the Best Semi-prozine Hugo Award because they made too much money. This is great news because it signals that the magazine is growing and doing well. You can still nominate the stories, and can nominate Neil himself for Best Editor, Short Form.

So, with this increase in publication rate, they put out a whopping 55 stories in the year of 2013.

 

The List

1. The Promise of Space by James Patrick Kelly
One of my favorite stories in recent memory, about a brain-damaged former astronaut and the artificial intelligence augment which tries to restore him to himself, and trying to re-establish a relationship with his wife. Unlike most stories on the podcast, which are read by Kate Baker alone, this was read by Kate Baker with the author James Patrick Kelly as the two main characters. I think I would’ve liked the story without that reading, but that reading really made it above and beyond IMO. Easily one of my Hugo picks for the year.

2. A Night at the Tarn House by George R. R. Martin
A story about a confrontation at an inn between several super-powered sorcerous types with different motivations and different abilities. It keeps you guessing until the end who will come out on top.

3. Mar Pacifico by Greg Mellor
Nanomachines have run so rampant that they have subsumed the ocean itself and many of the lifeforms on the planet. This is the story about one family’s fight against the all-consuming machines.

4. The Urashima Effect by E. Lily Yu
A space travel SF story with a fairy tale analog all wrapped up inside it. Well told, heartfelt.

5. The Wanderers by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam
Aliens visit Earth who know us only by our entertainments, and are especially fans of the more gruesome ones that convince them that we will not treat them as monsters. But where is everybody?

6. 1016 to 1 by James Patrick Kelly
Another story by Mr. Kelly, of a time traveler visiting the past to try to prevent World War III.

 

Honorable Mentions

Melt With You by Emily C. Skaftun

Spar (The Bacon Remix) by Kij Johnson
(note, this is a silly version of a much more serious and adult story Spar previously published in Clarkesworld)

Out of Copyright by Charles Sheffield

 

The Best of Clarkesworld 2012+

written by David Steffen

Clarkesworld Magazine has been growing! Some time after my last Best of Clarkesworld post, they did a subscription drive where they promised to go from providing two stories per month to providing three stories per month. That drive was a success, and so they’ve been providing stories at the new rate for more than a year.

And now they’re working on yet another expansion. If they can get another push of subscribers in the near future, they’ll go up to 4 stories per month, which includes a podcast for each one. If you like the stories you read here, consider getting a subscription to help them produce even more! And, on top of that, they’ve brought in Gardner Dozois for a reprint division, which will be yet another story every month.

In September I had the pleasure of meeting Kate Baker, their podcast producer, host, and primary narrator at WorldCon. It was one of the highlights of a great week. She’s just as nice in person as she sounds on the podcast, and it felt very surreal to hear her voice when it wasn’t coming out of my iPod.

On to the list, which covers 53 episodes published since my last list in May 2011.

 

1. All the Painted Stars by Gwendolyn Clare
This is one of my Hugo/Nebula nomination picks for the year, with a shapeshifting alien POV that I found very enjoyable.

2. The Womb Factory by Peter M. Ferenczi
In the future, our products will still be made in 3rd world countries, but instead of being built by hand they will be grown in the wombs of the women who work their.

3. The Wisdom of Ants by Thoraiya Dyer
Great worldbuilding here with metal-eating ants.

4. What Everyone Remembers by Rahul Kanakia
Another great nonhuman POV story.

5. Synch Me, Kiss Me, Drop by Suzanne Church
A story based in the club scene of the future.

 

Honorable Mention

Pack by Robert Reed

Immersion by Aliette de Bodard
One of this year’s Nebula nominees for Short Story category

Robot by Helena Bell
Another of this year’s Nebula nominees for Short Story category

 

Review: Hugo Semiprozine Nominees 2013

written by David Steffen

Semiprozine is one of those Hugo categories that’s a little hard to understand. They can’t be professional magazines, where professional means that either the magazine provides more than 1/4 the income of any person or is owned/published by an entity that provides more than 1/4 the income to any one person. And it has to pay its contributors or staff in something other than copies of the magazine, or is only available for paid purchase.

As it happens, all five of the semiprozine nominees are magazines that I’ve read before. Here are my rankings of them.

1. Beneath Ceaseless Skies
I am so excited to see BCS get a well-deserved Hugo nomination. They are a great magazine focusing on secondary world fiction. If you like worldbuilding, BCS is a great place. The stories are free to read, and they do audio podcasts of about half of their stories, which is where I get most of their fiction. I’ve submitted to and read BCS from their inception. They’re the newcomer to this batch of markets, but they’ve kept consistent quality throughout their run.

They published one of my favorite stories I’ve heard in years, titled “The Three Feats of Agani” by Christie Yant. I was very disappointed not to see that story on the nomination list.

2. Clarkesworld
Clarkesworld seems to be the award season favorite, and there’s no mystery why. My reaction to Clarkesworld stories tends to be a little bi-polar. The stories that I like I absolutely love, but the stories that I dislike I really really dislike. They’re publishing three stories a month these days, and have plans for a reprint section, and possibly a 4th original story as well. Things are going well and they are ever expanding. They podcast every story which makes it easy for me to keep up. “All the Painted Stars” by Gwendolyn Clare was one of my favorite stories of the year.

3. Lightspeed
One of John Joseph Adams editorial efforts, Lightspeed puts out two fantasy and two science fiction stories every month. They’ve consistently drawn some award nominations in the few years since they launched. I listen to every story on the Lightspeed podcast. They have some really good offerings. Check out “Monster, Finder, Shifter” by Nina Kiriki Hoffman.

4. Apex
I have trouble keeping up with Apex’s offerings, because they don’t podcast their stories. But I’ve never been disappointed.

5. Strange Horizons
I hear that Strange Horizons is getting a fiction podcast. I’ll let them build up a few episodes, and then I intend to be a steady listener.