Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 204

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Issue can be read on-line: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/issue_204/

Rating: 3/5

A better than average issue with an interesting mathematical based story by Arula Ratnakar and a loving story of a different kind of robotic servant by RJ Taylor.

• “Stones” by Nnedi Okorafor: a story about an alien made out of stones who makes contact with humans and comes to regret it. Unfortunately, the abilities of the alien to span time and space and sense humans are rather too fantastic to allow me to enjoy the story.

• “The Queen of Calligraphic Susurrations” by D.A. Xiaolin Spires: a writer working with bees is desperate to write an award-winning story and uses an AI that virtually takes over her body to write one. The after effects would be dramatic.

• “A Guide to Matchmaking on Station 9” by Nika Murphy: a matchmaker on a space station has to go out of her comfort zone to find a match for her customer, so that she can return home on the proceeds.

• “Axiom of Dreams” by Arula Ratnakar: a remarkable and fantastic story of a graduate student who installs an AI chip in her brain in an attempt to harness her dreams for ideas for her mathematical paper. In parallel, the inhabitant of a strangely mathematical world wants to know why she has not been marked out for ‘mathematical selection’ like the other inhabitants. Both stories would merge when both get to meet. But the meeting would cause a crisis when it turns out that the dreams of one person are a nightmare for the other, and resolving it would require sacrifices.

• “The People from the Dead Whale” by Djuna, translated by Jihyun Park and Gord Sellar: on a world where people live on ‘whales’, one group has to abandon its whale when it dies due to an unknown disease. The attempt to find a new home would lead to a discovery from their past.

• “The Five Remembrances, According to STE-319” by R. L. Meza: a fighting machine is left to rot by the military after a battle. As it slowly decays and rusts, an event would occur that would require an act of free will from the machine. The results would lead to a kind of peace for the land.

• “Upgrade Day” by RJ Taylor: an uploaded person in a robot body acts as a servant for a family. But without periodic upgrades and repairs, which are becoming more expensive, the robot will start to malfunction. Then the family makes a suggestion that would allow this, a suggestion that the robotic person has to decide upon.

Magazine read from 2023/09/03 to 2023/09/07