Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 214

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Issue can be read on-line: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/issue_214/

Rating: 3/5

An average issue, with interesting stories by Tia Tashiro and Grant Collier.

• “Every Hopeless Thing” by Tia Tashiro: a space scavenger visits a deserted and polluted Earth, only to discover it is not so deserted after all. Her attempts to get them to leave Earth fail, and she realizes that her desire to help every hopeless thing, like her ship that has an AI that was destined for the scrapyard, will be her guide to helping those who prefer to say at home.
• “I Will Meet You When the Artifacts End” by Amal Singh: on a colony ship heading to a new world, two people send messages to each over, though they have never met. But plans to do so are interrupted when parts of the colony need to go to deep sleep to save resources. And there is no guarantee they will wake up at the same time in the future. But one person is still determined to find the other, or at least, keep some memories of their talks together.
• “The Best Version of Yourself” by Grant Collier: the story is set in a future where nanotechnology can allow people to ‘edit’ themselves to remove unwanted mental states and achieve ‘nirvana’. One daughter’s mother has undergone the procedure, and she now believes her mother is no longer her mother. But a promise she had made to her mother has to be kept.
• “Stellar Evolutions in Pop Idol Artistry” by Em X. Liu: in the future, K-Pop like stars perform to a galactic audience. But like pop stars nowadays, they are made for their roles, and can just as easily be discarded for the next big thing.
• “Aktis Aeliou, or The Machine of Margot’s Destruction” by Natalia Theodoridou: an explorer crashes on a planet where a strange signal was discovered. The signal turns out to be from a person that, to the explorer (and readers), is basically a god. Now they have to decide how far they want to take their relationship together.
• “The Happiness Institute” by AnaMaria Curtis: at an institute that tries to explore happiness, one person decides to dig a pool to be happy, while another discovers a way to mentally connect to others for happiness.
• “Born Outside” by Polenth Blake: in a future, some form of children would be born from large seed pods, and adjust to living on a world may not welcome them.

Magazine read from 2024/07/02 to 2024/07/05