Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 219

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Issue can be read on-line: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/issue_220/

Rating: 4/5

A good issue of Clarkesworld, with some interesting long stories. One that I liked are by Gunnar De Winter, H.H. Pak and Tia Tashiro.

• “When There Are Two of You: A Documentary” by Zun Yu Tan: in a world with sentient AI that can be installed into a person, questions would be asked about who would really be in charge of the person.
• “Child of the Mountain” by Gunnar De Winter: at a time when the world is in a climate crisis, a monk at a monastery whose members can be ‘regrown’ when they die has a flash of insight on how to solve the problem. But to do so will require sacrifices to be made.
• “Never Eaten Vegetables” by H.H. Pak: a spaceship transporting hibernating embryos suddenly faces a crisis when some embryos unexpectedly begin to grow before the ship reaches its destination. The desperate decisions it makes would affect the colony that develops years later, and one of the colony’s member decides to investigate just what happened before the ship’s final termination.
• “The Temporary Murder of Thomas Monroe” by Tia Tashiro: Thomas is murdered, but is then bought back to life with a memory download from an earlier time. Now he tries to recall who murdered him, and it may be linked to his conflicts with his parents who want to control his life, and his relations with a girl who may be the key to the reason why he was murdered.
• “Beyond Everything” by Wang Yanzhong, translated by Stella Jiayue Zhu: an envoy is given the job of stepping through gates that transport him to distant worlds, in hopes of finding a way to end a conflict on Earth. What his finds may not answer his question, but still offer hope for a solution.
• “Autonomy” by Meg Elison: at a time when autonomous cars can be made to stop for any reason, one person discovers a keyphrase that could be used to make a car behave differently. That may become important when she is then attacked by another person who take advantage of the car’s autonomous behaviour.

Magazine read from 2025/01/08 to 2025/01/11