Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 223

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Issue can be read on-line: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/issue_223/

Rating: 3/5

An interesting issue, with good stories by Samantha Murray, Gordon Li, Zhang Ran and Thomas Ha.

• “Through These Moments, Darkly” by Samantha Murray: the story of a man whose relationship with a woman turns dark when she vanishes. But how she vanished is a mystery; a mystery that may have to do with a dark matter universe that she, a physicist, thinks may be opening portals for animals (and people) to go through.
• “The Seed” by Sheri Singerling: on a watery world, an ancient device is discovered from the deep. Based on her grandmother’s words, one woman thinks it is evil and tries to cast it back into the sea. But the device has other plans, and perhaps it can convince the woman to see the world differently.
• “Aegiopolis Testudo” by Gordon Li: on a world where country sized ‘turtles’ wander, one person, part of a research team on one of the turtles, wonders whether he is a ‘parasite’ on the turtle, using it for his and the company’s business (research and tourism). Then an unexpected event makes him rethink his role on the turtle.
• “Still Water” by Zhang Ran, translated by Andy Dudak: a thoughtful story of a mother who wants to let her child live a life, after he is diagnosed with early onset ALS. Via two story threads, one on the mother, the other on the child, we see them live out their lives after he is apparently cured. But it is only at the end do the two threads merge, and we see the lives that they have both lived together.
• “Symbiotic” by Carolyn Zhao: a pair of explorers, neurally linked together, explore a sunken ship, only for one of them to encounter an underwater creature that also has a symbiotic link with another organism.
• “In My Country” by Thomas Ha: a man talks about how things are done in his country; how thoughts and words have to have clear meanings with no chance of re-interpretation. So how is he to deal with his son, whose stories invite reinterpretation and possible insinuations about the leader of his country?
• “An Even Greater Cold to Come” by Rich Larson: two young daughters hide in the woods with their mother from hunters. It is only towards the end, when the hunters close in, does the strange nature of their mother and her unborn son would have on the world is violently revealed.

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