Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 226

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Issue can be read on-line: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/issue_226/

Rating: 3/5.

An average issue with some interesting stories by Tia Tashiro, Fiona Moore, Gary Kloster and Bam Bruin

• “Missing Helen” by Tia Tashiro: an interesting story about a man who divorces his wife and then decides to marry her younger clone. The rest of the story tells the story of why the woman allowed a clone of herself to be made and what happens when she decides to meet her clone and the effects it has on them and the man.
• “The Walled Garden” by Fiona Moore: after the collapse of civilisation, a community find that they are running out of plastic sheets used to keep their gardens warm. One person comes up with an idea on how to grow food despite the colder conditions, but it would need her former security robot, now turned helper, to show her an extra step that would help with the gardening.
• “Welcome to Kearney” by Gary Kloster: an artificial being in the form of an otter appears at a reservation that preserves the past. The solitary keeper of the reservation repairs it, and learns it considers itself sentient. While trying to learn more about its past, he finds it avoiding him, but it is only when a scavenging robot tries to reclaim it does he learn why the sentient being ran away, and why it can’t stay with him.
• “Serpent Carriers” by K.A. Teryna, translated by Alex Shvartsman: starting off as tales told around a campfire, the stories would turn out to involve one person at the fire, who left a fungal farm where she was a captive, only now possibly made a captive of another form of farm involving Words that may be woven into DNA.
• “Bits and Pieces on This Floor” by Eric Del Carlo: on a world about to be abandoned, one person goes in search of a related person, to discover that one skill had been passed on by their relative.
• “A Land Called Folly” by Amal Singh: a boy journeys to other worlds that involves teleportation that the boy feels turns you into a different person. But when the time comes for him to return home, he learns that teleportation might not change the person.
• “Hunter Harvester” by Bam Bruin: on an alien world, some colonist harvest alien ‘lettuce’ for nourishment. The lettuce fields are occasionally protected by aliens. But it is only when they retrieve the latest harvest, which includes an especially large lettuce, do they realise what they are harvesting.

Magazine read from 2025/07/03 to 2025/07/27.