Clarkesworld is a Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning science fiction and fantasy magazine. Each month we bring you a mix of fiction (new and classic works), articles, interviews and art. Our April 2016 issue (#115) contains:  Original fiction by Carolyn Ives Gilman ("Touring with the Alien"), Gregory Feeley ("The Bridge of Dreams"), Sara Saab ("The Cedar Grid"), and Chen Qiufan ("Balin"). Reprints from Garth Nix ("Old Friends") and Elizabeth Hand ("Winters Wife"). Non-fiction by Jason Heller (Silver Machine: Hawkwind's Space Rock Journey throughout Science Fiction and Fantasy), an interview with David Brin, an Another Word column by Margot Atwell, and an editorial by Neil Clarke.

Clarkesworld Issue 115 (Clarkesworld Magazine)

Science Fiction & Fantasy

NIX, Garth

Hand, Elizabeth

Clarke, Neil

Gilman, Carolyn Ives

Qiufan, Chen

Feeley, Gregory

Saab, Sara

Science Fiction

Clarkesworld Magazine

From Nebula and Hugo Award–nominated Carolyn Ives Gilman comes Dark Orbit, a compelling novel featuring alien contact, mystery, and murder. 
Reports of a strange, new habitable planet have reached the Twenty Planets of human civilization. When a team of scientists is assembled to investigate this world, exoethnologist Sara Callicot is recruited to keep an eye on an unstable crewmate. Thora was once a member of the interplanetary elite, but since her prophetic delusions helped mobilize a revolt on Orem, she's been banished to the farthest reaches of space, because of the risk that her very presence could revive unrest.
Upon arrival, the team finds an extraordinary crystalline planet, laden with dark matter. Then a crew member is murdered and Thora mysteriously disappears. Thought to be uninhabited, the planet is in fact home to a blind, sentient species whose members navigate their world with a bizarre vocabulary and extrasensory perceptions.
Lost in the deep crevasses of the planet among these people, Thora must battle her demons and learn to comprehend the native inhabitants in order to find her crewmates and warn them of an impending danger. But her most difficult task may lie in persuading the crew that some powers lie beyond the boundaries of science.

Dark Orbit: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

United States

Tor Books

From Nebula and Hugo Award–nominated Carol Ive Gilman comes Dark Orbit, a compelling novel featuring alien contact, mystery, and murder. 
Reports of a strange, new habitable planet have reached the Twenty Planets of human civilization. When a team of scientists is assembled to investigate this world, exoethnologist Sara Callicot is recruited to keep an eye on an unstable crewmate. Thora was once a member of the interplanetary elite, but since her prophetic delusions helped mobilize a revolt on Orem, she's been banished to the farthest reaches of space, because of the risk that her very presence could revive unrest.
Upon arrival, the team finds an extraordinary crystalline planet, laden with dark matter. Then a crew member is murdered and Thora mysteriously disappears. Thought to be uninhabited, the planet is in fact home to a blind, sentient species whose members navigate their world with a bizarre vocabulary and extrasensory perceptions.
Lost in the deep crevasses of the planet among these people, Thora must battle her demons and learn to comprehend the native inhabitants in order to find her crewmates and warn them of an impending danger. But her most difficult task may lie in persuading the crew that some powers lie beyond the boundaries of science.

An unabridged collection spotlighting the “best of the best” science fiction stories published in 2016 by current and emerging masters of the genre, edited by Allan Kaster. In “The Art of Space Travel,” by Nina Allan, the staff of a hotel prepares for the crew of a one-way mission to Mars on the heels of earlier disasters. An artist and his wife search for fulfillment in a utopian world created by AIs in “They Have all One Breath” by Karl Bunker. In “Patience Lake,” by Matthew Claxton, an injured military cyborg helps defend a farm family that has helped him. In a top secret job, an all too conscious bus driver takes a non-cognizant alien and his human translator on a tour of the United States, in “Touring with the Alien” by Carolyn Ives Gilman. In “My Generations Shall Praise,” by Samantha Henderson, a woman on death row is persuaded to have her mind overwritten so that a wealthy relative can use her as a host body. People adapting to a melted Antarctica evolve new folklore, superstitions, and myths in “Elves of Antarctica” by Paul McAuley. In “Red in Tooth and Cog,” by Cat Rambo, a woman acquires a keen interest in the small domestic appliance AI ecosystem that evolves in a park after her phone is stolen. An ancient robot tells a human how it helped build the Great Ship, a planet-sized starship, from hyperfiber in “Parables of Infinity” by Robert Reed. In “Prodigal,” by Gord Sellar, an uplifted family dog questions the relationship between dogs and humans and then takes action. And finally, in a Bradburyesque tale, people go to Mars via cheap, one-person, one-way spacecrafts called jalopies in “Terminal” by Lavie Tidhar.

The Year's Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction 9

Tidhar, Lavie

Rambo, Cat

Allan, Nina

Kaster, Allan

Sellar, Gord

Bunker, Karl

Claxton, Matthew

Henderson, Samantha

MCAULEY, PAUL.

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

"The best science fiction novel I've read in a long time"-St. Louis Post-Dispatch **** A Starflight Reader nominee for best book of the year **** Tedla is a 'bland,' an asexual class of people that exist only to serve their fellow beings. **** Val is an expert on alien cultures but has never seen a bland before. They come together after Tedla is found light-years away from its home planet-alone, isolated and suicidal. Val's mission is to help Tedla recover. But the more she learns about the beautiful alien being, the more she discovers about the torment Tedla and its kind suffer on their planet. **** Little does the rest of the universe know of the hidden world of the blands, a world that hides shocking secrets and unspeakable crimes. **** Halfway Human is a mesmerizing look at an intricately created alien world which is strange and distant, yet hauntingly familiar. **** "Beauty, pain, wit, and wisdom all suffuse this powerful novel, as it uses imagined futures to reveal our own world in starkest clarity...and yes, with a whisper of hope." -Locus

Halfway Human

Phoenix Pick

Humans live deep within an apparently lifeless planet covered by massive ice sheets. Having to survive in confined spaces has bred a unique culture where deference and non-confrontation make co-existence possible. *** Osaji's opportunities are limited by the need to care for her aging grandmother. But all that is about to change as circumstances push her toward a journey like no other.

Arkfall-Nebula Nominated Novella

Set in the same universe as Arkfall (although a totally independent story), The Ice Owl tells a tale capturing that moment when we start to lose our childhood...when we start to realize that our parents and the "grown-ups" are just as flawed as we are...everyone struggling to deal with their own demons. *** It is also a story about past crimes and the haunting echo of ghosts long dead, of a life-long quest for redemption and, for some, the final revenge for crimes lost in the stellar dust...

The Ice Owl - Hugo & Nebula Nominated Novella

Genre Fiction

A Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy ISSUE 51: July 2021 Lezli Robyn, Editor Martin Shoemaker, Assistant Editor Taylor Morris, Copyeditor Shahid Mahmud, Publisher Stories by Carolyn Ives Gilman, Brian Trent, Mike Resnick, Tina Gower, David Cleden, Robert Silverberg, Julie Frost, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Bao Shu (translated by S. Qiouyi Lu) Jean Marie Ward Interviews Seanan McGuire Serialization: Over the Wine Dark Sea by Harry Turtledove Columns by: Gregory Benford, L. Penelope Recommended Books: Richard Chwedyk Galaxy's Edge is a bi-monthly magazine published by Phoenix Pick, the science fiction and fantasy imprint of Arc Manor, an award winning independent press based in Maryland. Each issue of the magazine has a mix of new and old stories, a serialization of a novel, columns by L. Penelope and Gregory Benford, and book recommendations by Richard Chwydyk.

Galaxy’s Edge Magazine: Issue 51, July 2021

Rusch, Kristine Kathryn

Silverberg,Robert

Short Stories & Anthologies

This is the fifth annual edition of the Long List Anthology. Every year, supporting members of WorldCon nominate their favorite stories first published during the previous year to determine the top five in each category for the final Hugo Award ballot. This is an anthology collecting more of the stories from that nomination list to get them to more readersThe Long List Anthology Volume 5 collects 20 science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories from that nomination list, totaling over 450 pages of fiction by writers from all corners of the world. From science fiction mysteries to studying wish-granting fairies, research on haunted houses to extracting language knowledge from your brain, from sex-changing dinosaurs to survival stories in a wild alien environment. There is a wide variety of styles and types of stories here, and something for everyone. The stories included are:"Mother Tongues" by S. Qiouyi Lu"Field Biology of the Wee Fairies" by Naomi Kritzer"Meat and Salt and Sparks" by Rich Larson"Sour Milk Girls" by Erin Roberts"Asphalt, River, Mother, Child" by Isabel Yap"The Starship and the Temple Cat" by Yoon Ha Lee"Waterbirds" by G.V. Anderson"You Can Make a Dinosaur, but You Can't Help Me" by K.M. Szpara"And Yet" by A.T. Greenblatt"She Still Loves the Dragon" by Elizabeth Bear"An Agent of Utopia" by Andy Duncan"A Study in Oils" by Kelly Robson"The Substance of My Lives, the Accident of Our Births" by José Pablo Iriarte"No Flight Without the Shatter" by Brooke Bolander"How to Swallow the Moon" by Isabel Yap"A World to Die For" by Tobias S. Buckell"Thirty-Three Percent Joe" by Suzanne Palmer"The Privilege of the Happy Ending" by Kij Johnson"The Nearest" by Greg Egan"Umbernight" by Carolyn Ives Gilman

The Long List Anthology Volume 5: More Stories From the Hugo Award Nomination List (The Long List Anthology Series)

Bear, Elizabeth

Egan, Greg

Kritzer, Naomi

Robson, Kelly

Johnson, Kij

Greenblatt, A.T.

Larson, Rich

Bolander, Brooke

Steffen, David

Fantasy

Independently published

An unabridged collection spotlighting the best hard science fiction stories and novellas published in 2023 by current and emerging masters of the genre, edited by Allan Kaster.<ul><li>"The Last Cathedral of Earth, In Flight" by Tobias S. Buckell - The last of humanity flees, among the stars, from alien Prowlers.</li><li>"The Unpastured Sea" by Gregory Feeley - A mission to the planet Neptune runs into many setbacks.</li><li>"The Tinker and the Timestream" by Carolyn Ives Gilman - Colonists on a planet orbiting a decaying sun encounter interstellar time travelers.</li><li>"Six Incidents of Evolution Using Time Travel" by Derek Künsken - Time travel is found to be encoded in the DNA of some alien species.</li><li>"Cloudskimmer" by Geoffrey A. Landis - Robots and humans team up to explore Venus.</li><li>"Even if Such Ways Are Bad" by Rich Larson - A two-person crew goes on a deep space mission inside a living wormship.</li><li>"The Enthnomusicology of the Last Dreadnaught by Yoon Ha Lee - The battle glory of an atrocious weapon of war is honored.</li><li>"Exiled to Gravity" by Marissa Lingen - A mysterious ailment hampers an engineer's return to space.</li><li>"Clockwork Melting by James Maxey - An immortal races against time to complete an ice sculpture on Venus.</li><li>"The Elephant Maker" by Alec Nevala-Lee - Scientists clash with hunters and poachers for a rogue elephant needed to test a brain implant.</li><li>"The Ghosts of Mars" by Dominica Phetteplace - A teenager struggles to survive on Mars amidst peculiar phenomena attributed to ghosts.</li><li>"The Many Different Kinds of Love" by Geoff Ryman with David Jeffrey - After ten years of silence, an abiotic intelligence on Enceladus receives unauthorized messages from Earth.</li><li>"Lemuria 7 Is Missing" by Allen M. Steele - The disappearance of a passenger moonship is scrutinized.</li><li>"Defective" by Peter Watts - A zero-sum battle for survival rests on the ability of a scientist to communicate with an alien species.</li><li>"OCASTA" by Daniel H. Wilson - An AI, with an algorithm that analyzes and learns, has a story to tell.</li></ul>

The Year's Top Hard Science Fiction Stories 8

Buckell, Tobias S.

Lee, Yoon Ha

Watts, Peter

Wilson, Daniel H.

Ryman, Geoff

Künsken, Derek

Steele, Allen M.

Landis, Geoffrey A.

Infinivox

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