84

Lightspeed, March.

Lightspeed, April.

Lightspeed, May.

Lightspeed, June.

Clarkesworld 102, March.

Clarkesworld 103, April.

Clarkesworld 104, May.

Clarkesworld 105, June.

 

The online magazine Lightspeed has had a mixed year so far, with a number of entertaining stories, but, with only a couple of possible exceptions, nothing really extraordinary either.

The strongest story in the March Lightspeed is probably “Hot Rods,” by Cat Sparks, set in a desolate future Australia, ravaged by climate change, in a drought-stricken village where there’s nothing to do but try to squeak by somehow, race hot rods aimlessly on the salt flats, and pray hopelessly for rain. The plot follows a young woman whose lover has, out of desperation, gone off to work in the nearby American military base, a foreboding place surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards that he’s unable to leave until his contract is up—if he survives that long, as there’s a war going on (none of the villagers know with whom, or much care), and the base comes under periodic high-tech attacks, which the villagers watch uncomprehendingly from a distance, like field mice watching the bombing of an artillery range. By the end, the young woman and all the villagers are left in a desperate position—Jesus has failed them, the climate has failed them, technology has failed them, and love means nothing set against the blank uncaring forces of the world. In fact, they have no hope left. Uncompromisingly realistic, and a way all too many of us are likely to end up in years ahead, but hardly inspiring. The March issue also features another of the always-entertaining “Erm Kalso” science-fantasy stories, “A Face of Black Iron,” which is almost bouncingly optimistic after the Sparks.

The major story in the April Lightspeed is a long, bleak Afterlife fantasy, “The Ministry of the Eye,” by Dale Bailey—well-written but depressing, showing that there’s no hope of relief even after death. Jason Gurley’s “Quiet Town” also shows its characters in a hopeless situation, but the dominate mood here is “quiet resignation” rather than despair, as the inhabitants of a small town glumly watch their town start to be swallowed up by rising sea levels, knowing that there’s nothing they can do about it, and that soon the town will be gone beneath the waves and they’ll be forced to start over. This is emotionally affecting, but barely science fiction, since this is already beginning to happen in many place around the world, and is only going to get worse in the years to come.

The best story in the May Lightspeed is “The Myth of Rain,” by Seanan McGuire, another excellently written, emotionally affecting, and even moving story that’s not going to be science fiction for long, as a scientist struggles to save a rare spotted owl, part of an effort to catch and relocate as many of the animals in a forest in the Pacific Northwest as possible before developers from drought-ravaged California, looking for new places to build condos, raze it to the ground. She doesn’t succeed, and it’s clear by the end, in spite of an effort to strike a wan note of optimism for the long run, that there’s little or no hope for the world, which is going to end up clear-cut and paved in spite of the heroic efforts of the dedicated environmentalists. Matthew Hughes contributes the last of the “Erm Kaslo” stories (at least for now; I have a feeling he’ll be back) with “The Blood of the Dragon.” C.C. Finlay tells the mildly amusing tale of a nerd trying to create a bubble of stopped time with his girlfriend inside it in “Time Bomb Time,” a story that reminds me strongly of an episode of the old Angel TV show from years back with an almost identical plot. Helena Bell’s “Mouth,” about a girl who accidently rips off her brother’s mouth and loses it, is listed as SF, but I’d list it as fantasy instead, a problem I often have with the classification of stories in Lightspeed.

Lightspeed’s strongest issue of the year to date is the June Lightspeed, the special “Queers Destroy Science Fiction!” issue, in which all the stories are by gay authors. The best story in June, and perhaps the best story Lightspeed has published all year so far, is Chaz Brenchley’s “The Astrakhan, the Homburg, and the Red Red Coat.” This is a flamboyant and highly entertaining kind of Martian Steampunk, set in an Alternate World where Victorian England has colonized Mars, and dealing with a group of clandestinely meeting gay colonists (homosexuality was illegal in Victorian times, and transgressors were subject to severe punishments), including a thinly disguised Oscar Wilde, who are genteelly extorted by authorities into participating in a dangerous attempt to mentally communicate with the mind of a Martian—a mind which turns out to be vaster and more alien than anyone could have imagined. Great stuff. There’s a lot of minor stuff in the issue too, but also very good here is Amal El-Mohtar’s poignant “Madeleine,” about a woman whose dreams are haunted by an imaginary friend who turns out to be not quite so imaginary after all. There’s also two good stories about the difficulties military cyborgs face adapting to civilian life, Rose Lemberg’s “How to Remember to Forget to Remember the Old War” and “(Influence Isolated, Make Peace),” by John Chu, with the Lemberg being slightly the more effective of the two. In “Trickier With Each Translation,” Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam tells the complicated story of a woman who keeps being yanked back and forth in time by a would-be lover with the ability to control time, who hopes to arrange things so that she falls in love with him rather than with the people she does fall in love with.

The online magazine Clarkesworld has had a similarly mixed year to date, with some first-rate stories and a number of more routine ones. The strongest issues for Clarkesworld so far were the January issue, which featured Aliette de Bodard’s “Three Cups of Grief, By Starlight” and Naomi Kritzer’s “Cat Pictures, Please,” the February issue, which featured Rich Larson’s “Meshed” and Kelly Robson’s “The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill,” and the April issue. The best stories in the April issue, Clarkesworld 103, and among the best stuff published there all year, were Robert Reed’s “The Empress in Her Glory,” in which, unbeknownst to her, invisible aliens invest a woman with powers that make her effectively the de facto ruler of the Earth, and “Let Baser Things Devise,” by Berrien C. Henderson, set in a slightly Alternate World, in which an uplifted chimp is selected for a mission to the Moon, and finds himself torn between his new world and the old primal, instinctual world of the jungle. There’s also a cute parody of Godzilla movies here, Emily Devenport’s “Postcards from Monster Island,” which is amusing, but goes on too long.

Many worthwhile stories appeared in other issues of Clarkesworld, but none of them quite at the level of quality of the stories mentioned above. The March Clarkesworld, Clarkesworld 102, Mike Buckley’s “An Original Brightness” is a sentimental tale about future soldiers so badly injured that they are reduced to life in a Virtual Reality Surround, and what happens when government cutbacks threaten to pull the plug, and what sacrifices they willing to make to stay together; also in March are a slow-building (perhaps too slow-building) tale about people who are socially ostracized because they were born without the ability to communicate empathically which each other that everyone else has, “Slowly Builds An Empire,” by Naim Kabir, a tale which reminds me a bit of Ian R. MacLeod’s “Entangled,” from 2013; and a quirky, kind of bleak superhero tale, “Cassandra,” by Ken Liu.

Truth be told, I didn’t warm to anything particularly in the May issue, Clarkesworld 104. Best here is probably Matthew Kressel’s “The Garden Beyond Infinite Skies,” although it is sort of an extended Shaggy God Story at heart.

The June issue, Clarkesworld 105, features “Asymptotic,” by Andy Dudak, an audaciously amusing story about a universe where the Speed of Light is not just a natural law but a Law as well, enforced by cosmic “traffic police” who arrest and punish those who break it by going Faster Than Light; slight stuff, but fun. Kris Millering’s “The Wanderer, in the Dark of the Year” is an intense story about a reporter who is captured by political extremists who also happen to have captured a crashlanded alien; the reporter is put in close confinement with the alien so that she can form a symbiotic bond with it, although how the extremists know this going to happen, since nobody’s ever seen an alien before, is unclear. Eventually, after a long painful process, she does form such a bond with it—unfortunately for the extremists. “Somewhere I Have Never Traveled (Third Sound Remix),”  by E. Catherine Tobler, is a story trembling of the verge between cosmic and silly about a woman aboard a space station who is haunted by and eventually forms a deep telepathic/emphatic bond, almost erotic, with the planet Saturn—with surprising long-term results.