March 2017 Clarkesworld Now Available
The March 2017 issue of Clarkesworld, issue #126, comes packed with tales of apocalypses. Here’s Charles Payseur from Quick Sip Reviews.
Clarkesworld Magazine for March [contains] five original stories including a great novelette in translation… these pieces are concerned with new forms of intelligence and with the end of the world. Or maybe just with the end of certain aspects of it. But at least two of the stories are more specifically apocalyptic, and many besides are about doubt and depression, anxiety and seclusion. These stories show people closing themselves off from the rest of the world — out of fear or hurt — and then having to decide whether to open up again. It’s a wonderful issue…
“Goodnight, Melancholy” by Xia Jia, translated by Ken Liu (11,932 words)
This is a wrenching and beautiful story about despair and about loneliness. About machines and machine intelligence and people in need of a voice and presence. The story breaks itself between two storylines, between parts that involve Alan Turing, which are semi-historical and reveal a man desperate for connections but deeply worried about make thing, and parts that involve a young woman who is using machines as part of therapy to help her through depression and anxiety. The parts with Turing reveal his situation as a gay man in a world where being gay was a crime, where every conversation he had might lead him to ruin. To embarrassment and worse. To what did ultimately happen to him… It’s an amazing story that is deep and lyrical even as it captures something of a biographical tone.
Find Charles’ complete review here.
The March issue of Clarkesworld contains original fiction from Robert Reed, J.B. Park, Nomi Kritzer, Octavia Cade, and Xis Jia, plus reprints by Ian R. MacLeod and Alexander Jablokov.