Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 220 (January 2025)

I decided to add a bit of short fiction back into my reading life this year. Two years ago (2023) was my year of short fiction, which I read almost exclusively. At the end of the year, I stopped as I found that there was no easy way to find good short fiction without getting subpar stories as well. But last year, I found myself missing the timeliness of short fiction magazines. So I did a bit of research on my reading in 2023 and decided to subscribe (again) to Clarkesworld magazine in 2025. This is my review of the first issue of the year.

“When There Are Two of You: A Documentary” by Zun Yu Tan (2,130 word) – In a near future world, citizens can get a copy of their mentality/personality called a Sentience. It’s kind of a snapshot of who they are. One character makes one of himself and puts it into his clone. We follow what happens with that clone after the original dies. The other main character is a woman who has her Sentience within herself. It’s kind of like the voice in your head on steroids. This is a wonderful exploration of identity and the way we talk to ourselves. (My rating: 4/5)

“Child of the Mountain” by Gunnar De Winter (2,890 words) – Taking place on a mountain in an unknown place and time, a young girl is caretaker for her genetic sisters. When they die, she extracts a “soul seed” and resurrects them. This is her purpose in life. But the ritual vultures that eat the flesh off her sisters’ dead bodies seem to be suggesting a different path altogether. A haunting tale of life, death, and hard decisions. (My rating: 3/5)

“Never Eaten Vegetables” by H. H. Pak (15,170 words) – A corporation sends a sentient ship filled with suspended embryos to a planet previously prepared for their arrival. But when something goes wrong, the ship has a tough decision to make on her own. The corporation won’t answer her questions as to what she should do as she keeps bumping into parts of herself that she has no access to. Very well written. The story just flows and it is easy to empathize and root for the characters. (My rating: 5/5)

“The Temporary Murder of Thomas Monroe” by Tia Tashiro (11,900 words) – A young man wakes up to find that he has died… again. But this time instead of being at his own hand, he has been murdered. But he doesn’t recall who killed him. At least not at first. And as he starts to remember, things get odder and odder. Another propulsive, well-written read that kept me turning the pages. (My rating: 5/5)

“Beyond Everything” by Wang Yanzhong translated from Chinese by Stella Jiayue Zhu (9,750 words) – In a future world devastated by never-ending war and environmental collapse, a new envoy is sent to seek help from extraterrestrials after all but one of the previous envoys never returned. After talking to the only returning envoy, the new one sets out to learn from the aliens, presumably more advanced than Earth, what the Earthlings can do to save themselves. The story feels muddled a bit and the writing felt clumsy to me. The author is going for something big and difficult to communicate. It didn’t quite work for me. (My rating: 2/5)

“Autonomy” by Meg Ellison (3,100 words) – A woman meets her best friend, as she regularly does, and hears about a confrontation with a man who sat on the hood of her robo taxi and the mysterious code someone gave her to use in similar future situations. Later, on her way home, the woman is assaulted in her autonomous taxi and finds out what happens when she uses that code. Has some gore and a feel of a short horror story. I thoroughly enjoyed exploring “what if” in a world with fully autonomous vehicles. (My rating: 4/5)

That’s all the fiction in the issue. There are two interviews each with a writer/editor as well as an interesting essay about termites and consciousness. The issue is rounded out by Neil Clarke’s editorial reviewing happenings with the magazine last year and a brief bio of the artist of the cover art. My average rating for the fiction comes out to 3.83 out five stars. A solid start to the new year that leaves me grateful for subscribing again. I’m looking forward to reading the next issue!

The First State of Being by Erin Entrada Kelly

Two days before Christmas, I was chatting on the phone with my sister. She was telling me about a book that she had read. She mentioned that she had bought me a copy and asked if it had arrived yet. It had not, but while I was talking with her Amazon delivered it. As soon as I finished the book I was reading, I picked it up as my first new read of 2025.

This is a middle grade book about a boy named Michael Rosario. He lives alone with his mother in an apartment complex in 1999. He is concerned about the Y2K problem. While talking with his babysitter (which he thinks he doesn’t need and who he has a crush on), they notice a strangely dressed young man who seems out of place. Something just seems “off”. The reader learns pretty quickly that this young man is from the future. Michael and his babysitter decide to befriend and help him, even though they aren’t sure they believe him.

I really enjoyed this book. It is an easy, quick read. The characters feel realistic. There is a touching relationship between Michael and the apartment complex’s handyman. Michael and his mother are close, too. In fact, as so often happens with single moms and sons, Michael feels the need to take care of her in some ways. It is sweet. And the time travel aspect reminded me a bit of Back to the Future but has its own clever twist on the dilemma of time paradoxes. Well done and worth the time to read.

My rating: 4/5

The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing by Adam Moss

This book has been brought to my attention at least three times through podcasts I listen to or newsletters I read. It was named as one of the best books of the year for its unique look at the work of creativity. Due to my interest in writing and the level of praise it’s received, I picked it up. It definitely lived up to its billing.

Each chapter of the book is the result of an interview by the author with an artist where he tried to get at what the process of creativity looks like. This includes many artifacts of the artists as they worked: drafts, notes, correspondence, etc. The breadth of artistry was wide including painters, playwrights, singers, songwriters, authors, and sculptors among many others. One of my favorite features of the book is the footnotes. They read like the author’s own notes on reviewing his text. They help to connect the wide variety of insights where they overlap. I found it essential to the books utility.

The writing is direct and easily accessible for such an esoteric subject. Words are hard to apply to a process that is so far from linear. There is a lot of gut feeling in this and the exploration of what that means. Each chapter is self-contained, and they can be read in any order. I read them sequentially, finding that very satisfying despite the author’s invitation to jump around. This is a book that is unique in its subject matter. I am not sure anyone else has set out to get at how art gets made in quite the same way. The author succeeds in drawing the reader into the often messy and hard to pin down process that is making art. Engaging and fascinating.

My rating: 5/5

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

This one is my book club’s selection for December when we read contemporary fiction. We all vote on what to read from the three highest rated (on GoodReads) books from those suggested by our members. One of the other members of my book club suggested this one. I am so grateful to her as I am not sure I would have read it otherwise.

Tova is an elderly widow who works nights cleaning the aquarium in Sowell Bay, WA, a two-hour drive north from Seattle. There she connects with a great Pacific octopus named Marcellus who is approaching the end of his life. Thirty years ago her son Erik mysteriously disappeared the summer after his senior year in high school. A young man named Cameron comes to town in search of his father whom he has never met and whose mother had some sort of connection to the town. Through a series of events, their lives all intersect. The octopus is the first to realize something about the other two and does his best to show them what he discovered.

Writing that summary, it seems a little ridiculous. But it never felt that way to me, despite many of the chapters being narrated in the first person by Marcellus. The setting evoked a lot of feelings. My family is from the Seattle area. Tova is Swedish and so is most of my family from that area. Reading this book was almost like reading about family history. Tova even reminded me a bit of my great grandmother. The characters felt very realistic as well as the ways they behaved even when they were less than ideal. Writing this review I am finding it hard to adequately communicate how this story touched me so deeply. Yet it did. One of my favorites of the year.

My rating: 5/5

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson

This book has been on my list so long that I don’t recall how specifically it got there. I know that I love to learn from history and found intriguing a book about what it was like to live in Nazi Germany as Hitler and the Nazis consolidated power. I picked this up now due to the political situation here in the US.

Shortly after the Reichstag fire on February 27, 1933, Franklin Roosevelt named an erudite professor at the University of Chicago as the ambassador to Germany. He was not the president’s first choice, or even his second choice. He was way down the line as no one else seemed to want the job. In July of 1933 Professor Dodd and his wife, son, and daughter, all moved to Berlin. This book follows their experience of living under Hitler as violence against Jews and foreigners rose there, culminating in the Night of the Long Knives that started on June 30, 1934. It is as much about the private life of his daughter Martha as it is about his experience as ambassador. As such, it is a very interesting look inside the social as well as the political world within Nazi Germany.

This is a remarkable book about what it was like to experience first hand the rise of Nazi power in Germany. It is astounding how willing everyone was to look away and make excuses, both foreign and domestic. The US government was myopically interested in getting bond payments on WWI debt. Europe was intent on avoiding another devastating war. With today’s political world rhyming so closely with the 1930s, there is a lot to learn from the history in this book.

My rating: 4.5/5

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by TImothy Snyder

I don’t recall how this book came to my attention. I normally write down what prompted me to add a book to my list. Unfortunately, I did not do that for this book. Still, I know exactly why I decided to read this book now. Due to the authoritarian bent of our incoming president, I was looking for some comfort and answers on how to respond.

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century is a collection of twenty essays for what to do in the face of growing authoritarianism in a country. No current politician or political party is mentioned. The points made are all based on historical experiences of countries with despotism. A few of the points most relevant today are “Do not obey in advance” as this gives the regime power without even being challenged, “Make eye contact and small talk” because this builds community across political divides and humanizes the other, and “Be calm when the unthinkable happens” in order to respond in a rational way that can actually make a difference.

The writing here is short and pithy. The book packs a lot into its only 128 pages. I felt that the writing was a bit slow in the first few chapters, but by the latter half of the book the points and their historical support had me nodding along in full agreement. I highly recommend this book for our times. It just might lower levels of panic while encouraging the fortitude required to prevent a slide into a state that no one really wants.

My rating: 5/5

My Favorite Thing is Monsters Book Two by Emil Ferris

As soon as I finished My Favorite Thing Is Monsters Book One this past June, I put its sequel on hold at my library. It took until earlier this month for me to get my turn to read it. Like book one, it grabbed me right away. I tore through it in two days.

It continues the story of Karen started in book one. She continues to struggle with her own identity as a “monster” who doesn’t fit in. At the same time, she is coming to terms with a revelation about her brother from the end of the previous book. With a new friend, she continues to look into the mysterious death of a woman in the building who cared deeply for her.

As was the first book, this is in part a very challenging holocaust story. At the same time it is a coming of age story of a young gay girl. It is very touching and emotionally evocative in the way it deals with othering. The art is amazing and is a well-realized tool in the author’s storytelling.

My rating: 4.5/5

Breath by James Nestor

I heard the author of this book interviewed on the People I (Mostly) Admire podcast. I heard a lot of amazing and seemingly outlandish claims about breathing. But the interviewer is someone I trust who had tried the things discussed. He was amazed at his results, so I decided to read the book myself.

The text tells the author’s journey of discovery. He suffered from pulmonary issues himself and sought out ways to improve his life. The journey took over ten years. He starts with an experiment that he did with a friend and colleague with lab results measured by Stanford University. They both got a long series of tests. Then they plugged their noses for ten full days so they could only breath through their mouths. For those ten days they ate and exercised to a precise schedule so they could reproduce the same activities when they were breathing through their noses for the following ten days. They got all the same tests at the end of the first ten days and at the end of the full twenty days. They had all sorts of issues when breathing through their mouths that simply went away when they started breathing through their noses. These included higher blood pressure, snoring, and mild sleep apnea. The rest of the book explores the author’s research on what affects breathing and how to breathe to improve health.

I was astounded by what this book uncovered! I am looking forward to putting much of it into practice myself. I already find myself keeping my mouth closed and breathing through my nose as much as I can. There is an appendix with breathing exercises as well as a link to videos that also show how they are done. The only quibbles I have are that due to the excellent structure for telling about all he learned, the author’s storytelling arcs are a bit confusing at times. He had to jump around a bit in his timeline to intelligently gather the details for the book. And there isn’t a coherent single description for what a reader should do with this information. The author isn’t a physician, so this is likely on purpose. He does support all that he presents, though, with scientific studies from doctors and other scientists. I am looking forward to building a breathing practice that I expect will help me to stay as healthy as I can as I age.

My rating: 4.5/5

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

I had heard of this book through many channels. The one that got me to pick it up was a review by Ian Mond in Locus magazine. There he described it as “the sort of novel you fall into, only to come up for breath to eat and sleep.” It has an element of time travel and the exploration of how people from the past might deal with the shock of coming to the future. Sounded like a great book for me.

In a near future UK, the government has discovered time travel. Unsure as to what might happen to time travelers, they have brought forward from the past five people who history shows as either dead or missing. Each of these people is assigned to a “bridge” who helps them adjust to the dramatic change in their lives. The main characters are one of these people from the past and his bridge. As the story progresses, some things begin to appear to not be what they are at first glance and the time travelers and their bridges start to band together to figure things out.

Unfortunately, this book did not live up to the billing. I found it rather easy to put down. In fact, I almost stopped reading it halfway through. The metaphors feel forced. I found the writing clumsy and stilted with only a rare moment or two where it shined and pulled me in, enveloping me in a feeling and communicating something deeply. And there were numerous references to things in the UK that someone not immersed in that culture would not understand. Worst of all, the conclusion fell flat. The author seems to think she has said something profound in this story that just wasn’t there for me. I should have listened to my instinct and left this one unfinished.

My rating: 2/5

Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford

This one has been on my list to read for almost a year. What put it there was an incredible review by Cory Doctorow. I finally pulled it from my pile when my book club selected it to read in November, our indigenous fiction month.

It is set in an alternate 1920s where much of the western US was never completely subsumed by the United States. The central action takes place in the state of Cahokia covering parts of modern day Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The capital is also called Cahokia. The protagonist is an orphan giant of a man whose heritage is part black, part indigenous. He is a murder detective for the Cahokia Police Department. As the book opens, he and his partner have been called to the scene of a grizzly murder at the top of a skyscraper. The body has been mutilated in the style of an Aztec sacrifice. In a racially divided city, this sets the city on edge and puts pressure on the mayor and the police to solve the crime fast.

This novel has everything—politics, history, racial tension and conflict, mystery, plot twists, romance. I kind of feel like the grandfather in The Princess Bride. Seriously, this is one of my favorite books I’ve read. I most appreciate books that explore deep issues of what it means to be human, and I found it in this book at every turn. It deals with but gives no easy answers for questions like these:

What do I do when there seem to be no good choices to make?
Where is the boundary friendship and doing the right thing?
Where do I belong? Who am I?
Is it okay to break the law in service to a higher sense of law?

To top it off, the writing is evocative. I felt immersed in the noir detective world of prohibition politics in a Midwestern state governed by natives who never gave up governing their own land. This book has it all. Truly a masterwork.

My rating: 5/5