I’ve gotten a pit behind in my short fiction magazine reading lately. This week I finished reading the September issues of Clarkesworld and Lightspeed. One story in each issue stood out to me as five star material. These were:
- “When Humans Are No Longer Born Human” by Zhu Yixuan — A pure blood human performs a series of tests to determine if a pregnant woman is human. This is a timely allegory of xenophobia, racism, and attempts to restrict voting.
- “Dreamweavers” by Alexander Weinstein — In a world where the billionaires are making everything digital and taking control of it, their engineers make a plan to steal seeds essential to survival and escape. Once again, timely given the control that so many tech companies seem to be seeking and gaining.
I have once again updated my Stories Read table. Head there to see four other stories from these issues that I gave four stars. Happy reading!
