Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy

“Hey Marty,” Mom asks, “got a moment?” I cringe whenever Mom’s voice has that tone to it. I don’t know what she’s going to say; but if I’ve learned anything in my thirteen years on this desolate…

Author: James Flanagan Iain opened the car door for his father, Tom, inviting him to exit. “Three decades I worked for those uncouth S.O.B.s,” Tom muttered. “I raised you kids…of all the betrayals…” “I’ve heard great things about this retirement home,” Iain said, pleading with his father to step out of the car. “It’s affordable…” […]

Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy

Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy

Author: Kelian Quinn It certainly was some kind of plant. Maybe. I’d gone out to water the small garden my apartment complex had allowed me to have, hoping that I would find something other than dandelions this morning. Even if I didn’t, any moment away from my roommate was a moment I cherished. It sat […]

Author: Meg Carey I’m reaching around in the dark, touching up and down your soft, slimy body as you heave long sighs beside me. You’ve been asleep for a few days now, and I don’t know how long this is supposed to go on for. I press my face into your crocodile skin, I let […]

Trixie got out of her cherry-red godmobile and waved away the flitting cherubim waiting to bear her to her sedan chair. She wasn’t in the mood for a reverent chorus of hosannas, and the sedan chair…

The Oldest Fun by Natalia Theodoridou

Author: Lora Kilpatrick When you wake up, they tell you not to look in the mirror. You feel cocky like always, so you float over to the bathroom when they release you. You expect to see the person you were before you died. It comes as a shock to realize you’re just a floating board […]

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer The sirens start to wail behind us. I hate this bit. “Time to do one!” Adey swings his backpack onto his shoulders as he starts running, dodging the spotlight of a hunting drones as he goes. Must be nice, being that fit. “Auntie Jin?” I look down at Little Em. […]

Against All Odds By Anna Mikhalevskaya Translated by Elvira Rizaeva   Time is slipping away drop by drop, along with sweat on deceptively calm faces. He runs through the shafts of stairs, through abandoned tunnels. Seeps through the ceilings into echoing hangars, stumbles upon crooked figures, shakes oilcloth curtains, rolls empty mugs, beats metal on […]

Author: Hillary Lyon “Hey, citizen!” A voice rasped from the shadowed alleyway. Bhodi glanced at the man but kept walking. “I said, hail citizen!” Bhodi stopped to look in the man’s direction. “Yeah, you,” the man rasped, waving Bhodi over. He approached the old man, assuming he wanted to sell him a contraband gadget. Grinning, […]

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer “Have you decided, Jared?” Eagle. The disk spins high into the air in the low gravity, polished metal reflecting the light from the fires about him. Jared smiles. If he had the acuity of vision, he could probably distinguish the reflections from the spotlights of the waiting army. Watching from […]

Author: Majoki I fancy myself quite a reader. I mean, I read everything. Everything. Even “Know your 8-inch Howitzer” published in 1984 by the Department of the Army, Headquarters, US Army Armament, Munitions and Chemical Command. I’m not particular. I wasn’t programmed to be. I’m a brute force. Scraping and scooping up every bit of […]

The Golem Lover by J.H. Siegal     I have learned of a lace that runs through my little village. Geilevska, nestled within the bosom of nearby hills, rests upon these strands, sewn around the fertile patchwork of letters learned in the men’s yeshiva, through the words traded by merchants, beneath the whispers of the […]

Author: Cliff McNish Eventually, once we’d screwed up everything in the ecosystem, Naomi and I were the final ones left – the last man and woman on Earth. Unfortunately, we didn’t get on. We felt some vague responsibility to repopulate the world, but kept avoiding sex. We did it politely, but even so. ‘Mm, what […]

Author: Timons Esaias This would be a nice planet, if not for all these places where the seabottom is sticking up out of the worldocean. It is most unseemly and immature. We are trying to be generous about it, trying to convince ourselves that this planet is too young, that the worldocean will tear down […]

A man using a social media app that reaches across dimensions to talk to himself in different timelines, discovers some of his problems are universal...and some are not...

Miguel is a foolish, ill-informed, spoilt youth of the cyberscraper culture. It's Saturday night, and he's alone in the family apartment with the beautiful Maria Del Fuego. But what, exactly, does it take to turn her on?

Aden had never once forgotten his gear for bulk trash day, but he found it touching that Nura still taped a monthly reminder note on the door from the kitchen to the garage. Sweet of her to remember, given how exhausted med school had her these days. He ducked out to the garage to toss […]

Content Note: All Possible Warnings Apply click here for full note Warnings: violence, incest, cannibalism, fratricide, attempted infanticide just as in the original…   Children don’t generally assume their father will abandon them to die in the snow. But under certain circumstances, they might get an inkling. If their mother had died the year before, […]

In Which Caruth is Correct by Carolyn Zhao

The Aunties Return the Ocean By Chris Kuriata Auntie Roberta landed badly on the roof of her escarpment house, scraping her knees across the flagstone shingles and splitting her pantyhose. Her arms were too full of black water to keep her balance so she nearly slid off the edge. She carried so much ocean she […]

During one of the much smaller disasters that preceded the really big disaster, I met a lot of my neighbors online. I can’t remember if we set up the WhatsApp group because of the pandemic or the civil disorder or both. My Minneapolis block had always been reasonably friendly—people would take their kids around on […]

Author: Jennifer Thomas “Friends of space, how are you all? Have you eaten yet? Come visit us if you have time.” —Greeting in Amoy, one of 55 languages on the “Golden Record” sent toward interstellar space on Voyager 2, 1977 CE [Transcript: Testimony of Android 32XX, International Academy of Sciences, March 9, 2072] Ladies and […]