Subscribe to Clarkesworld and never miss an issue of our World Fantasy and Hugo Award-Winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine. This page: Who’s Afraid of Wolf 359 by Ken MacLeod

Subscribe to Clarkesworld and never miss an issue of our World Fantasy and Hugo Award-Winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine. This page: Landmark by Cassandra Khaw

Subscribe to Clarkesworld and never miss an issue of our World Fantasy and Hugo Award-Winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine. This page: Botanica Veneris: Thirteen Papercuts by Ida Countess Rathangan by Ian McDonald

Subscribe to Clarkesworld and never miss an issue of our World Fantasy and Hugo Award-Winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine. This page: Crossing LaSalle by Lettie Prell

Subscribe to Clarkesworld and never miss an issue of our World Fantasy and Hugo Award-Winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine. This page: The Rains on Mars by Natalia Theodoridou

Grand-Daddy would start thrumming at twenty hours, even if it could be the middle of the night, or of the morning. The vibrations filled the heads of everyone within a twenty-five kilometer radius with harmonics. The world became a giant MRI chamber…

Luciole. I dreamed I was swimming in the seas of my homeland again. My hair turned into seaweed thick with petrol; my mouth tasted like radiation and uranium. via Pocket

Ostap is putting the finishing touches on a cartoon tardigrade when Alyce calls him. The render is blown up to the size of a sumo, its butcher-paper skin creased and wrinkled around chubby tendril-tipped legs, its eyeless head dominated by a lamprey…

Alls I want is a goddamn tampon. Is that so much to ask at the end of the world? Yo. Name’s Enfys. This is, uh, my channel as I wander in search of tampons and the meaning of life in what’s left of Western Europe. Seems, I’m, um, immune to the phage…

Jiang Xiaoyu didn’t move. “Time to ratchet things up a notch.” Max didn’t seem to have noticed Xiaoyu’s trepidation. “We can’t let your trip be in vain. Now then, down on Earth, you might try to jump the last three steps of a staircase. via Pocket

Meychezhek is big, even among badhar-krithkinee, a circumstance exacerbated by the fact that I’m both already nervous and kneeling in anticipation of her entrance. Her skin is purple-black, more textured than human skin. Her head crest, flattened no…

The atheist awoke in the machine. Body had he none. Merely a consciousness, who even dead, yet hath his mind entire. A good line, that. Where did it come from? Around him was a sort of prison of flat light, was it light? Prison, because he could not…

I hope you’ll forgive the whimsy of this report. I’ve held my silence my entire life, and there are many things I deserve to say to you. I know it’s a breach of protocol, but in a sense, so was I. And there may not be another chance. via Pocket

Jassim is giving chase and he shouldn’t be. Beneath the flapping robes of Jassim’s running target, a deadly corset bristling with titanium circuitry flashes into view. via Pocket

Yoshi scythes the lotus seedpod with orange-slickered arms and tosses them in the harvesting bag on her back. The blue sky overhead reflects ominously in the still ponds below. She reaches out and cuts the same perfect pod again. This means she’s in…

Sahar, moving softly through the river valley, made sure to listen. The sound filtered into her helmet from the external mics, and she imagined this must be what hiking on Earth must be like. via Pocket

I was sixteen when the viz came. The spiral went crazy for a while, shooting, soldiers at the corners. But then, like everyone knows, it went back to normal. By twenty I was looking for ghosts in the vaults. via Pocket

Long ago I dreamt things to myself because, when I talked to people, I had nothing else to do, most of the time. Robots were easy. I could loan them cycles and bandwidth to temporarily accelerate them, or just download them and read them completely …

Wake up, killer. For a year, two, you’ve been the static hum of space, floating, spread out over a solar system, asleep, invisible. Girl born on Helio 70, you. via Pocket

Gonzo arrived in an assault of brass music and spilling banners rippling the pelt of cannon smoke where her feet would’ve been, taking up the hotel entrance in all its marble and chrome—its expensive anachronisms and the people paid to stand next to…

The Gods were circling when the sun rose, nine long patches of black that did not brighten with the sea as the sky lit up. I watched Them, Their knife-blade fins like polished onyx slicing the surface, formation shifting but the huge old matriarch a…

Stormchases’ little skiff skipped and glided across the tropopause, skimming the denser atmosphere of the warm cloud-sea beneath, running before a fierce wind. via Pocket

They never gave her a name; when she needs one she names and renames herself after the birds she sees from the watchtower, the birds she sees in the forest, whichever most recently caught her eye or arrow. via Pocket

Chenguang hikes up her sleeves before vaulting over the pile of fuzzy moss and greets Lukas with a nod. The chloropolyurethane fabric flaps in the slight breeze and the double suns beat down onto her arms. via Pocket

The skimmer is on the roof waiting for him, but he cannot help but pause to take a few deep breaths when he first enters all that open space. via Pocket

When Li Yaya was roused from sleep, it was seven o’clock in the morning on a Saturday. This was aggravating because the day before Saturday was Friday, and on Friday nights, Yaya never retired too early. The first thing she saw when she woke up was …

They all tried to save me. In that space between life and death, you make a decision whether to wake up. Maybe that’s when time ceases to matter. I felt older than four years old and too young to remember. via Pocket

The occasional breeze allayed the scorching midsummer heat, soothing the fever dreams of the sleepers in the mining scar. The remote blue sky was rooted to the earth, which here in the work zone was the blood red of hematite. Zhang Hua crouched low.…

Landing planetside used to be a good feeling. via Pocket

“I rise today on this September 11th, the one-year anniversary of the greatest tragedy on American soil in our history, with a heavy heart . . . ” —Hon. Jim Turner September 9, 2001 Jessica slumped against the inside of the truck door. via Pocket