Fictional Worlds

Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy

I’d always known Calam would run. He had all the signs. A taut restlessness, body brittle as an overstretched lute string, when we stayed too long in one place. A gloom in his eyes, as we drifted through stretches of dead space. A sullen crease between the brows, whenever I tried to ask how he’d landed in that dead-end Martian workshop at seventeen. But after ten years, why now?

It has been one hundred and thirteen years since our mother’s pear and red date soup slid along my tongue, and now I taste only the sweetness of soil and rot...

Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy

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, […]

The fourth and final installment of a new serialized novella from Hugo Award-winning author Sarah Gailey...

The third installment of a new serialized novella from Hugo Award-winning author Sarah Gailey...

The second installment of a new serialized novella from Hugo Award-winning author Sarah Gailey...

Introducing a new serialized novella from Hugo Award-winning author Sarah Gailey...

A woman visiting Las Vegas for a fun weekend encounters her ne’er-do-well ex-husband, who begs her for a favor that gambles with life and death…

Unknown forces attempt to stop Judge Dee and Jonathan from transporting a mysterious and possibly dangerous prisoner, who holds a secret about the Judge, to an executioner in France...

Simon thought he left his fascination with the infamous “Sunshine Killer” and his cult, the “Sunshine Circle,” behind in childhood, but the past may be closer than he realized…

Kelly's friends were all getting a little sick of Kelly, even before the doppelganger showed up. And sure, it probably wants to kill her; they're just trying to decide if that's worse...or better.

Misunderstanding threatens a commune whose survival is dependent on precise communication with another species...

Set after the events of Everfair, espionage, betrayal, and political intrigue follow, when the estranged son of a founding member of Everfair visits his sister in Zanzibar . . .

An android who knows nothing besides his work in a factory, is given one final week to explore the world before he is forced to undergo mandatory reprogramming, in this bittersweet precursor to TJ Klune’s IN THE LIVES OF PUPPETS, now available in trade paperback!

Author: Mark Renney Darren had come to dread having to decompress. He wasn’t alone and yet no-one was talking about it, even the media were quiet on the subject but then hardly anyone now was exempt. The evidence was everywhere and decompressing people had become a commonplace sight across the city. Old people, old bodies, […]

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer The corridor is just far enough off-true that it messes with your vision and balance if you’re not careful. Or if part of you relies on an exoskeleton to function. “You okay there, Zeno?” I flick a glance and grin towards Leroy. “I’m seventy-one, godammit. Been doing this war shit […]

In Which Caruth is Correct by Carolyn Zhao

Author: Majoki “You’re a peasant, a cyber peasant in the fiefdom of Facebook, of Meta. You’re a digital sharecropper for Google and Amazon and Apple, and you don’t even know it!” The hooded man stood on the polished marble steps and shouted as a small crowd gathered. Alternately, the man turned and slapped bright yellow […]

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer The microwave is telling tales on me. I had an extra chocolate pudding I took from the restaurant. The family left and it was just sitting there unopened. So I took it. I’m recycling. But the bloody microwave scanned the barcode. I heard it: ‘mmmzzt’. It knows the pudding didn’t […]

Ellie Mathieu can tell when the Big Easy arrives by the smell of its engine.

Author: Jenny Abbott For Harold Culpepper, the concept of dying had, until now, seemed like a relatively abstract event—something everyone had to do at some point, but tried not to think about and avoided discussing in polite settings. But now, as he lay bleeding by the darkened roadside, he was forced to reassess things. Struggling […]

On Snowflake-veined Wings by Chip Houser   Amalia runs her finger around the inside of her Tupperware, wiping up the last of her leftover poutine. Her fall allergies kicked in a few days ago, so she doesn’t really taste the gravy. But she’d rather finger-clean her Tupperware at her table than go wash it because […]

Author: Mark Renny When Time stopped it was harsh; a blurred still but dense and difficult to navigate. When it happened to Damien it was fleeting, only for seconds really, a few minutes at most and he simply stood still and closed his eyes and waited it out. They, the men and women in the […]

Author: Henry Peter Gribbin My name is Ben. I am a middle-aged schoolteacher from Pittsburgh. I am also a homeowner. I recently bought a house that sits on a busy street in a thriving community. The previous owners were an elderly couple who recently passed. The husband was a successful stockbroker who made his fortune […]

In a club at Oz, / I collect the reverberations / of the songs of our dead

In a near-future San Francisco where the gig economy has made work more precarious than ever, Edwina is an average twenty-something scrambling to hold down her job with a major skin care brand. Until her awful boss does something you should never do—angers the fae on social media—and the struggles of her job take on an even nastier shade.