Subscribe to Clarkesworld and never miss an issue of our World Fantasy and Hugo Award-Winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine. This page: Shiomah’s Land by Nisi Shawl

Subscribe to Clarkesworld and never miss an issue of our World Fantasy and Hugo Award-Winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine. This page: Intro to Prom by Genevieve Valentine

Subscribe to Clarkesworld and never miss an issue of our World Fantasy and Hugo Award-Winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine. This page: The Psychology Game by Xia Jia

Subscribe to Clarkesworld and never miss an issue of our World Fantasy and Hugo Award-Winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine. This page: The Last Boat-Builder in Ballyvoloon by Finbarr O’Reilly

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

Subscribe to Clarkesworld and never miss an issue of our World Fantasy and Hugo Award-Winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine. This page: The Sum of Her Expectations by Jack Skillingstead

We stole the cherry red 1984 Corvette at noon, when Random was inside the strip club for Tuesday’s Wings and Things and otherwise occupied. At one, we stopped behind a Denny’s to swap the plates, even though it felt dangerous to have paused knowing that Random would be standing in the badly maintained asphalt parking lot staring at where he’d left the ’vette and coming to certain conclusions. “It’s okay,” Abony said as I held the license plate in place and she screwed it on. “Take deep breaths.”

That’s how Cynthia and Ugo met. The Easter egg hunt had just started when little Cynthia noticed a dark, short-haired nine-year-old boy, all alone, sitting by the church steps. Her first impression of him was his quietness, and the way he stared at her. When she told him (well, shouted) that it was impolite to stare at strangers, and why wasn’t he running like all others?---the dark-haired boy walked quietly over and told her that they didn’t need to hurry.

Subscribe to Clarkesworld and never miss an issue of our World Fantasy and Hugo Award-Winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine. This page: Little /^^^\&- by Eric Schwitzgebel

Subscribe to Clarkesworld and never miss an issue of our World Fantasy and Hugo Award-Winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine. This page: Fish Dance by Eric Schwitzgebel

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

Subscribe to Clarkesworld and never miss an issue of our World Fantasy and Hugo Award-Winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine. This page: Bonding with Morry by Tom Purdom

Subscribe to Clarkesworld and never miss an issue of our World Fantasy and Hugo Award-Winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine. This page: Antarctic Birds by A. Brym

Subscribe to Clarkesworld and never miss an issue of our World Fantasy and Hugo Award-Winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine. This page: The Algebra of Events by Elizabeth Bourne

It was always a relief on the ward when midnight came, bringing the late-night caretakers in their faded scrubs and sensible shoes, carrying their little trays of sweet oblivion from bed to bed and room to room. They passed among the patients like the Sandman himself, leaving even the most devoted screamers sleeping peacefully. The silence wouldn’t last, but oh, it was sweet for a little while. The more damaged patients—the ones who’d been waiting years for sanity to make a house call.

Subscribe to Clarkesworld and never miss an issue of our World Fantasy and Hugo Award-Winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine. This page: From Their Paws, We Shall Inherit by Gary Kloster

Subscribe to Clarkesworld and never miss an issue of our World Fantasy and Hugo Award-Winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine. This page: Perfect Lies by Gwendolyn Clare

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

Subscribe to Clarkesworld and never miss an issue of our World Fantasy and Hugo Award-Winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine. This page: All the Painted Stars by Gwendolyn Clare

Many years ago, in Shangdong Province, there lived an unfortunate farmer by the name of Dou Zhuo. Like most of us who walk this teeming Earth, he was trapped in the circumstances that fortune had provided him. He owned a patch of land that supported crops only after backbreaking effort, and then with results that betrayed its resentment of the demands he put on it. His cucumbers were bitter, his cowpeas difficult to boil, his leeks over-pungent, his pak choi stiff, and his edible amaranth hardly deserving of its name.

The derelict hangs in Neptune’s blue orbit, a chip of shadowy flint from a distance. Up close, it’s old and rusting, myriad old systems cobbled together, and Hadley swallows her nervous and exhilarated heart a dozen times as she latches the pod to its belly, makes a hard seal at the airlock, and geckos her team inside. The exterior of their spatulae suits—hands and knees and hips—permits them freedom of movement even in zero gee. Especially in zero gee. She glances back at their pod once.

Dr. Ain was recognized on the Omaha-Chicago flight. A biologist colleague from Pasadena came out of the toilet and saw Ain in an aisle seat. Five years before, this man had been jealous of Ain’s huge grants. Now he nodded coldly and was surprised at the intensity of Ain’s response. He almost turned back to speak, but he felt too tired; like nearly everyone, he was fighting the flu. The stewardess handing out coats after they landed remembered Ain, too: a tall, thin, nondescript man with rusty hair.

bing bing bing / The lights speak to me as they flash red, red, red. They’re saying wait, wait, wait, then ready as yellow flashes, then get the fuck going as greens turns the sky into a maelstrom of steel and fire and I’m rising, pushed into the back of my navpod so hard I fear I’ll break through. The first three seconds are the most dangerous, the powers of heaven and earth look away as a hundred ships fight for the same small stretch of sky.

If you were a certain kind of person with a certain kind of schedule in the early sixties, you probably saw a show that some friends of mine and I worked on called Acres of Perhaps. By “certain kind of person,” I mean insomniac or alcoholic; by “certain kind of schedule,” I mean awake at 11:30 at night with only your flickering gray-eyed television for company. With any luck, it left you feeling that however weird your life was, it could always be weirder.

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

Subscribe to Clarkesworld and never miss an issue of our World Fantasy and Hugo Award-Winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine. This page: A Man Out of Fashion by Chen Qiufan

Subscribe to Clarkesworld and never miss an issue of our World Fantasy and Hugo Award-Winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine. This page: Venice Drowned by Kim Stanley Robinson

Subscribe to Clarkesworld and never miss an issue of our World Fantasy and Hugo Award-Winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine. This page: In the Blind by Sunny Moraine

Subscribe to Clarkesworld and never miss an issue of our World Fantasy and Hugo Award-Winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine. This page: Twisted Knots by D.A. Xiaolin Spires