Many have written on this subject to confess failure; who am I to claim success? The objections line up like policemen: Alien intelligence does not, in fact, exist. So when we try to describe it, our thoughts do not connect to any object except ourselves. The words we put into an alien mouth, the feeling into an alien heart, the tools into alien hands, what can they be but imitations of our words, feelings, tools?

Ona watched her Teacher turn around. The helmetless Ms. Coron wore a dress that exposed the skin of her arms and legs in a way that she had taught the children was beautiful and natural. Intellectually, Ona understood that the frigid air in the classroom, cold enough to give her and the other children hypothermia even with brief exposure, was perfectly suited to the Teachers. But she couldn’t help shivering at the sight. The airtight heat-suit scraped over Ona’s scales, and the rustling noise reverberated loudly in her helmet.

“Push! Push! Damn it, put your backs into it!” Kino Ye’s voice rose to a panicked screech as the four sweat-drenched soldiers strained against the spokes of the giant winch. “Push!” But one of the spokes snapped as the man leaning against it fell face-first into the sand, and the winch whipped around and tossed the other three men through the air to land sprawling on the beach a few paces away.

Subscribe to Clarkesworld and never miss an issue of our World Fantasy and Hugo Award-Winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine. This page: The Clockwork Soldier by Ken Liu

February 11, 1907 By the time we arrived in the Manchu settlement of Tanbian, the Russian expedition had already left a day earlier. For the last five days, we have been moving through deep snow and dense primeval forest in the Changbai Mountains, trying to catch up. The superiority of the mechanical horse is becoming […]

Read—or hear Harlan Ellison narrate—“Werewolf Loves Mermaid” by Heather Lindsley/@random_jane http://t.co/zdYmCLMyBi http://t.co/czazSrNq63

Read (or listen to) “Given the Advantage of the Blade” by Genevieve Valentine (@GLValentine). http://t.co/F6Pcw65ILV http://t.co/PMj3zCLdEc

today in #diversestories: Wine by Yoon Ha Lee @motomaratai in @clarkesworld Jan 2014 - http://t.co/McPKlWSfvv

today on #diversestories - *another* great story by Xia Jia & trans. by @kyliu99,Tongtong's Summer in @clarkesworld - http://t.co/ORSSbbuFLc

Today's delightful #lunchread was @NisiShawl's The Pragmatical Princess (via @bogiperson and #diversestories): http://t.co/xsFsq9DSfz

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

[A] photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask. —Susan Sontag

Subscribe to Clarkesworld and never miss an issue of our World Fantasy and Hugo Award-Winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine. This page: The Long Haul From the ANNALS OF TRANSPORTATION, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009 by Ken Liu

The tiny cottage at the edge of Sanli Village—away from the villagers’ noisy houses and busy clan shrines and next to the cool pond filled with lily pads, pink lotus flowers, and playful carp—would have made an ideal romantic summer hideaway for some dissolute poet and his silk-robed mistress from nearby bustling Yangzhou.

There is no definitive census of all the intelligent species in the universe. Not only are there perennial arguments about what qualifies as intelligence, but each moment and everywhere, civilizations rise and fall, much as the stars are born and die. Time devours all.

The world is shaped like the kanji for umbrella, only written so poorly, like my handwriting, that all the parts are out of proportion.

Officially, the five exiles on the station were the Initiates of the Fermata. Unofficially, the Concert of Worlds called them the swanwatch.

I have been ordered to write an honest accounting of how I became a Midwestern Jesus and the subsequent disastrous events thereby accruing, events for which I am, I am willing to admit, at least partly to blame. I know of no simpler way than to simply begin.

Lloyds was not willing to insure a phoenix egg, not even of the most impeccable pedigree. Hence the inspection of the purchase became a great deal more important.

Languages simply differ from one another, in ways both great and small. If you're a linguist, it's part of what attracts you to the field. And if you're not...it can be confusing.

Subscribe to Clarkesworld and never miss an issue of our World Fantasy and Hugo Award-Winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine. This page: The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees by E. Lily Yu

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Madeleine remembers being a different person. It strikes her when she’s driving, threading her way through farmland, homesteads, facing down the mountains around which the road winds. She remembers being thrilled at the thought of travel, of the self she would discover over the hills and far away. She remembers laughing with friends, looking forward to things, to a future.

Subscribe to Clarkesworld and never miss an issue of our World Fantasy and Hugo Award-Winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine. This page: An Evolutionary Myth by Bo-young Kim

Subscribe to Clarkesworld and never miss an issue of our World Fantasy and Hugo Award-Winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine. This page: First Light at Mistaken Point by Kali Wallace

Subscribe to Clarkesworld and never miss an issue of our World Fantasy and Hugo Award-Winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine. This page: The Abduction of Europa by E. Catherine Tobler

Subscribe to Clarkesworld and never miss an issue of our World Fantasy and Hugo Award-Winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine. This page: Between Dragons and Their Wrath by An Owomoyela and Rachel Swirsky