#22 Clarkesworld 221-224, various writers
hello all. i know you have all been impatiently waiting for the return of the nikola oiyum review blog, wishing but unable to form your own opinion about diverse pieces of media and hoping for some beautiful recommendations from all across the spectrum of obscurity. your days of waiting are now over. we are back in business. this time non-chronologically because i have a lot of catching up to do.
our first topic of the day is clarkesworld, a short story scifi/fantasy magazine published on a monthly basis, and the most popular of these as far as i understand. the stories range from 1k to 20k words, and each magazine has a good spread of them, so theres something for everyone. im personally a fan of the shorter end of the spectrum for these, because its quite easy to make a story drag on for too long, especially for an inexperienced writer. to avoid being unnecessarily mean about hobbyists and aspiring writers i will only be talking about the stories that i actually liked. i generally reserve my cruelty for mainstream properties and things with huge development teams. ! marks the stories i enjoyed the most and would absolutely recommend checking out.
! Numismatic Archetypes in the Year of Five Regents - 3560 words. very good framing, a story that feels real and physical. made me viscerally aware of how much human meaning and emotion is lost in interpretation of history. absolutely one to study to see how to write a work with such a precise impression of a world and the people living through its tumultuous times in so few words, theres not a single detail that feels superfluous and yet ive had no problem imagining it.
The Hanging Tower of Babel - 6380 words. i always enjoy reading stories about sci-fi dreams that crashed and burned. it feels like a natural reaction to the unfulfilled promises of the genre that originated from the apollo era, where real space exploration feels like it has been just around the corner for decades now. a very human story of a son struggling with the legacy of his father suffering from alzheimers disease. i did not particularly care for the prose for this one, but its still a good read.
Hook and Line - 4150 words. about passing on a legacy of earth to people who can no longer relate to it. again a nice microcosms of life on a spaceship, trying to use the fantastical human power of telling stories about those who came behind us in a world that cares less and less about such superstitions with each passing generation. very much feels like its rooted in reactions to the world we are all living in currently.
! Funerary Habits of Low Entropy Entities - 3500 words. honestly cant find words to properly explain this one. several little glimpses into alien lives that are so different from our own that it feels hard to fully grasp. wonderful prose. just great stuff
Those Uncaring Waves - 18140 words. oof. this one was way too long for me and did not keep my focus all the way through. but there is definitely a center of gold and the worldbuilding was great. a world in which humans have patterns on their skin that affect their behavior and perceived worth, and those patterns can be changed before birth, and partially after, and women who were wronged greatly by this system. definitely need to look at more things from this writer
The Sound of the Star - 3820 words. very classic series of planetary visits, but the creativity on display is wonderful.
For Sustainable Space Colonies, Let There Be Soil - self descriptive. great read, loved the prose which is a special kind of praise for a non-fiction work.
Aegiopolis Testudo - 7500 words. technician living on the back of a giant turtle thats currently being used for unsustainable tourism. i really enjoyed a good chunk of this one but the ending rubbed me the wrong way, it just ends feeling accusatory towards people who take their activism 'too far' and act mean towards likeminded individuals for not doing enough. and the writer follows that one famous british transphobe on twitter. so you know. but i would feel wrong not putting the story on here because i did like it. just. the optics arent great.
The Seed - 5300 words. kind of like a girl power eldritch pact thing but i fuck with it lol. feels like the beginning of a longer thing but i kind of like it as it is.
! In My Country - 6220 words. interesting one about how capitalism co-opts its own criticism and turns it into something consumable to prevent people from actually doing something about it. definitely has something to say about how ambiguity is more dangerous for totalitarian governments than outright dissent because it forces people to think about how they actually feel about something. would not feel out of place in kinos journey (high praise). absolutely recommend this one
! We, the Fleet - 7700 words. human encounters bee-like colony of robotic planetary colonists, but from the perspective of the 'mother bee'. really liked this one, i just love stories that try to portray how it feels to exist in a mind of something so different from typical humanity.
! Oh Time Thy Pyramids - 7430 words. PEAK. look man. just read this one. i just feel like i would ruin it by even saying what its about. you are 900 words into my blog post. you can read the first 900 words of this and see if you like it or not.
Proxima One - 4020 words. a branching exploration on the possibility of extraterrestrial life. good prose.
alright thats all for now. your homework this week is to read at least one of these stories and tell me your thoughts about it, 10 words minimum, β maximum. 100 bonus points if you can give me a story you like from the magazine thats not included on this list.
γγΎγ - not from any of these issues but it would feel like a crime not to mention it, read Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole, 3190 words . it won a bunch of awards, its in the cultural zeitgeist or whatever. you know you want to