Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 154: Clarkesworld Magazine
    Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 154: Clarkesworld Magazine
    Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 154: Clarkesworld Magazine
    Ebook209 pages2 hours

    Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 154: Clarkesworld Magazine

    By Neil Clarke, Sam J. Miller, Thoraiya Dyer and

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Clarkesworld is a Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning science fiction and fantasy magazine. Each month we bring you a mix of fiction (new and classic works), articles, interviews and art.

    Our July 2019 issue (#154) contains:

    • Original fiction by Grace Seybold ("The Visible Frontier"), Ng Yi-Sheng ("Xingzhou"), Sam Miller ("Shattered Sidewalks of the Human Heart"), Tang Fei ("Wu Ding''s Journey to the West"), Geo-il Bok ("Flowers on My Face"), Rodrigo Juri ("One in a Million"), and Thoraiya Dyer ("The Weapons of Wonderland").
    • Non-fiction by Carrie Sessarego, interviews with Yoon Ha Lee and Arkady Martine, and an editorial by Neil Clarke.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWyrm Publishing
    Release dateJul 1, 2019
    ISBN9781642360455
    Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 154: Clarkesworld Magazine
    Author

    Neil Clarke

    Neil Clarke (neil-clarke.com) is the multi-award-winning editor of Clarkesworld Magazine and over a dozen anthologies. A eleven-time finalist and the 2022/2023 winner of the Hugo Award for Best Editor Short Form, he is also the three-time winner of the Chesley Award for Best Art Director. In 2019, Clarke received the SFWA Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award for distinguished contributions to the science fiction and fantasy community. He currently lives in New Jersey with his wife and two sons.

    Read more from Neil Clarke

    Related to Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 154

    Titles in the series (69)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Science Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Polarized

      Mar 24, 2023

      Polarized
      6 min read

    • Article

      Nophek Gloss

      Dec 2, 2020

      RELEASED OUT NOW! 464 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Essa Hansen Publisher Orbit Books Part Iain M Banks, part ’60s cosmic Marvel, this first entry in new series The Graven is an ambitious, but not entirely successful, debut. Set in a multiverse awas

      1 min read

    • Article

      Remembering Steve Ditko: Forget Kirby Dots, Let's Talk Ditko Sparkles

      Jul 8, 2018

      The idiosyncratic co-creator of Spider-Man, Doctor Strange and many lesser-known comics characters died last week. His distinctive storytelling style shaped generations of comics readers.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Eversion

      May 18, 2022

      Eversion
      2 min read

    • Article

      Parallel Lives Lost: K Chess’s ‘Famous Men Who Never Lived’

      Feb 13, 2019

      Famous Men isn’t quite a sci-fi novel, but something more like its inverse—a book less concerned with alternate universes than their absence. The post Parallel Lives Lost: K Chess’s ‘Famous Men Who Never Lived’ appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Found in Space

      Feb 8, 2022

      Found in Space
      2 min read

    • Article

      Parasite Lost

      Dec 1, 2021

      Parasite Lost
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Final Countdown

      Dec 1, 2021

      The Final Countdown
      3 min read

    • Article

      Bill And The Tooth Fairy

      Mar 10, 2021

      Bill believed in the Tooth Fairy. Big deal, you’re thinking. Lots of kids believe in the Tooth Fairy. Well, Bill wasn’t a kid. He was twenty-eight years old. You don’t believe it. My girlfriend Mary Beth didn’t believe it, either. We were having dinn

      15 min read

    • Article

      Vaccine Victory Via Chickens

      Feb 24, 2022

      Vaccine Victory Via Chickens
      3 min read

    • Article

      Captain Back On Deck!

      Nov 3, 2021

      Captain Back On Deck!
      1 min read

    • Article

      Liberation Day

      Nov 2, 2022

      Liberation Day
      2 min read

    • Article

      Legacy Characters

      Apr 20, 2023

      Legacy Characters
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Man In The Mask

      Dec 1, 2021

      The Man In The Mask
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Thousand Earths

      Oct 5, 2022

      The Thousand Earths
      3 min read

    • Article

      Warhammer 4ok: Rogue Trader

      Feb 21, 2023

      Warhammer 4ok: Rogue Trader
      5 min read

    • Article

      Martian wants Drabbles

      Jul 7, 2022

      Martian is a zine for SF drabbles and the team publish new ones twice a week. Drabbles are very short stories of exactly 100 words (excluding title) and they are tricky to write. Read what’s published here to see how other writers do it. The editoria

      1 min read

    • Article

      Kinds of Kindness

      Jun 6, 2024

      Kinds of Kindness
      4 min read

    • Article

      THE WD INTERVIEW N.K.Jemisin

      Mar 20, 2019

      THE WD INTERVIEW N.K.Jemisin
      8 min read

    • Article

      Wish Upon A Protostar

      Nov 3, 2021

      Wish Upon A Protostar
      4 min read

    • Article

      Dune

      Oct 6, 2021

      Dune
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Space Between Worlds

      Aug 12, 2020

      RELEASED OUT NOW! 324 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Micaiah Johnson Publisher Hodder & Stoughton Fresh takes on sci-fi staples aren’t easy to find, but this debut novel from Micaiah Johnson pulls off a demanding and mind-bending approach to

      1 min read

    • Article

      Spirited Away

      Dec 1, 2021

      Spirited Away
      8 min read

    • Article

      Bleat Child Of Mine

      Dec 1, 2021

      Bleat Child Of Mine
      3 min read

    • Article

      Frenemies Within

      Jul 12, 2022

      Frenemies Within
      8 min read

    • Article

      Hello Darkness My Old Friend

      Jun 17, 2020

      Hello Darkness My Old Friend
      4 min read

    • Article

      A Cosmology Of Monsters

      Jun 17, 2020

      RELEASED 30 JUNE 448 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Shaun Hamill Publisher Titan Books Shaun Hamill’s debut arrives with a fierce buzz and a glowing Stephen King cover quote. That feels apt. A Cosmology Of Monsters may riff heavily on HP Lovecraft’s

      1 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 154

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 154 - Neil Clarke

      Clarkesworld Magazine

      Issue 154

      Table of Contents

      The Visible Frontier

      by Grace Seybold

      Xingzhou

      by Ng Yi-Sheng

      Shattered Sidewalks of the Human Heart

      by Sam J. Miller

      Wu Ding’s Journey to the West

      by Tang Fei

      Flowers on My Face

      by Geo-il Bok

      One in a Million

      by Rodrigo Juri

      The Weapons of Wonderland

      by Thoraiya Dyer

      Tolkien and World War I

      by Carrie Sessarego

      Fractal Universes, Serialized Novels, and a Cat: A Conversation with Yoon Ha Lee

      by Chris Urie

      Byzantium, New York, and Rose Petals: A Conversation with Arkady Martine

      by Chris Urie

      Editor’s Desk: From the Moon to Magazines

      by Neil Clarke

      The Giant Mimr

      Art by Axel Sauerwald

      © Clarkesworld Magazine, 2019

      www.clarkesworldmagazine.com

      The Visible Frontier

      Grace Seybold

      That’s Ifenwa, the captain said, pointing at a smear of light almost directly overhead. Inlesh repeated the name dutifully to himself. That’s Ontok. A pentagon of bright sparks halfway up the sky. They’ve each got their own names, but you don’t need that for now. That’s Hiea. A sullen orange glow in an otherwise unbroken patch of dark. You can’t see it at twilight or dawn, so don’t rely on it for then, but it’s about the only star that ever shows in that direction, so it’s better than nothing.

      Inlesh nodded. I heard, he said, and stopped, because it sounded stupid, and then tried again, because he was supposed to ask questions in order to seem clever. Is it true there are people there?

      The captain scratched at her jawline. Well, she said, not at Hiea, likely. Used to be, they say. My grandfather was just a boy when it blazed up. Shone like the sun for a while, he told me, you could see it daytimes, and then burned down to what it is now. The maps show it looking a lot like Ifenwa before that.

      There are maps? Inlesh asked. This was a startling concept. Star maps?

      For records, the captain cautioned. Not for using. They’re not reliable. Stars shift, you know. That one there. She pointed at a long silvery line, almost too thin to see, that split off at one end into a dozen tiny branches. "Omond Halaw. It moves a little bit every year, always down. Coming toward us, as it happens. If that star has people, they’ll get here in, oh, ten thousand years, something like that. Someone told me the exact number once, but I’ve forgotten."

      Inlesh repeated ten thousand years silently, along with the name. In the days since leaving their home port of Gwylleridge, the captain had told him quite a lot of things on which he had no idea whether he’d be tested or not, and quite a lot more things that he was fairly sure would never come up again, and a fair few things he was almost certain weren’t true, but the last thing he wanted was to be caught out.

      So you don’t trust sky maps for navigation, not by themselves, the captain continued. "Shore maps can be good for a generation, and sea charts are good enough if you get them updated every year, but stars can change between one night and the next. And there’s no pattern to it; they can change by a lot, or by a little, which is worse. Memorize them, use them, but don’t rely on them unless you’ve got no choice.

      Questions, Inlesh thought, ask questions. He shuffled hurriedly through the bits of folk wisdom and tall tale and family history that had been most of his education. There hadn’t been much about stars, but after a moment he dredged up something his aunt Alchayr had said once. Is it true that the sun is a kind of star?

      The captain gave him a disgusted look. Of course not, she said. Don’t be stupid.

      They made port at Roal Hadda, a city on the curve of Haddachirn Bay, all glaring white stone and little shaded plazas and the famous temple dominating the landscape from the top of its high hill. It was the farthest from home Inlesh had ever been, and as soon as he could he fled the docks and the company of Aranthaw’s sailors, to wander alone through the twisting streets, marveling at the glorious strangeness of a place that wasn’t his own.

      At length he found himself on a climbing road, and around a curve the temple loomed up before him. He made the pilgrim’s donation with the small advance on his wages the captain had doled out to the shore parties, and entered the great rotunda, to gaze openmouthed at the sleek lizard-headed statues and the mosaics that shone mysteriously with soft light.

      Do you wish a guide, young sir? A priest appeared at his elbow, soft-slippered on the ancient floor. Are you perhaps interested in learning more of God?

      I’m just— Words failed Inlesh, as embarrassment often made them do. He had only come in to look, but it suddenly seemed terribly rude to say so.

      Perhaps you would like to hear one of the Lessons, the priest offered. You may ponder them at your leisure, young sir, being, as I think you are, a sailor, with ample time to study the sky upon which God writes His missives.

      The sky? Inlesh repeated, still trying to think of a way out of the conversation.

      The priest gave a bobbing nod. As the sky changes, young sir, so are the Lessons revealed. But, of course, it changes in God’s time, not ours, and so we must watch for many generations to follow a single tale. Come, come outside, the sun’s nearly covered.

      It was indeed almost full dark. Down below in the city there were lights, torches, and electric bulbs and by the harbor the occasional more exotic speck of illumination, but all that ceased at the foot of the temple hill, so that they had nearly as fine a view of the sky from the front portico as Inlesh had ever seen at sea.

      The priest gestured grandly at the glowing smudge the captain had named Ifenwa. That is the Lesson of the Cloud, he intoned. For thirty generations it has kept its shape, growing steadily but so slowly that no one in his lifetime may notice the change. So are we enjoined to propagate the faith, not by dispersing our people throughout the world as some foreigners do, but by steady advancement among those nearest? As the Cloud grows, so do we, and so long as it continues to grow, we know that God is pleased with our increase.

      How do you know that’s what it means? Inlesh asked. Ifenwa didn’t look that much like a cloud, even, other than being vaguely round and in the sky.

      We must interpret God’s Lessons with our own limited understanding, the priest said. Therein lies the difficulty, and the need for contemplation and the slow acquisition of wisdom. Of course there are differences of interpretation, but—see there? He indicated the thin branching lines of Omond Halaw. Consider the Lesson of the River. It splits and changes, but remains one River, and the streams and tributaries of error eventually fade away, leaving only the main current of truth.

      Do you make maps? Inlesh asked. To remember what the—what the Lessons said in the past?

      The priest nodded, a pleased expression on his face. We do, young sir. They are, of course, for the priesthood only, but if you were to seek initiation—

      I have to get back to my ship, Inlesh said hurriedly.

      Of course, of course, the priest said, not seeming at all dismayed. Consider the sky as you travel, and if it brings you to feel God’s call to it, return to us. We will be here always.

      Always seemed like a very long time, and Inlesh, back at sea and on the late watch alone, regretfully concluded that people who casually threw around words like always probably weren’t to be relied on.

      But he started drawing his own map that night, carefully marking out the fixed positions of the stars and their curious shapes with a charcoal stick on a piece of sailcloth, and beside them writing both the names the captain had had him memorize and the names the priest had given: Cloud, River, Ember, Wing.

      There was more to the world than anyone at home knew, as Inlesh fervently believed: it was what had impelled him to leave Gwylleridge, to beg position on Aranthaw and seek a wider life. Now, having begun (he thought) to grow used to the great sea, he transferred his longing to the sky.

      At Shemcorizan Island they took on fresh water and laying hens and innumerable barrels of pickles, in preparation for the long stretch of empty water they would have to cover before reaching the next scheduled port. The great sea, the captain said, in that tone that meant Inlesh had better be learning, was one hundred ninety-seven thousand six hundred twenty kilometers from one end to the other, and its shores bore stretches of jungle for a year’s journey on foot, and sheer cliffs one might sail past for twenty days without finding a good harbor, and cities of machines and cities of stone and cities of clockwork and cities in ruin. There was a sailing ship of legend, Taramura, that had circumnavigated the great sea and taken fifty years to do it, though almost none of her original crew were left when she returned, save the pilot and the assistant cook, and a pair of the ship’s ancient fighting-beetles. Of course, the airships of some of the machine peoples could make the journey in days, but where was the glory in that?

      Aranthaw’s itinerary was much more modest, a circle from Haddachirn Bay out through the Misleading Islands and the Sardees, and then back inshore to strike land near Quern Head, and a stop at Treynou Bay, and home again. It took her a hundred days to ply the route, which she had done for longer than Inlesh had been alive. Some of Aranthaw’s people, the captain among them, had made scores of circuits; others were temporary hires who would move on when mood or chance took them. Inlesh listened wide-eyed to all their tales, even knowing they couldn’t all be true.

      Ah, but how can anyone know for sure? the second helmsman, a burly one-eared man who answered to Teeth, asked jovially in response to a chorus of skepticism at the end of one of his stories. The world is vast beyond all belief. There’s room for all manner of wonders. I saw a map in Atalmar once, the size of this ship, on which even the great sea itself was so small as to be almost invisible.

      Maraut are liars, the first helmsman snorted. One of them told me once that they have jewels inside their skulls that make them live forever. And where would someone stand to draw a map like that, anyway?

      On the sun, one of the other sailors offered.

      On the night-shell! Inlesh put in, eager to contribute.

      On your arse, more like! said the first helmsman, to general laughter. Anyway, I don’t believe it.

      Maps could be had in plenty in the markets of Shemcorizan, though none at such a scale, for the island was one of the main starting points for voyages amid the archipelago that stretched far out into this part of the great sea. Inlesh spent hours gaping at the goods from distant places laid out for sale, exotic foods and strange machinery and all manner of marvelous things. He was entranced by a mechanical bird that reproduced with perfect accuracy anything said to it, but fortunately its price was close to a year’s wages for a sailor, so that he couldn’t be tempted. The next stall over was selling books in a hundred languages; the merchant admitted xie couldn’t read any of them, but was nonetheless firm in xer conviction that they held the secrets of creation. One stall further on, massive white-furred cats lounged in cages, displaying startling fangs to passersby when they yawned. Inlesh shuddered at the thought of transporting those as cargo.

      "Oh, we don’t carry them on ships, good fellow! their keeper said with a startled laugh when Inlesh inquired. No, no, certainly not. There’s an outpost of the Donn Enshau at the edge of the jungle where they live, and we pay a goodly amount—an exorbitant amount, let me tell you—for the use of their teleport. Ah, it’s a grand thing. I’ll be reborn as a Donn Enshai in the life after next, let me tell you."

      There was quite a lot in that statement that Inlesh needed explained, and he wouldn’t have bothered trying to unravel it had not the keeper casually mentioned that of course it wasn’t his next life he was talking about, as that one would take place in one of the stars.

      Well, naturally, he said when Inlesh pressed him about that. The stars are full of people, you know. The world is a great sphere, and the stars are on the other side of it. Wherever you die, your soul goes in a straight line through the sun, and you’re reborn at the point precisely opposite. One pays a geometer quite a fortune to calculate the opportune place to die, to be reborn in the best star. He himself had done so, he continued, though he regretted he couldn’t point out his chosen star, it being early morning at the moment, the night-shell slowly opening its petals from around the sun.

      That the stars might be cities, or nations, was a vertiginous thought, but one that it turned out many of the local people held as truth. Many were willing to expound at length on the glories of the star they had selected as their place of rebirth, though the one most often mentioned, Inentou-daralees, would not be visible at night from here, being, of course, directly overhead and therefore hidden by the night-shell. Nonetheless Inentou marked it carefully on the blank space in the center of his map, writing Inentou-daralees and beside it, city?

      Out into the open sea Aranthaw went, and every island and strait and stretch of open water was a wonder of a different kind. There were clouds of leaping fish that darkened the sky, and tiny jeweled lizards that swarmed aboard ship from a red sand beach and fought fiercely with the rats in the bilge in titanic contests on which the sailors wagered. They met folk who lived their whole lives on great rafts without ever going ashore, whose singing could be heard for kilometers. They saw a fleet of airships like vast golden balls pass overhead on their way to one of the machine civilizations. Once, late at night, an explosion lit the darkness, and streaks arrowed downwards into the sea; all lamps were lit and the watch ordered to the rails in case anyone was in the water, but no trace of whatever had fallen was found.

      Inlesh’s map grew, the star-names multiplying until some stars were fully surrounded by a thicket of letters. In a marketplace in the Sardees he found a kind of fine black paper that held the most precise markings when pressed with a particular kind of needle-thin stylus. It came, the merchant said, from Ontok-Belah, from a ship of strangers who had long ago visited from that star, the statement gave Inlesh a peculiar thrill even though he was fairly sure the merchant lied. He bought it, and endured the jeers of those sailors who’d spent their money more sensibly on exotic intoxicants, and during one of the calm watches he copied his cloth map onto this new medium.

      As he did so, a skitter-craft ran along the top of the water, spindly legs churning, and was as quickly out of sight. Inlesh wondered how long it would take to reach the end of the great sea, and how long, if it kept going, until it made it to the other side of the world.

      Fifteen days’ tacking across open sea with no land visible brought them around on the homeward leg of their journey, and at the sixteenth dawn as the segments of the night-shell folded back from the sun, they sighted Quern Head with its jade green tower.

      We should have come in at night, the captain commented

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1