Rin moves into a new flat on the day the aliens arrive. Their new flatmates are laid-back Sanjay and conspiracy theorist Pete. It doesn't take long to notice some oddities about the pair, like hoarding cardboard and hissing at people when they're angry. Something strange is going on, but it's not all due to the aliens.

The Spokane Ecology Board covers up supernatural incidents, under the pretence of enforcing environmental laws. It's a dull job of sightseeing thunderbirds and pixie outbreaks. Until the team gets murdered.Ari is the replacement team's Bigfoot liaison. Armed with everything she's learned from detective shows, she's ready to find the murderer. The downside is the job comes with a human partner, who smells of air freshener and lines up his desk like a math project. He's only a scient...

The everyday lives of aliens are explored in this collection of flash fiction and poetry. An amoeboid shares recipe tips. Cartwheeling worms carry messages across the desert. A living planet has suspicions about a new moon. Humanoid aliens fade into the background as the truly alien aliens take the stage to tell their own stories.

A deep-sea robot tells stories in every colour, but no shade can describe meeting a giant squid.Rainbow Lights is the first collection by science fiction and fantasy author Polenth Blake. Alien scorpions, vampire ice cream sellers and clockwork flies, try to find their place in worlds where being human is optional. These thirty-five stories and poems are a mixture of new pieces and work published in venues like Nature, Strange Horizons and ChiZine

Clarkesworld is a Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning science fiction and fantasy magazine. Each month we bring you a mix of fiction, articles, interviews and art. Our July 2024 issue (#214) contains:* Original fiction by Tia Tashiro ("Every Hopeless Thing"), Amal Singh ("I Will Meet You When the Artifacts End"), Grant Collier ("The Best Version of Yourself"), Em X. Liu ("Stellar Evolutions in Pop Idol Artistry"), Natalia Theodoridou ("Aktis Aeliou, or The Machine of Margot's Dest...

A queer, Beauty-and-the-Beast-inspired novellaHeron thought ey wanted to be with handsome, charming Tiel—but the relationship hasn't quite lived up to eir expectations. With Tiel's confidence comes a tendency to be overbearing, and now he wants Heron to leave eir farm life behind and move to town with him. And Heron can't figure out how to explain to him that ey doesn't want that.When an accident strands Heron's mother at a castle rumored to belong to a family of m...

Four shipwrecked sailors. An island of unimaginable beauty. And a nightmare determined to hunt them down and consume them, bodies and souls.Emery Lapwing is only interested in two things: exploring the natural world, and pretending that he's not in love with his closest friend, Captain James Rawlings of The Achillean. The first is easy: James will sail him anywhere he wants to go. The second, Emery has been doing for the past ten years.Emery's routine is sh...

The once-grand, now dilapidated old house they live in has become a refuge for their found family—Morgan's partner Araminta, an artist with excellent dress sense; Theo, a ten-year-old with an excess of energy; quiet telekinesthetic pensioner Denny—as well as the ghosts who live alongside them. All people who once needed sanctuary for their queer, neurodivergent selves.Now they offer that safety to the dead as well as the living.When a collection of ghosts trapped in old bot...

What's a little necromancy between family?For the Crow Witch, Icarus "Rus" Ashthorne, Moondale seemed the perfect hiding place. But like they always say, you can't go home again, and Rus finds out quickly that nothing is how she remembered, while at the same time very little has changed. Then she comes face to face with the only woman she's ever loved, Az Elwood, and... well, things get messier than she thought they ever could.The Elwoods are a staple of Moondale, respected...

Paris, 1823. Victor Beauchêne has led a stifling existence, unrecognized for both his cleverness and his gender, except in the pages of his meticulous diary. Abruptly cut off from his family's fortune, he takes the opportunity to start a new life in a shabby boarding house with his beloved spinster aunt Sophie. There, he stumbles upon two kinds of magic: a pen with eerie powers of persuasion and a reserved, alluring art student named Julien.Brilliant, unconventional Julien...

Fans of Jim Butcher and Scott Lynch will love this snarky fantasy mystery.It was only supposed to be one little job - a simple curse-breaking for Mennik Thorn to pay back a favour to his oldest friend. But then it all blew up in his face. Now he's been framed for a murder he didn't commit.So how is a second-rate mage, broke, traumatized, and with a habit of annoying the wrong people, supposed to prove his innocence when everyone believes he's guilt...

An autistic necromancer, his undead lover, and the case that could destroy everything.When a necromancer turns up dead, Oliver and Felipe think it will be the perfect, straightforward case for their new partnership. That is, until it leads them to a clinic promising a cure for magic, but they aren't the only ones investigating the Institute for the Betterment of the Soul. Oliver's ex, Ansley, is in town, and he's certain the clinic isn't the paragon of righteousnes...