Klara and the Sun meets S. A. Barnes’s Dead Silence with a touch of Becky Chambers’ A Psalm for the Wild-Built in Nebula Award-winning author A.D. Sui’s darkly philosophical murder mystery, as a death monk and a team of researchers trapped onboard a spaceship of the dead encounter something beyond human understanding…Vessel Iris has devoted himself to the Starlit Order, performing funeral rites for the dead across the galaxy, guiding soul...

Nearly ten years after Inez Kato sustained a career-ending injury during a military exercise gone awry, she lies, cheats, and seduces her way to the very top, to destroy the fleet that she was once a part of, even at the cost of her own life.Ennis Rezál, Third Daughter of the Rule, has six months left to live. She is desperate to end the twenty-year war she was birthed to fight. But when she brings Inez aboard the mothership, a chess game of manipulation and double-crossing begins ...

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 September 2026 issue (#240) contains:Fiction* "Water-Eaters" by Beth Goder* "When Humans Are No Longer Born Human" by Zhu Yixuan* "To Walk This Distant Shore with You" by A.D. Sui* "And So I Open My Fists" by Rachel Sobel* "Fistful of Antimatter" by Rich Larson* "Count...

A pair of monastic siblings struggle to help a sentient spaceship suffering through an existential crisis in this philosophical novel about what constitutes life, love, humanity, and death for fans of Martha Wells’s The Murderbot Diaries and The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei.Unable to forgive himself for his actions aboard the Counsel of Nicaea, Iris left the religious Starlit...

The first issue of Heartlines Spec contains the challenges, and joys, and frustrations that come from long-lasting connections. It’s a mother you never understood, a friendship that’s fierce but changing, the quiet gratitude of sipping champagne with someone you love. All the stories and poems within feature partners, families, lovers, and friends. The relationships between them are varied but strong.Editorial by Rebecca BennettShort FictionRedline b...

This sapphic cli-fi thriller is a love letter to hope in the bleakest of times, combining the multiverse-bending drama of This Is How You Lose the Time War with the cat-and-mouse chase of Killing Eve**.**On a near-future Earth devastated by climate change, Dr. Cassandra Barlowe is right where she wants to be: working on an island of floating trash in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, as far away fr...

Frost Bites Ghostly Drabbles is a mini-anthology of bite-sized stories and poems in the tradition of telling a ghost story for Christmas.These pieces are not necessarily set on Christmas, but each 100-word drabble or 200-word double-drabble does feature a ghost of one kind or another.

A brilliant con artist and a secretive librarian collide in New York Times bestselling author Kalyn Josephson’s enchanting adult fantasy debut packed with twists, tricks, slowburn romantic tension, and magical creatures -- perfect for fans of S.A. MacLean, Mai Corland, and K.A. Linde.“Absolutely fantastic—I couldn't put this book down! A stunning, absorbing, and timely tale about a wondrous library, magical beasts,...

Becky Chambers meets Miss Marple in the second entry of this cozy sci-fi mystery series, helmed by a formidable no-nonsense auntie of a detective.Welcome to the HMS Fairweather, Her Majesty's most luxurious interstellar passenger liner! Room and board are included, new bodies are graciously provided upon request, and should you desire a rest between lifetimes, your mind shall be most carefully preserved in glass in the Library...

From the acclaimed author of The Stardust Grail comes the epic tale of two sisters who sail across oceans to find their missing third sister—and Earth’s environmental salvation.In Earth's not too distant future, seas consume coastal cities, highways disintegrate underwater, and mutant fish lurk in pirate-controlled depths. Skipper, a skilled sailor and the youngest of three sisters, earns money skimming and reselling plastic from the ocean to care for her ...

At what point in time does a memory exist?Set in the coastal Pacific Northwest in 1994, Afterglow is a mind-bending psychological journey that follows Edyn, a troubled 32-year-old man who remembers nothing before three years ago except for a haunting vision atop a grassy hill, where a mysterious woman speaks her last words.As the fragments of Edyn's hidden memories are unlocked, disturbing new flashbacks break through; glimpses of a ruined world th...

Winner, 2025 Locus Award for best science fiction novel of 2024Winner, CIBA Mark Twain grand prize winner for best satire of 2024Finalist, Foreword Reviews for best thriller of 2024Finalist, Eric Hoffer Award"10 for 2024" Year-End Best Books ListPreble Jefferson can see five seconds into the future.Otherwise, he lives an ordinary life. But when a confrontation with a cop on a New York City subway goes tragically wrong, those ...