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 May 2023 issue (#200) contains:* Original fiction by Naomi Kritzer ("Better Living Through Algorithms"), Harry Turtledove ("Through the Roof of the World"), Suzanne Palmer ("To Sail Beyond the Botnet"), Rich Larson ("LOL, Said the Scorpion"), Parker Ragland ("Sensation and Sensibility"), Megan Chee ("The Giant...

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 April 2022 issue (#187) contains:Original fiction by Thoraiya Dyer ("Doc Luckless and the Stationmistress"), Leonard Richardson ("Two Spacesuits"), Greg Egan ("Dream Factory"), Pan Haitian ("Hanuman the Monkey King"), Beth Goder ("An Expression of Silence"), Martin Cahill ("An Urge To Create Honey"), and Parke...

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder is an oft-used phrase but perhaps a very useful judge when it comes to valuing Art and the price we are prepared to pay to own such desirables. But whether our price is paid with admiration, love or filthy lucre a price most certainly has to be paid.1 - Short Stories About the Value of Art - An Introduction2 - The Artist of the Beautiful by Nathaniel Hawthorne3 - The Last Leaf by O Henry4 - The Bull by Saki5 - Pau...

‘The End of the World is Nigh’ has been seen, heard and quoted ad infinitum all of our lives. In the comfort zone of our own arrogance and the resources that we humans have at our disposal it seems we are both inviolable and invincible. All is safe. We are in control.But Nature has a way of sending earthquakes, eruptions, fires and flood, and much else besides, at the most inopportune times and, in these more modern days, with increasing frequency and extremes.In this volum...

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was born on 24th June 1842 at Horse Cave Creek in Meigs County, Ohio. His parents were poor but they introduced him to literature at an early age, instilling in him a deep appreciation of books, the written word and the elegance of language.Growing up in Koscuisko County, Indiana poverty and religion were defining features of his childhood, and he would later describe his parents as “unwashed savages” and fanatically religious, showing him little affection b...

An author’s talents may seem obvious and indisputable as they move words and ideas into gathered phrases and stories.But where do these ideas and stories come from? A lonely thought that suddenly gathers form? An inspiration from a Muse? A suggestion from an everyday event?Perhaps in the case of their darker, more malevolent stories, other forces are at work. They help to nourish single words into sentences and paragraphs that ease themselves from the shadows and are sudden...

There is something about the number 3.The Ancient Greeks believed 3 was the perfect number, and in China 3 has always been a lucky number, and they know a thing or two.Most religions also have 3 this and 3 that and, of course, in these more modern times, three’s a crowd may be too many, except when it’s a ménage à trois. It seems good things usually come in threes.Whatever history and culture says WE think 3, a hat-trick of stories, is a great number to explore them...

Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society.In literature the ambition is much narrower. In order to be known, to be popular, you had to be published. And for that people had to know you existed and your ideas worth reading. Obviously for most of humanity’s time people couldn’t read and texts couldn’t be publishe...

There is something about the number 3.The Ancient Greeks believed 3 was the perfect number, and in China 3 has always been a lucky number, and they know a thing or two.Most religions also have 3 this and 3 that and, of course, in these more modern times, three’s a crowd may be too many, except when it’s a ménage à trois. It seems good things usually come in threes.Whatever history and culture says WE think 3, a hat-trick of stories, is a great number to explore them...

There is something about the number 3.The Ancient Greeks believed 3 was the perfect number, and in China 3 has always been a lucky number, and they know a thing or two.Most religions also have 3 this and 3 that and, of course, in these more modern times, three’s a crowd may be too many, except when it’s a ménage à trois. It seems good things usually come in threes.Whatever history and culture says WE think 3, a hat-trick of stories, is a great number to explore them...

The top 10 horror short stories of all time.Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions ...

Nature is always on the move. Evolution over untold generations moves, streamlines, sometimes mutates.Since the dawn of life there is little doubt that at any given time disease can strike, slowly growing over time or with a sudden instant ferocity that catches any given species in a consuming catastrophe.The human race has been on the receiving end of many viral and bacterial diseases from the Black Death, to smallpox, polio and a myriad of others that have slaughtered mil...