The legendary book of Lu Ban, The Book of Lu Ban, does not teach carpentry. Instead, it describes his ingeniously conceived and exquisitely crafted hidden weapons and killing devices. Lu Ban once cursed it: Anyone who deciphers this book will either lose their spouse and live as a widow or die alone and crippled! Thus, the book is also known as The Missing Art.

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 December 2022 issue (#195) contains:Original fiction by Naim Kabir ("Law of Tongue"), Bri Castagnozzi ("Keiki’s Pitcher Plant"), Ben Berman Ghan ("The Resting Place of Trees"), S.L. Huang ("Murder by Pixel: Crime and Responsibility in the Digital Darkness"), Lu Ban ("Upstart"), Vandana Singh ("Left to Die"), L...

Transnational cinemas are eclipsing national cinemas in the contemporary world, and Sino-French films exemplify this phenomenon through the cinematic coupling of the Sinophone and the Francophone, linking France not just with the Chinese mainland but also with the rest of the Chinese-speaking world. Sinophone directors most often reach out to French cinema by referencing and adapting it. They set their films in Paris and metropolitan France, cast French actors, and sometimes use French dia...

Against the dire consequences of China’s market development, a new intellectual force of the New Left has come on the scene since the mid 1990s. New Left intellectuals debate the issues of social justice, distributive equality, markets, state intervention, the socialist legacy, and sustainable development. Against the neoliberal trends of free markets, liberal democracy, and consumerism, New Left critics launched a critique in hopes of seeking an alternative to global capitalism. This volu...