A.C. Wise Reviews Short Fiction: Clarkesworld
Clarkesworld’s December issue starts off with a sweet story, “Morag’s Boy” by Fiona Moore, about a young man named Cliff who leaves home and ends up being taken in by a woman named Morag who lives alone on a farm. Cliff shows an aptitude for fixing tech, but struggles to find a direction in life. Morag helps him find his way, leading him to become a kind of wandering salesman, designing, building, and repairing bots.
“In Memories We Drown” by Kelsea Yu is a lovely, but occasionally heartbreaking story, about a group of scientists stranded in an underwater lab after a disaster cuts them off from the world above. Rosalie is studying a newly discovered bioluminescent plant, one that smells to her like apple pie. As their food supplies dwindle, she gives into curiosity and eats a leaf. It tastes exactly like her mother’s five-spice apple pie, evoking strong memories of her mother, and even stronger memories of her partner, Alex, who was supposed to come to the lab with her, but ended up staying above. After sharing the leaf with her co-workers, Rosalie learns that the plant tastes like something different to each person on the station, usually something connected to a personal memory of family. Yu does a wonderful job of exploring the connection between food and memory, as well as the complicated and intertwined feelings of grief, hope, and guilt Rosalie experiences. The plant provides her with a moment of grace, giving her a connection to the home she lost, but it also forces her to confront that loss. It’s beautifully done, and Yu’s evocative language and striking imagery help give the story even more emotional weight.
“Kill That Groundhog” by Fu Qiang, translated by Andy Dudak, is a thought experiment time-loop story of three people who find themselves endlessly repeating November fourth. After they find each other, they dub themselves the Groundhogs after the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day. They meet regularly in a local café, sharing various theories as to why this is happening to them, as well as increasingly desperate ideas on how to escape – crossing the international dateline, causing themselves extreme pain, frying their brains, and flying into a black hole. The ultimate solution they come up with gives the story a meta, fourth-wall-breaking twist that adds yet another kind of loop to their endlessly repeating existence.
“Waffles Are Only Goodbye for Now” by Ryan Cole is a surprisingly emotional story told from the point of view of a smart refrigerator. B3RT4A (AKA Bertha) is trapped in the wreckage of her former family’s home as bombs rain down around her. One day, a young boy named Henree comes along looking for food. She shares waffles from her freezer and between them, they develop a code for communicating based on her limited vocabulary, which consists solely of words from her former family’s shopping list. Pork chops means trouble, bread means hello, and waffles means goodbye. Bertha continues to mourn and miss her family, but finds something like redemption by protecting Henree the way she couldn’t protect them. Cole does an excellent job of making a refrigerator feel like a fully rounded character capable of experiencing pain and loss, but also capable of feeling hope for the future as well.
“The Last Gamemaster in the World” by Angela Liu is another story that mixes heartbreak and hope. The second-person protagonist suddenly finds herself in a strange space, being offered a choice of games. She was just on a bus with her friends, and doesn’t understand where she is now, or what’s going on. When she wins the game, however, her prize turns out to be a memory of making soup for her child, a busy game developer. What starts off as an eerie and almost threatening scenario is revealed to be something far more bittersweet. Like the bioluminescent plant in Yu’s story, the game scenario in Liu’s story is both a moment of grace and an encapsulation of terrible loss. It’s an effective story and very nicely done.
The issue also includes the second part of “Eight or Die” by Thoraiya Dyer, concluding the novella started in the November issue, following a human named Marino on a journey across worlds after he’s rescued from a collapsed mine by aliens who want his help in tracking down an intergalactic criminal. Dyer’s language is evocative and the story feels epic, full of excellent, weird worldbuilding, and aliens that truly feel alien.
Recommended Stories
“Waffles Are Only Goodbye for Now”, Ryan Cole (Clarkesworld 12/23)
“The Last Gamemaster in the World”, Angela Liu by (Clarkesworld 12/23)
A.C. Wise is the author of the novels Wendy, Darling, and Hooked, along with the recent short story collection, The Ghost Sequences. Her work has won the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, and has been a finalist for the Nebula Awards, Stoker, World Fantasy, Locus, British Fantasy, Aurora, Lambda, and Ignyte Awards. In addition to her fiction, she contributes a review column to Apex Magazine.
This review and more like it in the February 2024 issue of Locus.
While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations to keep the magazine and site going, and would like to keep the site paywall free, but WE NEED YOUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT to continue quality coverage of the science fiction and fantasy field.
©Locus Magazine. Copyrighted material may not be republished without permission of LSFF.
