Clarkesworld Magazine, #23, August 2008

Clarkesworld tends to publish some pretty strange stories, and like most stories involving the bizarre and surreal, it’s often a hit or miss thing. It either works brilliantly or falls flat, thus it can be a risky experiment. So hats off to all writers who attempt such tales and to magazines like Clarkesworld that publish them.

“Blue Ink” by Yoon Ha Lee takes the concepts of parallel universes and predestination vs. free will and combines them into a world(s)-altering tale done in present tense. I can personally think of a thousand ways such an attempt could’ve ended in disaster, yet Lee manages to avoid each and every literary landmine in the field.

Jenny Chang is just an average girl with artistic sensibilities who finds herself thrust into having to make a choice that will determine the fate of a multiversal Armageddon. A heavy choice to be thrust upon a teenage girl. Yet today, there is an element of reality to this otherwise unreal story, for if events continue in the directions they have, tomorrow’s youth may well be faced with decisions of which the weight alone could shatter most sane minds. So once again fiction, whether consciously or subconsciously, delivers a message that should at least be listened to.

“Tetris Dooms Itself” by Meghan McCarron delivers a whole new meaning to the term “dysfunctional relationship.” In classical fantasist manner, McCarron delves into the often complex and bizarre relationship of abuser and abused and uses fiction as a method to explain something that no mere set of words could ever do justice to. Some things must be experienced instead of told, and that is where fiction finds its strength—in its ability to show the experience in a manner that is safe for the observer. While I felt the story could’ve been better told with fewer scenes; overall, it is a worthwhile read.

“Her Mother’s Ghosts” by Theodora Goss is something of a basic ghost story, but the delivery alas falls flat. There’s so much telling that it’s hard to see any showing. There’s no plot at all to speak of, and the writer even admits to such (“You are angry with me. You say, this is not a story. It is merely a series of scenes, and of manufactured scenes at that.”), which threw me out of what little suspension of disbelief I had. I will applaud Goss for making a sincere attempt at doing such an experimental style, and though it may work for other readers, it just didn’t for this one.

And now to the thing I like most about Issue #23: there was more than just two stories. For once, I actually read an issue that had three! Okay guys and gal, just one more story per issue for a total of four. Pretty please? Oh, and keep those awesome nonfiction articles coming, too.