Short Story Sunday - Clarkesworld to go Pro?

A quick piece of short story news for this Short Story Sunday. Clarkesworld, one of the bigger speculative fiction online magazines (and probably my current favourite) is aiming to go pro! That means they would like to pay pro-rates to their writers as well as a reasonable wage to their staff. This is great news, and I hope Clarkesworld is successful!

The Hugo Award 2012 Short Stories - Review

Today the 2012 Hugo Awards will be presented at Chicon 7 (WorldCon), the ceremony beginning at 8pm CDT. And, since it’s also Short Story Sunday on my blog, I thought I would take a closer look at this year’s nominated short stories.

Homecoming, by Mike Resnick

This is probably the most ‘sci-fi’ of the bunch, though none of them are particularly focussed on SF/F genre tropes – with the obvious exception of John Scalzi’s story, which I’ll talk about below. Homecoming was originally published in Asimov’s.

Clarkesworld Issue 69 - Review

Target Detected, by Mark Davenport

 Clarkesworld is an online, monthly science-fiction and fantasy magazine. Every issue contains at least three short stories, as well as non-fiction articles of interest to science-fiction and fantasy fans. The latest issue (issue 69, for June 2012), includes three stories, ‘Immersion’ by Aliette de Bodard, ‘If the Mountain Comes’ by An Owomoyela, and ‘You Were She Who Abode’ by E. Catherine Tobler; and two articles, ‘Energising Futures: How SF Fuels Itself’ by Stephen Gaskell, and ‘Neither the Billionaire nor the Tramp: Economics in Speculative Fiction’ by Jeremy L.C. Jones, as well as a quick look at the statistics behind Clarkesworld’s readers and authors by the editor-in-chief, Neil Clarke.

All three stories are strongly character-driven and genuinely emotional. Each deals with a distinctly different subject, but there is a beautiful, bittersweet feeling that runs through all three, complementing each other nicely. One non-fiction article, dealing with sources of energy and fuel in science-fiction, is very interesting, but it is the article on economics in speculative fiction that is particularly fascinating, as well as being a subject that's rarely touched on. These articles approach speculative fiction from a more technical and factual perspective, looking at world-building and what powers these new worlds, providing a contrast to the very character orientated approach of the writers in the three fictional pieces. I enjoyed all of it, though for me the highlights were certainly the stories (which is probably how it should be).

The following is a more in-depth review of the stories and articles in the issue.