Painstaking by Rich Larson -2.9
Clarkesworld, February 2026 Mars is a genetically modified soldier fleeing military pursuit in Windhoek, Namibia. Born with a congenital inability to feel pain, he was selected as a child for…
Clarkesworld, February 2026 Mars is a genetically modified soldier fleeing military pursuit in Windhoek, Namibia. Born with a congenital inability to feel pain, he was selected as a child for…
Clarkesworld, February 2026 This nested science fiction narrative follows Mason (Maxexcelson), son of tech CEO Rembrandt Crow, who becomes the navigational consciousness of the Diviner—a luxury sleeper ship carrying wealthy…
Clarkesworld, February 2026 "Chip" is a thoughtful science fiction story about Mengxiang (Meng), a jobless newcomer to a futuristic city, and their unexpected friendship with an AI robocab named Chip.…
Clarkesworld, February 2026 In a near-future where the "Mindmesh" technology allows humanity to store memories in the cloud rather than biological memory ("lobemeat"), Iris recounts her mission to assassinate billionaire…
Baffling Magazine, Issue 5 April 2025 This poignant short story explores grief, memory, and the different ways people preserve connections to those they’ve lost. The narrator prepares eggplant parmesan using…
Strange Horizons, April 2025 The narrator, Em, marries Minju—the girl who bullied her in middle school—on the same day that “Pandora’s Formula” is published online. This formula is a simple,…
Introduction "Crisis Actors," co-authored by Maddison Stoff and Corey Jae White and published in Strange Horizons in January 2025, represents a significant entry in contemporary speculative fiction's engagement with surveillance…
Strange Horizons, 20 January 2025 In a dystopian near-future America, the Department for a Safe America employs “Watchers” who monitor surveillance feeds across the country, flagging suspicious activity to law…
Introduction In The Dream Hotel (2025), Pulitzer Prize finalist Laila Lalami delivers a chillingly prescient exploration of the intersection between technology, state surveillance, and the human subconscious. Building on her…
Harmattan Season by Tochi Onyebuchi is a noir detective novel set in a French colonial city in West Africa during the dry Harmattan season. Plot Overview Boubacar, a down-on-his-luck "chercher"…