Clarkesworld, April 2026 Valentine is an AI companion — humanoid, skin-regenerating, professionally trained in the art of human emotional need. Her current client is Liam, a middle-aged man whose illness…
Introduction Tania Fordwalker's novelette "D0G," published in Clarkesworld Magazine, arrives at a moment of unusual cultural urgency, when debates surrounding autonomous weapons systems, algorithmic violence, and artificial intelligence have moved…
Clarkesworld, April 2026 In a post-apocalyptic near future, a woman known as Billie survives alone on a small island in a river near Moosehead Lake, Maine, somewhere upstream from a…
Reactor, March 2026 Presented as a traditional folktale from the fictional Alak Empire, “Tatterdemalion” is framed by an introductory scholarly apparatus explaining its cultural context before the story proper begins.…
Bourbon Penn #38, April 2026 On the planet Sirami — a colonized desert world of oil fields, refinery towers, and dust walls — a roadhouse called The Gwyd stands as…
Bourbon Penn #38, April 2026 On a gray, electric December beach, the narrator — a quietly isolated, self-described loner who visits the shore to manage dark moods — encounters a…
Bourbon Penn #38, April 2026 Set during the Cold War, “Atomic Chess” weaves together two parallel narratives — one aboard a Soviet nuclear submarine, the other in a Havana café…
Bourbon Penn #38, April 2026 The story is narrated by an unnamed woman living in Los Angeles who observes, with skeptical detachment, the unraveling of her childhood friend Jenn Ryan.…
Bourbon Penn #38, April 2026 Gary Wittkow, a teenager with a petty criminal record, wakes up in a sheriff’s holding cell babbling in what turns out to be Old English,…
Apex, February 2026 A group of friends — the unnamed narrator, Agnes, Peter, Lina, and Jin — are vacationing on a remote Japanese island known for its sea turtles, staying…