So far only read 2:-- Meshed by Rich Larson - DNFOutside my interest so I decided to quit. A talent scout is trying to get a young athlete to add some Future SF tech so we can live vicariously through him and his athletic skill. (something like that)-- The Last Surviving Gondola Widow by Kristine Kathryn Rusch - DNFNot my cup of my tea: Steampunk / alt history / war / detective main characterThe detective has injuries from when the war started. She has been invited to watch a movie of the event....

I'm afraid I don't understand Jessica Churchill. She's murdered, saved by aliens, and then (view spoiler)[she murders the aliens. (hide spoiler)]All I can say is "ungrateful bitch!"Nevertheless, it's a powerfully written story, and you don't have  to like, or even agree with,  the central character to appreciate the strength of the writing.

According to Robson, "The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill" is a "screaming, raving, ranting child of my heart". That's a pretty accurate summation of this ugly little sf story that deals with violence against Indigenous women. I should note that I do not say ugly to imply that the story is bad. The story is ugly because it deals with ugly, terrible, heart wrenching things, and there is no happy ending in this one. I'm still thinking about what to take from it and what all the symbolism

I enjoyed about half of this issue's fiction. The best story being Kristine Kathryn Rusch's story "The Last Surviving Gondola Widow".One reason for the lower rating is the magazine is publishing more and more non-fiction.

Excellent issue! I liked every story in it.

I picked this up for Greg Van Eekhout's "The Osteomancer's Son" and Kelly Robson's "The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill" because I've read both authors and wanted more, but the standout story in this issue for me is Kristine Kathryn Rusch's "The Last Surviving Gondola Widow." I did not expect it at all, and it made me like steampunk a little bit again, although I was glad the steampunk elements were light. I do love a good detective, and now I'm excited to read Rusch's Retrieval Artist

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/larso...

I guess I'm missing something here, because while I can appreciate how wrenching this story is (and that's the ultimate goal of writing, to make the reader feel something), I don't see the point. It's just 5000-odd words of misery, with an inexplicable 9/11 connection (what did that add to the story??), in service of...nothing, as far as I could tell. It was 20 pages of compellingly written brutalism.Content warnings: sexual violence and assault, gore, 9/11, suicide

Meshed - ***

Who the hell is Rich Larson and how come I haven't heard about him before? Amazing story, breathtaking writing.

I enjoyed this edition of Clarkesworld and I am considering renewing my subscription (I cancelled largely on the basis that I don't have time to read a whole magazine a month). I particularly enjoyed Nicola Griffith's "It Takes Two", one of the reprints, which has rejuvenated my interest in reading her fiction (it's been two years or so since I read Ammonite !).Of the other fiction, I found "The Last Surviving Gondola Widow" to be about as interesting as Steampunk fiction ever is; both it and...

3,5/5

It kept me reading late last night so I assume that it wasn't really bad but the details were disgusting to me. I don't see any message in the story either.

A young woman is kidnapped by a stranger, and what happens is the worst - but typical - thing that you might imagine would happen when a girl is stolen by a strange man. Jessica comes to, alone in the woods, disoriented, and with a strange voice speaking to her from within, telling her it is trying to repair her body. Jessica realizes that she actually died, but has now been infected or colonized by an alien organism which is in symbiosis with her.What Jessica eventually decides to do is certain...

Particularly liked the story by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, which surprised me for its steampunkish genre, which usually isn't my favorite. The story by Robson was an extremely interesting take on alien contact, a use of microbes that I appreciated, and a weighty take on psychology/death.

I want to rate this story higher. But it is so disturbing that I can't. Trigger warnings are the least of it. The story unfolds gently, almost sweetly and then with each layer, the 3 resurrections of the main character, I found myself cringing from the events. I am glad that I read it though, it says some important things about how we treat women, missing or otherwise and will resonate for some time after reading.

Everything in this issue is of decent quality, but nothing blew my hair back. I liked the world building in Rusch's steampunk-ish "The Last Surviving Gondola Widow", but the story itself is just average by this author's standards (which, admittedly, is still better than most writers' best). I probably liked Rich Larson's "Meshed" the most, a story set decades in the future about a Nike rep trying to convince a young basketball phenom to get some tech surgically implanted in his head (think SQUID...

Original fiction:"The Last Surviving Gondola Widow" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch - fascinating steampunk(?) alt-history story with the South trying to reignite the Civil War with an attack on Chicago. The protag. is a woman who's also a Pinkerton detective."Indelible" by Gwendolyn Clare - strange but powerful tale of a woman caught between being human or being part of an alien race living as refugees on Earth."The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill" by Kelly Robson - gutwrenching. Rape, death...

Unique and very well written story about a kid being recruited/scouted to play basketball. Players are meshed: implanted with technology that captures and transmits biofeedback to monitor an athlete’s physical condition, but also to give a first-person visual to spectators and nervecast physical sensation. From Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 101Listen to the FREE podcast reading here:http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/categ...Read the FREE ebook here:http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/prior/

originally posted at: http://thebookplank.blogspot.com/2015...Disclaimer: I only read The Osteomancers Son.Last year Greg van Eekhout published his first book in the Daniel Blackland series, California Bones. Which was for me highly enjoyable book and showed a highly inventive new idea in Urban Fantasy: Osteomancy. Special people are able to suck on bones or smoke or digest them in some way and gain special powers associated with those beings. Now I was looking in Clarkesworld issue #101 and I s...