Clarkesworld #206, November 2023
“Eddies are the Worst” by Bo Balder
“Bird-Girl Builds a Machine” by Hannah Yang
“The Long Mural” by James Van Pelt
“The Parts That Make Me” by Louise Hughes
“The Mub” by Thomas Ha
“Thin Ice” by Kemi Ashing-Giwa
“To Carry You Inside You” by Tia Tashiro
“Eight or Die” (Part One) by Thoraiya Dyer
Reviewed by Chuck Rothman
“Eddies are the Worst” starts out the November issue of Clarkesworld. It’s set where the birth rate has cratered and minimum wage jobs are filled by clones. And one particular class of clones—the Eddies—are hired at Mamie’s fish processing plant because they’re the only ones available. Mamie tries to figure out a way to be able to train them. And meanwhile, his mother is acting strangely. Bo Balder has set up a dystopian world and the story deals with Mamie learning to deal with the clones.
Hannah Yang’s “Bird-Girl Builds a Machine” has a high school girl whose mother is building a mysterious machine and who won’t tell her anything about it. It leads to stress for the young woman and creates problems for her, making the relationship frustrating and putting pressure on her. The idea behind the story is a very old one (Heinlein and Lester del Rey used it) but it gains strength by focusing on the relationship and the twist in the end, while hardly original, still gives the story strength.
“The Long Mural” by James Van Pelt is set on a generation ship. Chimalus is working, along with others, on painting the scenes, recreating what life was like on Earth. But he has a secret: he has stowed aboard the ship and may be thrown out the airlock if discovered, forcing him to live secretly in an unused storage compartment and trying to look busy. Chimalus is a strong character, but the twist is no surprise.
“The Parts That Make Me” by Louise Hughes is the story of a repair robot who tells what’s happening by recounting the importance of its mechanical parts. I found it a bit offputting, and it didn’t seem to amount to much overall.
“The Mub” by Thomas Ha has a traveler encountering the title creature, which follows him around like an annoying little sibling. This one encourages the narrator’s penchant for drawing. People seem to fear mubs, but the story doesn’t really explain why and the protagonist’s feelings about it don’t really come through.
Kemi Ashing-Giwa’s “Thin Ice” is set on a world where the protagonist and his family are kept prisoners by “Half-Brilliant,” who asks the narrator to tell stories and criticizes them when they are done. The theme is parallel to the mub asking for art in the previous story and Half-Brilliant seemed to have a purpose for knowing the stories, but this particular story does not work for me.
“To Carry You Inside You” by Tia Tashiro features Anna, a woman and former child actor, who now works as a surrogate—impersonating a dead person by using a recording of their personality plugged into her brain to aid her performance as an actor. Her current job is to appear as a deceased grandfather who visits his grandchildren. But the grandfather has a way of taking advantage of the situation. Interesting setup and a strong story after all. This is the third story in the issue that uses the second person point of view, and the most effective one.
Also in the issue is the first part of the novella “Eight or Die” by Thoraiya Dyer. It will be reviewed next month when it concludes.
Chuck Rothman’s novels Staroamer’s Fate and Syron’s Fate are available from Fantastic Books. His short story, “Pot,” will soon appear from Podcastle.