Clarkesworld Anthology 2012 (22 page)

And, yes, the same random rules apply for words I hate.
Moist
sounds like someone smacking while chewing their food, and the images it evokes are always gross. I use ‘moist’ in stories if I want the character to seem disgusting or sleazy (if only to me!) As a child, I hated
tummy
because I thought it sounded babyish and stupid — and I still do. I will use the words I hate, almost as much as the words I love, but when I do it’s nearly always to make the characters seem uglier, more disgusting, more repellent than they would otherwise be.

What’s next for you?

I’ve recently won a grant from Arts SA, which has bought me almost a year of full-time writing time to complete my first novel,
The Familiar.
This is the first book in a dark fantasy trilogy focusing on witches and lunatic shapeshifters in the city of Stokenveld. There’s magic! Dead cats! Did I mention the shapeshifting lunatics? Meanwhile, finishing
Midnight and Moonshine
is also a top priority. Later this year, I’m heading up to Toronto for the World Fantasy Convention — and it’ll be great to meet some of you there.

About the Author

Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and teacher. He is the Staff Interviewer for
Clarkesworld Magazine
and a frequent contributor to
Kobold Quarterly
and
Booklifenow.com.
He teaches at Wofford College and Montessori Academy in Spartanburg, SC. He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006. Jones lives in Upstate South Carolina with his wife, daughter, and flying poodle.

2011 Reader’s Poll Results

Neil Clarke

The results from our 2011 Reader’s Poll have been tabulated and your feedback gone over with a fine-tooth comb. Without further ado, I give you this year’s winners:

COVER ART

THIRD PLACE
(TIE, listed in order of appearance)

Nautili
by Julie Dillon

The Towers of KEILAH
by Ferdinand Ladera

Off Road
by Facundo Diaz

SECOND PLACE

Planetary Alignment
by Julie Dillon

FIRST PLACE

A Sense of Importance
by Bryn Jones

FICTION

THIRD PLACE

Ghostweight
by Yoon Ha Lee

A Militant Peace
by David Klecha and Tobias S. Buckell

SECOND PLACE

Silently and Very Fast
by Catherynne M. Valente

FIRST PLACE

The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees
by E. Lily Yu

CONTEST

The winner of the contest for a signed hardcover copy of Silently and Very Fast by Catherynne M. Valente is Pat Wyatt.

Congratulations to all of the winners and thanks to everyone who participated!

About the Author

Neil Clarke is the publisher of
Clarkesworld Magazine
and owner of Wyrm Publishing. He currently lives in NJ with his wife and two children.

Clarkesworld Magazine

Issue 66

Table of Contents

Sunlight Society

by Margaret Ronald

The Bells of Subsidence

by Michael John Grist

From Their Paws, We Shall Inherit

by Gary Kloster

The Romance of Ruins

by E. C. Ambrose

The Biker Chick Who Rides Her Own Bike: A Conversation with Nathan Long

by Jeremy L. C. Jones

Writing Is Magic: A Conversation with John R. Fultz

by Jeremy L. C. Jones

And Now for a Few Short Words from our Editor

by Neil Clarke

Dead Space Girl

Art by Sergio Diaz

© Clarkesworld Magazine, 2012
www.clarkesworldmagazine.com

Sunlight Society

Margaret Ronald

When the Fourth Street biolab went up, I didn’t think of Casey right away. I was working in the far side of the complex, which meant I was one of about four hundred people who got to see the entire dome rise up off its foundations, rotate counterclockwise ninety degrees, and shoot up into the sky. My immediate reaction followed the same pattern as everyone else: first
What the hell,
then, just before a needle of light vaporized the biolab,
Are those
people
up there?

I could hazard a guess at the second question; I’d gotten that far into the shadow organizations, even then. I knew enough to guess at the identities of some of the blurry shapes darting through the smoke, shapes that official press releases would call confabulation and that the conspiracists would call aliens or Muslims or Freemason-built androids. The shadow orgs had been sloppy that time; usually they didn’t like to be seen at their work, but there’d been so little warning that they’d had no choice but to break out the big guns. Literally, in this case.

But that wasn’t what came to mind as I stared up into the sky, the glare of that solar blast fading bit by bit from my retinas, my nethead links relating the intensity of that blast, the projected knock-on effects on the rest of the Niobe web, the first stirrings among the dataminers. Instead, I just thought
Casey would love this
. I kept coming back to that thought over the next few weeks, even after word got out about the low-rent terrorists who’d gotten so close to taking over the biolab that vaporizing the whole place was the only alternative. Even after the arrests started.

I still think it’s true.

Today marks the first time I’ve been allowed into the Albuquerque facility. My credentials have been checked and re-checked so many times that they could probably tell you the weight and density of my last three bowel movements. Even so, they’ve been cutting corners on security, just so they can get me in here.