The ambassador takes a bite of her fish. It rolls across her tongue, rich and sweet with the barest hint of salt. It is not the flavor that she savors. She can feel the burst of energy from it almost immediately, can feel her mind sharpening with every bite. Her butcher has done well.

Clarkesworld Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine and Podcast.

The only sound Zero heard in their helmet was their own hyperventilating and the gentle pings from their pegasus. > waiting . . . > waiting . . . > communication received > confirmation of countdo...

After nine years married to a poet—ten come midsummer—Rosemarie can translate every noise. The sound of poetry being born makes her feel warm, like a crackling fire on a winter night.

Nobody read the Terms of Service. They were in a rush to watch the latest unbelievable must-see content from someone who probably died seconds later. It seemed like as soon as anyone knew The Dare exi...

Gerry and I didn’t have kids though we’d tried. I’d lost those babies in the fourth month, the fifth month, the fourth month again. By then I was so exhausted by hope and disappointment that I didn’t ...

This is the story of you, a man—simple, uncomplicated, perhaps a little stubborn, getting on in years, but still vital. And some of the stupid fucking choices you’ve made.

Clarkesworld Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine and Podcast.

The roll was light and fluffy, and the soup had a homey warmth to it. Everything the woman served seemed to be just what Sigrun had wanted. “It’s something I’ve always dreamt of,” Sigrun found herself...

By the time you come to your senses, his parents have already arranged for him to be burned. Your rage can’t save his body, but you rescue him from them one last time. You spin and spin the cold metal...

When Jacqueline learned she would not meet Chevalière Violette Montagne until the final mêlée, she proclaimed, “Thank God.”

Clarkesworld Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine and Podcast.

Two space marines trapped in a doomed spaceship confront the desires that will destroy them both.

Clarkesworld Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine and Podcast.

Sense of Touch Bryo is a moss-covered planet. A world of milky softness, cool as water, submerged in green. When Agata steps out of the spaceship, she sinks into moss up to her knees. Moss clings t…

“Careful, mortal.” The voice was disembodied, high and sweet as a nightingale’s call, commandingly stern as a priest’s sermon. “You dare step into the abode of a van-yakshini?”

Such tiny things, mice, the cat reflected. They live so little and they die so fast.

The earliest videos went something like this: disembodied female voices singing strange intonations of the words “girl dinner” in a voice-over effect as the visuals of the video featured dozens of inc...

Chief Adewale always said his wheelchair was faster than most people’s legs, and he had seventy-two years of evidence to back it up. Every morning, while Ibadan’s streets clattered awake with danfo…

Before you open your eyes, you know you’re not home. The weighted blanket gave it away, wrapped around your body like a tortilla, turning you into a breakfast fucking burrito on that cold, co…

Jeffreylynn was working the counter at Universally Sweet Cafe when the other dimension opened right on top of hers.

Check your skin at the door.

Oh my gods, calm down. Please—please—don’t hit me with that hurdy gurdy, you’ll damage it. I know how this looks but I’m not here to murder your family or burn your village—not my style. Just stay …

When people ask me where I’ve been for the last year, I always enjoy seeing the look on their faces when I tell them. “Titan? That’s so far away. There’s nothing out there.” “Wait, did you say they…

A couple weeks later, I felt my first flower pulsing just below the surface in the center of my chest. The tingle of energy was like electricity—an awakening, a definition of alive I hadn’t expected. ...

Everyone hates it when the alien shows up at the club. Everyone hates it when the ten-foot-tall bright-green-and-yellow alien (the one with all the tentacles (the one that smells like ass (the one …

Broadsheets posted across every city have made familiar the strange wonders the tychonaut Elisabeth, formerly the princess of Bohemia, witnessed on her celestial voyage to the Medicean stars.

No, she’d learned to keep acting in the midst of such spiraling thoughts. A couple of her backup knives were in her bike saddlebag—and her family laughed at her for having so many! Trist made it to he...

The others believe there’s no pulling Yobé out of his depressn. He’s convinced the second cataclysm is coming, worse than tsunami or algae bloom. He’s the most brilliant of us. We know he may be right...

Need, I decided, tasted of honey and salt. I didn’t like it. Still, I knew to test the tincture before paying for it and so I touched a single drop to my lips. The cloying sweetness clung to my ton…

Content Warning: Mentions of hurt children On Saturday morning, Amélia received a call from the Santa Minerva Nursing Home for the Empowered Elderly. They didn’t use to call except for urgent matters....

You leave while it is still dark. Your lover sleeps on his stomach, the sheet draped only to his waist.You don’t want to go. You want to slide back into bed and listen to him breathing. And f…

by Ayida Shonibar “Besra was a spoil of war.”

Leah is queer community. Leah is expanding and expansive. Leah wants to fall in love with everyone still alive in this room and beyond and be their bottom for a night, just one night, though she wo…

—she the ship recalls stories she never read of women and men in rivers weighed down their pockets full of stones she wonders at her cavities and hollows wonders am I an I am I my cargo does the I I a...

In the autumn of your death I go to the mead-hall, for there the Allfather says the heron of forgetfulness roosts. You cared not for the promises of gods and sages, but I go all the same.

by Xauri’EL Zwaan “Open abdominal expansion slot…”

The island's fisherwomen came to the shores to haul misery and lament, hair tied back in dead men’s kerchiefs.

1. KING Once upon a time there was a king who had a daughter that he loved very much, and when she disappeared, he called you to the throne room and requested your services. “Tell me what happened to ...

Content note: attempted suicide   The first time Kittu teleported was into the lavatory of a plane bound for London, fifteen seconds before it crashed in a field south of Gatwick. One moment she was b...

Fiction and Poetry for the 21st Century!

Stellar short fiction by women-identified writers since 2010

“…but what is it like, having a war criminal as your past life?” Sadie Salazar, Licensed Life Speaker, should have been professionally above the prurient interest lighting her hazel eyes, and much too...