From Booklist:
The second year of the online magazine Clarkesworld was as stellar as the first, full of strange and fascinating stories, some straightforward, some deeply weird, all interesting. This sampler begins with Ken Schole’s haunting alternate history, “Summer in Paris, Light from the Sky,” in which Hitler, Hemingway, and Chaplin meet in Paris in 1941, and ends with Jay Lake’s “The Sky That Wraps the World Round, Past the Blue and into the Black,” in which the narrator paints caltrop shards—remnants of some alien civilization—“end of the universe blue” with radioactive paint. (Weird?) One of the more delightful pieces in between is Kristin Mandigma’s “Excerpt from a Letter by a Social-Realist Aswang,” which is just what it sounds like (an aswang is a Filipino monster; a social-realist is a Marxist aesthete) and well done, indeed. Clarkesworld’s strength lies in including both established authors and newcomers, fresh talent as well as familiar voices. Its annual collection affords a concentrated dose of a particularly interesting editorial vision. --Regina Schroeder
From Publishers Weekly:
Clarkesworld editor Wallace and former editor Mamatas present 25 stories published in the Hugo-shortlisted magazine of the fantastic. Despite the editors' inexplicable decision to lead with Ken Scholes's saccharine Summer in Paris, Light from the Sky, a puerile tale about Hitler's implausible redemption in a shoddy alternate universe, most of the selections are noteworthy stories, such as Yoon Ha Lee's Blue Ink, a tale of alternate futures made personal, and Jeremiah Sturgill's Flight, wherein a quest for artificial beauty ventures into the grotesque. Stephen Graham Jones (Captain's Lament) and Samantha Henderson (Curse) skillfully reimagine well-known folklore and urban legends, and Stephen Dedman incorporates Edgar Allan Poe's work into the clever Teeth. Readers who get past the opener might even find themselves inclined to subscribe. (Nov.)
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