There is a new Clarkesworld out, and it is HUGE! Gardner Dozois has arrived with a bang, and there are no less than six stories in the issue.

Let’s start with the new material. The headline story is “Annex” by Benjanun Sriduangkaew. She’s a new name to me, which just goes to show that I should be reading GigaNotoSaurus and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, both of which I have heard lots of good things about.

Next up is “No Portraits on the Sky” by Kali Wallace, who has an even more impressive resume including F&SF, Asimov’s and Tor.com. How do people keep up with short fiction these days?

And then there’s “Melt With You” by Emily C. Skaftun, who has been in Strange Horizons, amongst others. And someone else whose name I hadn’t seen before.

I’ve only had time to skim these stories, but they look very much a Clarkesworld sort of thing. I guess my point here is that here are three very competent women writers, none of whom I’d heard of before Neil chose to publish them. And I figured I knew the field reasonably well. Sometimes the world is much more marvelous than you think.

And so to Gardner’s selections. Or at least the reprints. He’s not responsible for all of what follows. We start off with something which absolutely belongs in an issue that comes out on April Fools’ Day. Kij Johnson has done a new version of “Spar”, in which the girl and the tentacled alien, instead of having sex, spend all of their time eating bacon. It is quite bizarre, and apparently part of a charity anthology. “Spar (The Bacon Remix)” — I commend it to you.

The other two reprints, which Gardner did choose, are “Guest of Honor” by Robert Reed, which I’m not familiar with, and “Finisterra” by David Moles, which was a Hugo nominee. Reed is a favorite writer of mine, so I’m sure his story will be good. And that’s an excellent start to the reprint section.

Also, Neil said on Twitter that if he can add another 500 subscribers then there will be enough budget for a fourth original story. So if you haven’t subscribed yet, please consider doing so.

Meanwhile there is non-fiction, and Ken Liu has produced a fascinating article about translation. I feel for Neil having to do the layout on that with all the Chinese in it, but it was well worth doing. Goddess, I wish I had bought this article.

Jeremy’s interview is with Myke Cole, while Daniel Abraham gets his teeth into Grimdark in is usual, highly intelligent manner. Neil’s editorial talks about the Hugo nominations, and about the origins of the magazine.

This month’s cover is “The Awakening” by Alexandru Popescu, who is originally from Bucharest but now lives in London.

As usual, the magazine is available for purchase from the bookstore, and every purchase helps keen the authors paid, and the material free online for everyone else to enjoy.

We also have the new Lightspeed available. It has an awesome cover. It has fiction by Kathleen Ann Goonan, Robert Silverberg and Bruce Sterling, amongst others. The ebook-only material is a novella by Nina Allan. And most importantly it includes a brand new story by Karin Tidbeck. Go buy it now.