Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #166

Art by Yigit Koroglu

The latest issue of Clarkesworld is out and it’s a big one, with five short stories, a novelette, and a novella to enjoy. As always, the stories have a distinct science fiction bend to them, but with touches of fantasy and horror mixed into the sci-fi as well. More than that, many of the stories are about isolation and intense relationships, the people caught in ways, pulled toward loneliness and directionlessness, trying to find ways forward, trying to find where they belong and what their lives will look like. Not all of them find happy endings. Many of them find that their choices are extremely limited to factors in and outside of their control. Whatever their outcomes, though, the journeys are at turns beautiful and terrifying, and worth checking out. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Uncanny #34 [June stuff]

Art by Julie Dillon

The June original content at Uncanny Magazine is out and features two short stories, one novelette, and two poems, as well as a wealth of excellent nonfiction that I won’t be covering here. The works showcase a variety of genres and styles, though there is a distinct fantastical lean to these works. There are superheroes and sirens, magical communing over dresses, ghosts and memories that go deeper than the skin, deeper than the consciousness. The works show people reaching for expression, trying to push back against the forces trying to silence and co-opt them. It’s a wonderful collection of SFF this month, and I’ll dive right into the reviews!

Quick Sips - Fireside Magazine #72

Art by Amanda Makepeace

Well Fireside Magazine certainly takes its Halloween seriously, because this issues is entirely ghost-centric in order to get you into the spoopy mood. The stories explore what it means to be a ghost, what defines ghost-ness. And obviously, spread over so many stories, the place it arrives at isn't homogeneous. There are a variety of ghosts, as there are a variety of people—ghost who remember their lives and those who don't, ghosts who hunger for the living, and those who want only a break from isolation. Ghosts created by violence, and those created by longing. And it's a wonderful celebration of ghosts carried out over the issue. So let's get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #152

Art by Matt Dixon

There’s only one translation this month from Clarkesworld (from Chinese, for those curious), but there’s also another two short stories and two novelettes that explore science fiction and its sweep and flow. From far flung planets and evil empires to much more terrestrial prejudice and fear, the stories look at how people come together. How they relate to one another and how they seek to avoid each other and how they seek to understand themselves. Not always successfully, not always neatly, but always with an eye on human connections and relationships. The stories explore change, and transformation, and love, and they do so with depth and complexity. These are not overly easy reads, but they are indeed rewarding, and worth spending some time with. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Uncanny #27 [April stuff]

Art by Christopher Jones

April brings three short stories and three poems to Uncanny Magazine, most of them dealing with romantic relationships. About both the ways that people can find ways to help and affirm each other and the ways that people can hurt each other. Relationships are moments of vulnerability, and some of the characters understand and respect that, working to try and make something beautiful and resilient. Others, though, can only imagine relationships in terms of dominance and superiority, of being able to control and own their partner. It’s a month that has plenty of uncomfortable moments, but also a lot of beauty. Let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Fireside Magazine #65

Art by Bernard Lee

March brings a four short stories and a poem to Fireside Magazine, each of them full of darkness and light in warring measures. In each piece, people grow up hoping to find a place to belong. A world that matches the hope and brightness of their dreams and the stories they are told. But as they grow they find other fates waiting for them, trying to claim them. Trying to make them victims of the hunger darkness around them. Without the protection of a just system, these shadows do try to take many of the characters. But not all of them fall into the dark. Some of them are able to rise up, to join with others to fight back and seek to build a space to be true to themselves. It’s a defiant, inspiring issue of fiction and poetry that acts as a sort of extended hand to the weary, urging them up and forward to further the fight. So let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #149

Art by Arthur Haas

Clarkesworld hits February running with five short stories and a novelette, all taking on some big issues. From genetic manipulation to colonialism, from empathy to divinity, the stories tackle some Big Ideas, with some mixed results. The joy of reading SFF is that it can often make literal circumstances that would otherwise be purely figurative or philosophical. What if the world worked quite differently? What if people could experience an alien afterlife? It allows us to explore moral and ethical concerns without test subjects, but that’s not to say that means no harm is done. Though often careful, I find myself hesitating around many of the stories here this month, that seem to bring up some Big Ideas without fully examining how those ideas are in conversation with real world injustices and harms. But before I get too much into that, let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Uncanny #24 Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction! [September Fiction]

Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction! is here!!! And with it comes a whole heck of a lot of fiction and poetry. To be specific, ten stories and ten poems. But, because this is also a regular issue of Uncanny, the work will be released publicly over two months. And so, to keep things manageable for me, I’m going to be tackling this extra-big issue in four parts—September fiction, September poetry, October fiction, and October poetry. So let’s dig in! The first half of the issue’s fiction is up and features five short stories touching on aliens, assistive devices, families, and a whole lot of disabled characters getting shit done. The work in these focuses primarily (for me, at least) on occupations and growing up. About facing down intolerance and violence and finding ways to find community, hope, and beauty in a universe that can often be ugly and cruel. So let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Likhain

Quick Sips - Uncanny #21 [March stuff]

March brings a bit of spring to Uncanny Magazine, with three stories and three poems that feature music and rebirth and love and hope. These are also stories and poems that look at places, though. At haunted houses and magnificent cities and hometowns. That look just as closely at relationships. At the way that interactions build. How in big cities inspiration can seem to grow out of the creativity concentrated in one spot, synergize into something bigger and bigger. How in smaller towns isolation can give way to resentment and fear and depression, but where single gestures can come to mean the universe. These are stories of friends and family, poems of art and love and prayer. And without further delay, the reviews!

Art by Nilah Magruder

Quick Sips - Flash Fiction Online September 2017

The September Flash Fiction Online is taking things in a science fiction direction. Just like the special horror issue of earlier in the year, these stories are devoted to exploring worlds that might yet be. Worlds of the future. For some of them, that means dealing with the end of the world, or the end of human life. Or, perhaps, about the end of most human life. They become about loss but also about what can be preserved. The stories are also about violation and voice, though, about who gets to make decisions and who must live with them. These are stories that explore situations bleak and dire. They are not by and large happy stories, even when they lean toward justice, but they are fun in their own ways and heavy with emotional weight, an asteroid of feels careening toward an unsuspecting planet. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #225

May is off to a great start at Beneath Ceaseless Skies with a pair of stunning stories that center on the ideas of work and care, love and loss. The worlds that the stories introduce are full of brokenness, full of inequity, full of people dealing with bad situations and the whims of a universe that doesn’t really seem fair. For some, this means using the realities of the world to define what they should and should not expect. For others, it’s about standing in the face of the expectations and declaring that there are some things that cannot be sacrificed, even as some other things need to be. These are very difficult and wrenching stories that focus on hope and healing even as they reach for a place where the trauma might have been prevented entirely. So yeah, to the reviews!

Art by Ashley Dotson

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 09/19/2016 & 09/26/2016

The Strange Horizons Fund Drive continues with two more weeks of excellent content, featuring two stories, two poems, and a nonfiction piece. There are also nice previews of some of the initiatives that Strange Horizons will be running or hopes to be running that are worth checking out but that I won't get into here. The pieces from these weeks, though, seems to deal heavily with both history and heroes. Looking at the myths we tell, about the way in which history and narratives mix and mingle. There is a strong Greek mythology vein that is explored in a number of the works, and larger than that they all explore old wounds and newer efforts to heal and make right the injustices of the past. And the pieces are touching and interesting, complex and heavy. It's a great collection of works that I'm going to get to reviewing! 

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #199

By the power vested in me as some random reviewer on the internet, I declare the theme of this Beneath Ceaseless Skies issue of be: walking. Which might seem odd but really, both stories focus on walking. On air. Through the desert. But walking forward and not looking back or looking down. They are about bridges and distances, but not necessarily about maintaining those bridges. More like building them from now to the future. Escaping islands of solitude and stagnation with a drive to move forward. To keep walking even when it defies convention and possibility. To step into the clouds, and the future. It's a great issue and I'm going to get to my reviews! 

Art by Geoffrey Icard

Quick Sips - Mothership Zeta #3

The editorials in this issue of Mothership Zeta swirl around the idea of fun. And the stories of the issue do a fine job of illustrating the many ways that fun can work. A fun that is funny and a fun that is fast and action-packed and a fun that is clever and witty and a fun that is earnest and uplifting. The stories move well, from light to darker to transcendent, each piece well selected and placed in the larger flow of the issue. And all told each story made me smile at something, a clever line or a funny situation or a breath of hope, and if fun was the goal, then I'd say the issue is a success. To the reviews! 

Art by Elizabeth Leggett