Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #293

Art by Alexey Shugurov

At first blush the two stories in the latest issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies don’t share too much in common(a rarity for the publication). But digging a little deeper, though, finds stories featuring characters dealing with some systemic problems. Very different ones, but ones that still seek to make them complicit in evil and corruption. And that almost succeed. They’re both quiet at first but rather quickly ramp up, and their ends are both rather bloody, rather messy affairs. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Terraform SF June 2018

It’s a substantial month of science fictional visions at Motherboard’s Terraform this June, with four pieces (including a novelette told in two parts). The visions of the future focus on transportation and violence. In many, people seek to navigate a world made deadly through corruption, through public and private institutions being twisted to the goals of a very few, not to make the world better but to maximize profits and avoid culpability. The stories are by and large grim and difficult, but offer some hope as well. Mainly, in saying that it might not be too late, that by tackling the issues the stories identify head on, the future could turn out brighter than this. Better. Whether or not that will happen, though, is squarely up to us. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Terraform July 2016

Politics are dominating the news of late, but the July Terraform stories take a bit of a step back from that. Sort of. These are glimpses of possible futures and they're definitely not bright, from a report on how humanity might be viewed through archeology to the nightmare of the future of online privacy to blood and chaos at the Olympic Village to a world where things are definitely not Okay. These are not overtly political pieces, in that they don't feature any political candidates, but at the same time they are deeply ideological, about what is at stake with the current conversations about privacy, against individual versus corporate rights, and about where we're steering our planet. It's a fascinating bunch of stories that I'm going to get to reviewing! 

Quick Sips - Terraform June 2015

Because apparently I missed a story that came out in (very) late May, this month's Terraform features six stories, most of them under 2k and a few breaking guidelines to be more than that. Personally I find it just a little funny because the "hard" word limit was praised in some corners (that I didn't really agree with) as being conducive to creativity, and yet here Terraform shows that for the right story the limits have to be eased. But yes, a very good mix of stories, all little glimpses into what might be and all worth giving a look at. So to the reviews!