Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 03/19/2018 & Samovar 03/26/2018

It’s a full two weeks from Strange Horizons and Samovar, which released a new issue full of translated SFF. With three stories and two poems to look at, the overall feeling this week is, once again, strange. Especially with Samovar, I feel like there is a wonderful vagueness to some of the work, a touch of surrealism that makes the pieces pop. They are works that are first viewed through the lens of translation, but further than that they are also pieces that don’t seek to explain themselves, offering up rather literary takes on genre while still definitely retaining a strong speculative weirdness. Plus the pieces from the regular Strange Horizons week mix history, the unknown, and some deep feelings of grief and despair. This is not a light offering of short SFF, but the publications really hit hard with their variety and complexity. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 03/20/2017 & 03/27/2017

Strange Horizons has a treat to close out March. That's right, Samovar has officially arrived, and with it a pair of translated stories and a translated poem. Plus, you know, the other outstanding work from the regular issue (which also includes a translated story). Sadly, for time reasons, I am skipping the reprint, but I do encourage everyone to go and check that out. What's here is gorgeous, though, at times bleak but with an unrelenting current of hope and empathy and reaching out. These are pieces that ask us not only to survive but to stand up. To preach. To inspire. And what results are some amazing pieces of SFF. So yeah, without further ado, the reviews!

Art by Sishir Bommakanti