THE SIPPY AWARDS 201! The "I'd Ship That" Sippy for Excellent Relationships in Short SFF

Welcome, dear readers, to the FIFTH ANNUAL SIPPY AWARDS! For those uninitiated, the Sippys are the SFF short fiction awards that no one asked for but I'm giving out anyway! The rules are simple: of all the stories covered by QSR over the previous year, I'm selecting my five favorites in each of five categories. That's 25 stories in total, with 5 that walk away with the prestigious and coveted Big Sip Award. This is obviously the literary achievement that people wait their whole lives to reach, yes? Anyway, these posts will go up, one a day, for the next five days. As is tradition, I'm kicking things off with the...

“I’d Ship That” Sippy Award for Excellent Relationships is Short SFF

I'm a sucker for a good relationship story. They don't have to be romantic. Or sexual. Though most of these stories do feature romance and sex, they also feature characters that interact and orbit each other in intensely beautiful ways. For some of the stories, the connections are between just two people, lovers or friends or something else. For others, the connections flow between more people, or did, and were severed. They feature people striving to find comfort and meaning in their own skins, knowing sometimes that takes help, and understanding, and compassion. And occasionally it takes kicking some ass. Whatever the case, the relationships explored in these stories have stuck with me through a very hard year.

The stories come from all over, and it's probably no surprise that most of the relationships read as queer. But it's not just that which speaks to me. These are stories about people dealing with some crushing situations. And reaching out to each other, and helping each other, protecting each other, boosting each other. Surviving. Thriving. They're beautiful and fierce and I'll just get out of the way and let them speak for themselves.

Quick Sips - Omenana #14 [part 2/2]

Art by Sunny Efemena

I close out my review of the latest Omenana today with a look at three short stories. And they are stories filled with people with powers. Powers they receive as part of a global trend, or powers they inherit from their god, or powers that seem to come by accident thanks to an experimental procedure. But all of the stories in this back half of the issue focus on what those characters do with their powers. Do they seek to better the world and right great wrongs? Or is there perhaps more important things to do, like using them to try and deal with the traumas in their lives to give themselves a bit more power in situations where they feel powerless? Whatever the case, it's some amazing short SFF that I'll get right to reviewing!