Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #298 [part 2]

Art by Andis Reinbergs

Sci-fantasy month continues at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and I’m finishing up my look today of the first issue. These two pieces have a lot to do with structures of society, with rituals both functional, religious, and damaging. Rituals that leave marks, or scars. That change people. Some are driven by corruption and a sense of “biology.” Some are driven by a need to survive a kind of attack. Both look at how some sort of invasion has changed humanity, either by altering the way they act or, more dramatically, by making them something other than human, by transforming the fundamental structures and progressions of their bodies. It’s a weird, dark issue, and I’ll get right to my reviews!

Quick Sips - The Dark Magazine #34

A pair of weird stories anchor the original fiction from March’s The Dark Magazine. Full of the oppression that places can bring, that cities can nurture and let fester. In both, the main characters find themselves trapped. For one, by a relationship. For the other, by a city. But for me, in both, the focus is on how toxic environments can perpetuate cycles of violence, abuse, captivity, and death. These are not the easiest of stories to read, both because they come with interesting styles and because they are unsettling and (if the name of the magazine hadn’t tipped you off) very dark. These are stories of the ways that hurt leads to hurt, that victims seem to be interchangeable, separated by time but linked by their common plight and common location. So let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Laura Sava

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 09/04/2017 & 09/11/2014

Hey! Strange Horizons is running their fund drive! It’s almost over! GO SUPPORT THEM!!! You get things like mugs and shirts and pins and just do it, okay. Strange Horizons is hugely important to SFF, in my opinion, and does amazing work. Case in point, I’m looking at three stories and two poems today that are rather stunning. They look at loneliness and loss, at compassion and patience, truth and love. These are stories that feature characters looking for connection, hoping to save someone, even if that someone is themself. The poetry is moving and haunting and everything weaves together to create a feel of warmth and chill, comfort and grief. It is some fantastic work and I for one want Strange Horizons to continue for a long time to come. So check out the fund drive, give what you can, and get ready for some reviews!

Quick Sips - GigaNotoSaurus May 2016

This month's offering from GigaNotoSaurus is not exactly for the faint of heart. It is not exactly a happy sort of story, nor a short one. It is an experience, though, appropriately weighty and dense with a fully realized world (all contained inside an insulating dome). Drifting through age and love and loss and struggle, the story doesn't offer any easy answers, but it certainly knows what questions to ask. So yeah, time to get to that review!