Quick Sips - Anathema #10 [part 2]

Art by Cindy Fan

I return to the latest Anathema Magazine issue today, closing out my look at two more new stories and one new poem. The works continue to be complicated and deep, exploring the intersections of identity, always informed by how people are vulnerable and marginalized--through race, sexuality, poverty ,ability, and more. They find characters who are put in positions where “winning” isn’t exactly possible, where “safety” is a dream they can’t afford to believe in, because what needs doing isn’t safe, but it still needs doing. And there’s still love, and family, and hope, even if those things must constantly be fought for. It’s a stunning issue, and I’ll get right to my reviews!

Regular Sip - Queens of Noise by Leigh Harlen (Neon Hemlock)

Art by Crystal Araiza

Today I’m reviewing a recent novella Neon Hemlock Press, which has already run a successful kickstarter for a slew of SFF novellas that all look amazing! This one deals with shifter, punk rock, and some shady business going down around the local music scene. It’s got a robust and fabulously queer cast, world building that gives me shifters and witches that do not disappoint at all, and enough romance, action, and mystery to keep hopefully even the pickiest of readers engaged and entertained. At least it certainly worked for me. But before I give too much away, let’s get to the full review!

Quick Sips - Anathema #10 [part 1]

Art by Cindy Fan

There’s a new issue of Anathema out and for my sake I’m breaking it up into two parts, the first covering the first three stories and poem. The work is stunning, building broken worlds and situations populated by people who have lost and who are in the process of losing. Who are desperate for relief, for comfort, for understanding, and who don’t really get that right away. Who have to wait for it. These are some fairly grim stories, but nothing without a bit of hope to them, a bit of light and warmth. It might not be enough. It might not always sustain. But for most of the characters there is the possibility, the promise, that it might grow into something more, larger--that it will give them something like freedom. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - PodCastle #622-623

PodCastle has two new stories this month, and show some very different flavors of alt-history fantasy. One is a post-disaster magical resurgence story (paradigm shift story?) about love, true and otherwise. The other is a historical fantasy featuring a couple living in the shadow of the Vietnam War. Both deal with our world and how magic might shape it, though, either a magic that has always been present and is now being twisted for war, or a magic that was absent and is now returned in the form of dangerous new rules, creatures, and hardships. The characters are in turn shaped by the conflicts that magic creates, struggling to find love and build families amidst the ruin and devastation. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Tor dot com April 2020

Art by Ashley Mackenzie

So I'm used to Tor dot com releasing up to four stories a month, which means this month's six stories represent something of a surge in fiction. Perhaps it's that the venue knows that more people are home right now, and so might be more available to read some great fiction. Whatever the reason, I'm glad, as the stories are a great mix of science fiction and fantasy, featuring portals inside little free libraries, psychic investigators battling malevolent ghost...fish, and a whole cartography of a new and strange world...that's really not all that strange at all. The works are careful and full of quiet longing and intense action, and I'll get right to reviewing this cornucopia of SFF!

Quick Sips - Fireside Magazine #78

Art by Erik Ly

It's always a joy when I can say that I'm not looking at a complete issue because I must recuse myself from my own work. On top of the three short stories that I am looking at from this month's Fireside Magazine, my own very short piece, "Foie Gras," is available to read as well. It features a holographic Napoleon and an...interesting way of thwarting his evil ambitions. The rest of the issue also brings a mix of fun and thoughtful SFF, making for a quick and fascinating collection of fiction, all under 1500 words. So yeah, to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 04/20/2020 & Samovar 04/27/2020

The back half of April brings not only a new story and poem from Strange Horizons, but a new issue of Samovar as well, with two stories and two poems in translation to enjoy. As always, neither publication disappoints, offering up worlds and characters that walk in shadows, that encroach upon the strange and the weird and haunting. That find characters wanting very much to break free of the constraints corruption and industrialization have shackled them with. And finding that maybe there is a way out. Maybe, through cooperation, through partnership, they can reach for freedom. Or maybe that too is a bit of an illusion, and what they're really reaching for is comfort to live with the injustices they can do nothing about. In any event, let's get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #302

Art by Flavio Bolla

Both the stories of the latest Beneath Ceaseless Skies feature characters who have lost their parents. who are left with an infrastructure that is largely patchwork and unsound. Who hope, by following the familiar paths, the rituals that have been left for them, they can have something like security, something like safety. While, really, there’s not much of either in their lives, and they are left struggling, scrambling for each scrap they can get, all stressed and lonely and hurting, wanting things they can barely give voice to, much less achieve. It’s a difficult issue but another well paired one, and I’ll get right to my reviews!

Quick Sips - Uncanny #33 [April stuff]

Art by Galen Dara

The April content from Uncanny Magazine offers up three short stories and two poems (as well as a bunch of nonfiction that I don’t cover), and it’s a rather heavy much of stories. From genocide to doomed timeloops to a slow decline in the dark of space, to the aching loss of destroyed books, to having to leave a dying planet behind, all the works deal with loss in some ways. All of them find characters who aren’t quite sure what to do in the face of their dreams turning to dust in their hands, or threatening to. They have to find ways to move forward, both to honor the past and dead, and to find ways to maybe keep living, keep going, even through some intense damage. It’s an emotionally difficult but of works, but it shows how moving and powerful short SFF can. So let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Diabolical Plots #62

Art by Joey Jordan

A new month brings two new stories to Diabolical Plots, which run from fantasy to...kinda science fiction? Tonally and otherwise, the stories couldn't be much more different. The first is a rather wrenching, slightly gothic story of a person following through on a promise to themself. The second is a much more wry take on the idea of resurrection and mad science. But both are linked by featuring characters who have just lost someone important to them, and who are intensely lonely. Both want something they can't quite give full voice to at first, though for one of them that means reaching back for something they've lost and for the other it means walking forward toward something they've never had. The stories are very much worth checking out, though, and I'll get right to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Nightmare #91

Art by Chorazin / Adobe Stock Art

Both the characters in this month’s Nightmare Magazine feature characters who are monsters in some ways, who live off eating the flesh or drinking the blood of others. These characters can be more than their drives, though, can choose not to kill if they want to. But both of them are also caught in toxic systems, in places where the cycles of abuse and pain seem so set, so deeply rutted, that there’s no getting out of it. They try. But every time they do it seems to weaken them, and when their efforts come to dust or worst, betrayal, it leaves one the desire to give in to the power they have, the hungers always waiting to be embraced. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #163

Art by Beeple

Clarkesworld returns in April with a full load of stories and a return of translated fiction. The works are diverse (though almost entirely science fiction) and lean a bit toward the dark, the chilling, and the horrific. They show people dealing with distance, and with the desire to be with another person. A desire that can strengthen and embolden people to strive for good, or can twist people toward greed and possessiveness. A lot of the works deal with people dealing with their relationship ending, or in imminent threat of ending, and what they do to either save it, try to save it, or break it entirely. It’s a fairly cohesive and strong issue, and I’ll get to my reviews!

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 04/06/2020 & 04/13/2020

Art by Galen Dara

Two new issues of Strange Horizons means two new short stories and two new poems. And the publication continues to just belt them out of the park, as it were, with two stories about care and about teachers being put into some impossible situations paired with poems that definitely capture the "strange" mandate of the venue. And yeah, the stories here are philosophical and wrenching, placing characters into a place where they have to make hard decisions, where they doubt themselves and their abilities but ultimately are able to stand behind their work, in the face of injustice and extinction. It's a wonderful pair of issues that I'll get to reviewing...now!

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #301

Art by Flavio Bolla

Both stories in the latest issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies deal with siblings, and a cycle of violence. In both, one sibling seems to be the perpetrator of violence, and yet in truth both are arrayed in conflict, both seeking to hurt. It’s a situation that creates a kind of power, a kind of fate that neither sibling seems keen to break. Because for some things the only way out is through, and the only way to be free is to bring everything crashing down into the water. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - GigaNotoSaurus April 2020

There’s a new novelette out at GigaNotoSaurus and it’s a new take on a somewhat “classic” trope. That of robot wives and a community rocked by certain revelations. But it’s also a story that doesn’t fall into the “classic” and misogynist pitfalls that so often accompany those stories, that view with rosy nostalgia a past where nuclear families were just swell. The piece makes room for the hard truths that can go hidden in suburbia, and doesn’t give in to the gravity to crash into violence. Rather, it’s a different kind of revolution being waged, and it makes for a wonderful story. To the review!

Quick Sips - Fiyah Literary Magazine #14

Art by Dominique Ramsey

I count every month that kicks off with a new issue of Fiyah as one that’s off to a great start. And this latest issue turns things up a bit with four stories and two poems, all of which bring wonderful and often wrenching visions of speculative fiction. There’s no theme to this issues works, but if I had to connect the dots I’d say that each of them revolves around revelations. Seeing something or learning something that completely changes the context of the world. That might be a secret that suddenly makes the world very different. Or it might be a single conversation that shifts a character’s perspective from the verge of committing violence to sacrificing themself to save people. It might be the dissolution of a relationship that leaves a character suddenly adrift and thrashing, trying to stay above water, or it might be the twisting and perversion of a professional relationship into something much more toxic. But all of the pieces find characters who see their lives going in one direction only for them to find a completely different outlook. So yeah, let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Flash Fiction Online April 2020

The latest issue of Flash Fiction Online is a nice mix of fun and kinda devastating. But the sad is sandwiched between two stories that make it easy to smile, and there’s plenty of charming humor to make up for the more disturbing and violent themes of the middle piece. So it’s a nicely balanced issue that moves well and focuses a bit on science fiction rather than spreading it about with regards to genre, but they’re three very different science fiction stories, and that’s great. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - The Dark #59

Art by Tomislav Tikulin

The two stories in the April The Dark Magazine both turn back the clock and offer up two historical or alt-historical (or I guess fantastical) stories of hauntings and abuses of power. Both pieces find situations where harm is done, where atrocities are allowed because some group is considered unworthy of consideration. Enemy soldiers or those too poor to merit more than trite sympathy, the people at the margins of the societies but front and center in the action of the stories are those who must suffer for the actions, or inaction, of the narrators. And those narrators have to decide whether or not they’re going to continue to ignore the bleeding humanity before them, or if they’re going to do something to change their own hesitation and complicity in tragedy. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #119

Art by grandfailure / fotolia

Only short stories means April's Lightpseed Magazine is a little lighter than normal, but the stories certainly hit above their weight class in many ways. The works tackle choices of all sorts, mostly by characters who are facing either accepting the dominant lean of society or rejected it. And in rejected it taking a chance of being crushed. The works show different outcomes for this, from standing in defiance to giving in to learning how to dance in the face of expectations and pressures to be small and quiet. It's an eclectic issue, and one with a lot of different speculative visions, to let's get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #300 [part 2]

Art by Flavio Bolla

Closing out the special anniversary issue, Beneath Ceaseless Skies has put out two stories about immigration and identity, about the fragile and careful web of people and hope that exist amidst a backdrop of war, refugees, and exploitation. It’s a wonderfully paired second half of an issue, with stories that resonate singly but build so well together, reinforcing the themes of movement and the messy realities of people who are without homes, who are searching for places to be while on all sides people try to exploit them and bleed them dry. It’s not an especially happy pair of stories, and yet both are incredibly strong in how they find hope and joy even in the harshest of situation. ANd before I give too much away, let’s get to the reviews!