Quick Sips - Anathema #5

Art by Maria Nguyen

Well I wasn’t really planning on reading or reviewing this issue of Anathema Magazine. I’ve known about it for some time and been excited about everything I’ve seen it do, but as my reviewing queue has been full, I’ve been hesitant to start. Well, thanks to a slow December I decided to just fucking do it. I cannot guarantee right now that I’ll be able to continue reading and reviewing the publication, but with a range of stories like this issue I really hope I do. The work here is challenging, often gutting, but shines with a beauty and a power that cannot be denied. These stories are sharp and focused and for me focus on magic and on change. On bodies and transformations. On betrayals and a hope for a better future. So yeah, a bit unexpected, but let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Omenana #12

Omenana’s second issue of the year is out and it contains four new SFF short stories. Things are leaning rather dark in these pieces, too, where characters must navigate situations where they must struggle against powerlessness. For most of them, who they are makes for some difficulties. They must deal with the world not really being set up for them, not really fair for them. They must deal with other people’s expectations on how they act and what they do. And each of them must decide whether to accept that or whether to push back and try to take back what power they can. Not always kindly. But with strength and resilience and cleverness. With kindness and cruelty and hunger and hope. It’s a wonderful bunch of stories, so I’ll get right to the reviews!

Art by Tamara Reddy

Quick Sips - Terraform August 2018

Motherboard's Terraform seems to be going through a new transformation of sorts. Not in its schedule or really even in the themes and genres it publishes, but rather in the length of works it focuses on. For a little while now, the bulk of the work it's been publishing has been ranging less into the flash fiction length and more solidly into short stories. Which means a bit of extra space to explore the futures these authors imagine—which can be both a good and a not-so-good thing, given how dark and gritty a lot of those future are. This month five short stories reveal futures full of slavery and corruption, drugs and borders. They star characters trying to heal the fissures they've opened up in their lives, or falling headlong into them. So yeah, let's get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #259

It’s something of a strange issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, with two stories that strike much more of a science fantasy feel than is standard. In both, characters struggle with loss and with injury. With hope and with community. In one, it’s a community that is systematically dismantled, while in the other it’s a community that seems able to heal, or at least that is still in a place where it can try. The stories are tonally rather different, though both center their action on an unexpected arrival, and on a rather wide cast of secondary characters. It’s stories about violence, flight, and confrontation of the fantasy variety, so let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Piotr Dura

Quick Sips - Tor dot com August 2018

Two short stories and a novelette round out the SFF originals from Tor this month, with a definite focus on science fiction, on futures of humanity interacting with the universe and, perhaps more importantly, with the Earth. Whether that means dealing with the touch of climate disaster and change, or working to move beyond the bounds of our terrestrial home through uploading and flight, or gaining a new and non-human presence to co-inhabit the planet with, the pieces look at how humans see the Earth, and how that perspective shifts as the gaze becomes less incorporated in a human body. It's a month full of strangeness and longing, risks and looming dangers, and it makes for a fascinating bunch of stories. To the reviews!

Art by Victo Ngai

Quick Sips - Fireside Magazine #58

August brings two short stories and two very short flash fictions to Fireside Magazine, each of them circling around memory and difference, hurt and acceptance. In each of the stories, a character is dealing with being put into a hostile situation, where they aren't wholly sure of the rules. For some, this means they try to define those rules, to give them shape when it seems there isn't any. For others, though, it means deciding to act regardless of what rules they might be breaking, and forging their own ways forward despite the danger and oppression. It's a rather wrenching month of stories that have a definite fantasy lean, and a fantasy where magic is pushing in on the "real world" to varied results. So let's get to the reviews!

Art by Kevin Tong

Quick Sips - The Book Smugglers August 2018

There’s two new Awakenings season novelettes at The Book Smugglers! The first evokes and complicates fairy tales and specifically a fairy tale romance, and is cold and in some ways very cruel. As cruel as reality, at least, which it turns out is quite cruel indeed. It’s a story that in some ways embraces what it means to be a fairy tale, full of darkness and magic and hope. But at the same time, it seems to me to hesitate short of providing a completely expected experience. Instead, it challenges the reader about their assumptions about what these kind of stories look like, and how they should end. And the second looks follows a young girl growing up, reaching for an adulthood where she can finally take control of her own life after years and years of dealing with waiting, abuse, and a pressure to conform. Both stories do a lot of interesting things, and build maintain very different styles while still pairing well, showing the world in all its complex, beautiful cruelty. So yeah, to the reviews!

Art by Jennifer Johnson

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 08/20/2018 & 08/27/2018

The second half of August brings two poems and a novelettes to Strange Horizons, as well as other nonfiction content that is well worth checking out but that I’m not looking specifically at. The fiction is intense, a noir mystery that’s really a revenge story, but circles around justice and guilt, denial and tragedy. The poetry is actually very nicely linked, as both pieces are framed as advice, as instructions. For very different things, it turns out, but still very important things. And the issues as a whole have a rather bleak feel to them. Of harm that cannot be erased or ignored. Of the slow approach of death, and fragile beauty of voices raised against the tide of time, holding on to what they can. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #37

August brings a new Heroic Fantasy Quarterly into my greedy hands, with four stories (one novelette and three short stories) plus three poems, all diving into myth and magic, war and longing. The pieces have a bit more of a battle focus in this issue, moving from battlefield to battlefield and finding knights, giants, dragons, and necromancers aplenty. The stories do more than just provide an action-packed fantasy read (though they do that, too). They dive into the realities and horrors of battle, and the reasons people have for entering into them anyway. It’s a varied and resonating issue, and before I give too much away, I’ll get to the reviews!

Art by Jereme Peabody

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #258

These two new stories from August’s Beneath Ceaseless Skies turn the action up to eleven with stories of teamwork and fighting against horror and oppression. In both works, the settings are defined by loss, by conflict. In one, people must live above a storm that ravages the ground below because of a war that involved separation and enslavement. In the other, a world must sacrifice its future to an alien creature in exchange for a twisted taste of immortality. And in both, people find that talking doesn’t work, and so resort of fists and blades and magic and flight to fight back against the tyranny and reach for a future that people tell them is impossible. To the reviews!

Art by Piotr Dura

Quick Sips - Shimmer #44 [August stuff]

Shimmer brings a pair of stories this month that deal with memory and time. In two very different ways, the stories feature characters looking back on their lives and what they’ve accomplished. For one of them, the view is a rather idyllic one, where their art has touched lives and continues to touch lives. Where they can feel the warmth they inspire in others. For the other, though, the reverse is true, and they are trapped in a sort of hell rather than a sort of heaven, transfixed by the gazes of those they have wronged or allowed to be wronged. The stories look at age and justice, on the rewards of what people do in life. And before I give too much away, let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Sandro Castelli

Quick Sips - Nightmare #71

The August issue of Nightmare Magazine offers an effective one-two punch of dark SFF focused on family, weight, and the (sometimes) futile efforts to escape from a bad situation. Both situations feature characters who have suffered, and who are dealing with that. Who are holding onto someone else in the hopes of overcoming the darkness swirling around them. But who, ultimately, learn to make the bargains they can to save who they can, even if it means losing themselves to the dark. These are two rather unsettling and moody stories, full of longing and fragility that cannot withstand the knee-jerk force of the quick pull of the noose or the terrible chaos of a car crash. But even there, the stories find beauty, and meaning, and something even more terrible. To the reviews!

Art by Itskatjas / Fotolia

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 08/06/2018 & 08/13/2018

Two short stories and two poems flesh out the first two weeks of Strange Horizons' August offerings. And, to be honest, the pieces would have to be really trying to be more thematically different from one another. The fiction starts off with something lighter and fun and then veers sharply into the bloody and horrific. The poetry is a bit more linked, circling around relationships, the first blush and long contentions and the hope and the way that society sometimes gets in the way and fucks things up. It's a varied and interesting collection of short SFF, showing how such disparate works can be united by the speculative and the strange, in every shape that takes. To the reviews!

Art by Shel Kahn

Quick Sips - Apex #111

It’s a special Zodiac-themed double issue of Apex Magazine this month, guest edited by Sheree Renée Thomas (who also just guest edited the SEUSA Strange Horizons special issue in late July). There’s A LOT of fiction and as with most of the Apex special issues, poetry is back! There’s actually six short stories and well as six poems in this issue, making it perhaps the biggest I’ve read from the publication. And it all swirls around the idea of the Zodiac, of divination, of astrology. Not always literally, though the actual signs and horoscopes make an appearance or two. Instead, the stories look very much at the stories that we tell. At the ways these stories then become everyone’s stories, our minds making them personal, intimate, and topical. Because our lives have a way of getting into the stories we tell and the stories we take in, and then we might mistake our pulling them out again like a bit of magic and mysticism. But there’s a lot of different takes on stories and truth to find in these SFF works, and I should just quit talking about reviewing them and get to reviewing them!

Art by Stacey Robinson

Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #143

Three short stories (including one translation) and two novelettes round out Clarkesworld’s August, with a bit more fantasy that I was expecting. Or what would have been more fantasy than I was expecting, except that a number of the stories this month play with that in subtle ways, slowly revealing that what seems like magic is actually something different, something much more technological in nature. Not that the issue is completely sci fi, but I feel like the uniting thread is more that each story plays with expectations in interesting ways, and leading the reader through worlds where they must piece together the rules, only to occasionally find that the final piece of the puzzle is a leap of faith. It makes for an interesting bunch of stories, which I will review...now!

Art by Luis Carlos Barragán

Quick Sips - GigaNotoSaurus August 2018

August brings a short story to GigaNotoSaurus, though a fairly long one. And it’s a piece that looks very candidly at pain and at trauma. Unfolding after a devastating war, it looks at two survivors in particular, and the ways that they’ve been touched by what’s happened. It’s a piece that explores ways to keep moving, to relieve the pain that comes with being in one place for too long, and before I give too much away I guess I should just review it!

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #257

I am sorely tempted to guess that the link between the two latest stories from Beneath Ceaseless Skies is that their both authored by a Christopher. Because, at first glance, these two pieces are very different in terms of character, tone, and theme. Looking closer, though, and the stories seem paired not because of how well they work in harmony, but in how well they contrast, showing two sides of the same coin. On one, we get to see a man on a quest realize that he’s in danger of losing something of himself and pause, take stock, and find comfort and guidance in another person. In the other story, though, we find a man who has fully embraced his quest, regardless of who he needs to destroy or hurt. Both stories feature mostly conversations and philosophy, but in one a lesson is learned, and in the other it is utterly destroyed. So yeah, let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Piotr Dura

Quick Sips - Flash Fiction Online August 2018

I wasn’t sure if I was going to review this issue of Flash Fiction Online, because it is entirely made up of reprints. But because these reprints are from Flash Fiction Online, making up something of a “Our Favorites” issue chosen by the editorial staff, and because I don’t want to skip the publication this month, I’m going to do ahead and review the stories that I haven’t already reviewed (all of them but the Samantha Murray piece, which I did very enjoy). Many of the stories are about families or children, though in very different ways, and many of those feature a focus on the ways that adults impact young people, for good and for ill. So yeah, let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Dario Bijelac

Quick Sips - The Dark #39

August brings two stories of hauntings to The Dark Magazine. In one of the stories, the haunting is of an exorcist who thinks he has lost everything. In the other, the haunting is of a man wandering a ruined world. In both, their special sight gives them a power and perhaps a way out of the darkness that surrounds them. Only for one of them that way out might well be a terrible trap, while for the other it might require a confrontation with some difficult truths. It’s a well paired and creeping issue, and I’ll get right to those reviews!

Art by grandfailure

Quick Sips - Uncanny #23 [August stuff[

The second half of the special Dinosaur issue of Uncanny Magazine brings even MOAR dinosaurs, with five new stories and three new poems. Two of the poems aren’t really dinosaur-centric, but the issue as a whole offers up a great diversity in styles and ways of incorporating the source material and expanding the shared space of the issue. Here we are treated to more stories of dinosaurs displaced in time, landing on the Oregon Trail, or in a strange fairy tale, or in the middle of a small town. There’s not quite the same focus on communication and understanding as before, though. Instead, these pieces look a bit more at violence, and hunger, and corruption. They don’t flinch away from showing some dinosaurs getting their feed on, as well as getting their freak on. It’s a strange, rather wonderful collection of short SFF, so let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Galen Dara