Quick Sips - Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #46

Art by Jereme Peabody

November brings a new issue of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, with one short story, two novelettes, and one poem. The pieces are well in line with the publication’s title, featuring fantastical daring do, adventures of the magical variety, and a touch of grimness to keep things from getting too boisterous. The works look at people trying to avoid violence by and large, all pulled in all the same, to cycles of death and revenge, all trying to end up on the winning side, many having to be content with a sort of balancing act. There’s a lot of worlds to discover and characters to follow, so without further delay, let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #244

It’s sci-fantasy month at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, which means a trio of stories featuring people and their connections to AI. Indeed, all three of the stories in this issue feature AI, and specifically ships that either developed or were designed to have sentience. These AI all relate back to the characters around them—a ghost cat, the ship’s captain, a former lover—in ways that shed light on the larger situations revealed in these settings. Which, by and large, have to do with conflict, war, and violence. Again, in each of the stories there is a simmering conflict if not outright war, and the characters are tasked with trying to protect what they can, to prevent what they can, and to save what they can from the jaws of destruction and prejudice. The themes show the danger of insular and adversarial thinking, of making the universe into Us against Them, and they do so with magic and with machines, with loss and hope and honesty. So yeah, let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Florent Llamas

Quick Sips - Flash Fiction Online August 2016

This month's stories at Flash Fiction Online do a nice job of capturing in bite-sized servings the charm and potential of SFF. Both in how they handle classic tropes like time travel and the Fae and how they innovate through novel uses of narrative, plot structure, and voice. The stories manage to do a lot in the short confines of their flash lengths, and they provide compelling tastes of these various settings, these various genres. What results are three stories that are at turns tragic and touching, hellish and hopeful. So yeah, let's get to the reviews! 

Art by Dario Bijelac

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 06/06/2016, 06/13/2016, & 06/20/2016

Today I'm looking at three weeks of content from Strange Horizons, and there is certainly a lot to see. Three original stories, three poems, and two nonfiction pieces anchor what has been a very strong, and very wide-ranging array of pieces. The fiction, though, is pretty heavily contemporary fantasy, stories that mix magic with very different life experiences. Characters of different classes, races, genders, and sexualities all confront magic in their own ways, from ghosts to art to traditions. The poems take readers to far off worlds and plunge into the heart of myths. And the nonfiction looks at history and awards and place. There's a lot to enjoy, so I'm just going to get to the reviews! 

Art by Sandro Castelli

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 03/14/2016 & 03/21/2016

It's March and spring is upon us! At Strange Horizons that means stories of water melting and things awakening. Of fairy tales and danger and loneliness. Of the resolve to do something. From a far future where the world has been irrevocably changed to a time much closer to our own when the weight of living might open doors best left closed, the stories are dark and layered, about human interconnections and separation, responsibility and the will to life and death. The poetry takes on almost mythic overtones, setting a few creepy and unsettling scenes, and I apparently have a lot to say on the piece of nonfiction. So yeah, lots to review. Let's get to it!
 

Art by Luke Spooner