Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #166

Art by Yigit Koroglu

The latest issue of Clarkesworld is out and it’s a big one, with five short stories, a novelette, and a novella to enjoy. As always, the stories have a distinct science fiction bend to them, but with touches of fantasy and horror mixed into the sci-fi as well. More than that, many of the stories are about isolation and intense relationships, the people caught in ways, pulled toward loneliness and directionlessness, trying to find ways forward, trying to find where they belong and what their lives will look like. Not all of them find happy endings. Many of them find that their choices are extremely limited to factors in and outside of their control. Whatever their outcomes, though, the journeys are at turns beautiful and terrifying, and worth checking out. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Flash Fiction Online June 2019

Art by Dario Bijelac

June brings three new stories to Flash Fiction Online that deal with meetings and relationships. Not all of them are romantic, but they feature people trying to navigate their lives and facing intrusions into that space. A sphinx who appears in the garden. A pain that comes from outside a person’s body. An intruder on the moon. The pieces explore how these things are faced, confronted, and either defeated, endured, or integrated into a new status quo. The pieces are heavy with loss and longing but bright with hope and possibilities. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Fireside Magazine #66

Art by Cat O’Neil

Five Tuesdays make for a busy April with Fireside Magazine, which released five short stories and a poem this month. The piece run the gamut of emotions, from slow and dark to fast and violent, from fun and sweet to numb and hurt. The connective tissue of the issue seems to me to have more to do with cycles, with systems and how they produce justice or injustice, depending on how they are structured. And what people do when faced with these systems. How they play into them. How they resist them. How they try to ignore them. And by and large the stories are challenging, presenting readers with visions they might wish to look away from, but which we all should see, and examine, and complicate. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Fireside Magazine #59

The four stories from Fireside Magazine this month deal with violation and consent, with connections and deceit and fate. There’s a good mix of fun and serious, fantasy and science fiction. There are alien sharks and magic curses, spirits trying to reach out and friends trying to keep each other safe. It’s hard to pin down a possible unifying theme, but I think they all come together in how they reveal the societal pressures at work that try and leave people open to harm. That try to keep people from banding together, from helping each other. And how individuals can push back against that, though often don’t, or often still fall against the pressure to conform, to accept the values and taboos and corruptions of the way things are. So let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Michelle Wong

Quick Sips - Mothership Zeta #4

With this, its fourth issue, Mothership Zeta celebrates its first year of publication. And it's quite a celebration, though also in some ways more restrained than some of its other issues. These stories are fun, yes, and hopeful yes, but more than that I think they show a bit more emotion, a bit more reaching toward compassion and understand. Many of the tales are romantic, showing two people coming together through difficult circumstances. Showing people starting new chapters in their lives, ready for some change, ready for something new and beautiful. That even in the dark of space or the sunless night there is some trace of warmth to be had, some hope to share in. So without further delay, to the reviews! 

Art by Wendy Xu