Quick Sips - Nightmare #78

Art by Yupachingping / Fotolia

March brings a pair of rather chilling tales to Nightmare Magazine even as spring arrives to the Northern Hemisphere. The stories look at broken systems, broken worlds, that push people into places where they can only participate. Where they can only choose how much they want to be victims or perpetrators. Where opting out isn’t really possible. This might take the form of a legacy and a world that bring about drastic and violent changes, or a criminal justice system where the justice part has been shattered entirely. The stories provoke and challenge, putting the characters in impossible and horrifying situations and forcing the readers to sit there with them, experiencing those no-win scenarios first had. It’s effectively done, and before I give too much away, let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #100 [part 2 - fantasy]

The anniversary fun continues with a look at the Lightspeed Magazine #100 fantasy fiction! By and large, the fantasy stories found in the issue range a bit shorter than the science fiction (with all five stories being short, and one of those crossing into flash fiction). They also deal a lot with ghosts, and loss, and longing. Indeed, a great deal of these stories focus on relationships and what happens when they end or are in danger of ending. They show people whose connections have been severed by death, by grief, by violence, and how those wounds can perhaps be healed by compassion and love. It’s a rather lovely if dark bunch of stories, heavy with sorrow but rising toward something lighter (though no less strong). And with all the fiction to look at, I should get right to the reviews!

Art by Galen Dara

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #91

December finds Lightspeed Magazine wondering about what ifs. Because the four original stories all seem to circle around the idea of what if? The characters feel the pull to embrace something that is in some ways against the very core of their beings. A cyborg chef, a religious woman tempted with a dark cure, a young woman trying to break her (literal) programming, and a person faced with doors into other words. For some, they can embrace this pull, can travel boldly into other worlds or find the obsessive joys of cooking meat. For others, they define themselves by how they resist, how they refuse to take the easy road, even if I seems the entire reason they exist. For all of them, though, the stories unfold as they confront their roles and seek to find ways to retain who they are in the face of a world, or worlds, that want to change them. Some are more successful than others, but all make for great reading. To the reviews!

Art by Christopher Park

Quick Sips - Nightmare #52

The first 2017 issue of Nightmare Magazine explores the border between the human and the monstrous. In these two tales of fantasy horror, we find monsters who seem nearly human and humans who might just be a little bit monster. These are story that delve deep into the dark corners of the mind but never quite lose their spark, stories that understand cycles of tragedy but also hold out some spark to keep going all the same. These are stories about fear. The fear of being alone, or of letting down those you care about. The fear of the unknown, and the slow creep of mortality. They're some interesting pieces of SFF horror, and I'm ready to review!

Art by annamei / Adobe Stock