Quick Sips - Apex #88

It's another fairly large issue of Apex Magazine with three fiction pieces and four poems, exploring a number of interesting different worlds that all seem to reflect back on our own. With the fiction, the stories are all rather more fantasy than science fiction this issue, though perhaps science fantasy might fit some of them better, with mixtures of magic and mortality. The poetry takes things in a bit more science fictiony direction, though, with glimpses of post-apocalyptic Earth as well as other worlds that might be experiencing catastrophes of their own. It's an issue that brings the dark but doesn't forget to pack some extra hope just in case. So yeah, to the reviews! 

Art by Mélanie Delon

Quick Sips - Apex #84

At first glance the May issue of Apex Magazine could be accused of playing it safe. Time travel? Monsters? The issue is packed with classic SFF tropes, and yet there's nothing about this issue that I would accuse of being cliche or tired. No, these are stories that take those classic elements and twist them until they howl, until their screams become something that rings through the halls of night and off the page and into the brains of the reader. This is one of the shorter issues of the year but it more than makes up for it with stories that grip and don't let go. That, just when you think you have a handle on them, dip down again into someplace deeper, darker, calling you to follow. So follow if you dare, dear readers, it's time to review!
 

Art by Robert Carter

Quick Sips - Apex #76

It's interesting to me how varied issues of Apex Magazine can be. One week it's have four pieces of fiction and four poems and the next four pieces of fiction and one poem and here there are five pieces of fiction and two poems. It does keep things new and fluid, changing, and at least I can trust everything to be high quality. This month the theme seems to be isolation, the characters mostly dealing with life on their own, cut off from help by choice, by pain, by the elements, by disorder. The issue does an excellent job of exploring the idea of being alone, cut off, different, and how people react to those who are alone. So review time!

Art by Ekaterina Zagustina

Quick Sips - Fantastic Stories of the Imagination July/August 2015

Back with their new publishing schedule, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination provides two new stories this month. One flash and one short story, and both interesting. There is definitely a tendency for the publication to spotlight a bit darker of stories in their original works, which is A-okay for me. The stories are short but typically revolve around a kernel of emotion, of loss or tragedy. This month the stories both feature death and communication with the other side, but in two completely different ways. Thematically the stories build on one another, one a more humorous take on speaking with the dead and the other a more wrenching tale, but both focus on communication, or perhaps a failure to communicate, with the dead. Good stuff, so let's get to the reviews!