Quick Sips - Glittership Spring 2020

New Glittership!!! That’s right, there’s a brand new issue packed with queer short SFF! Three short stories and three poems to be precise, with lots of reprint work as well that I definitely recommend you check out! The stories and poems run a nice range of themes and genres, from fantasy to science fiction to horror, and I love the way the authors weave identity and queerness into the works. Always deliberately. Always carefully. Always with respect and compassion. And they find such joy in the ways they bring their characters out from the grim expectations put on them and to places where they can live authentically and free. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - PodCastle #625 & 627

PodCastle’s May originals bring an interesting look at romantic relationships and loss. Both deal with characters who have lost and who are hurting. People who find it difficult to be vulnerable, though for very different reasons. One has been hurt too badly, betrayed too intimately, for trust to come easy. The other is physically incapable of being vulnerable because...well, because they’re dead, and beyond that. Kind of. Sort of. What remains for both characters, though, is the need to move on. To maybe heal and to maybe heal by helping others to heal. By holding to love and trying to express something fragile and wonderful and magic. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Flash Fiction Online February 2019

Art by Dario Bijelac

February brings a batch of short SFF to Flash Fiction Online featuring a sense of longing, community, and the threat of loss. In each of the stories, characters deal with a fragile connection to someone else. To a child, or a student, or a part of themself. And in each that connection is under attack, is threatened in a way that makes any action dangerous. That makes any movement perilous. And in each story the characters’ movements are explored—their hesitation or their determination to keep going or stand still. And it makes for a rather quiet, rather wrenching month of stories, with a delicate but resilient hope that shines even in the darkness. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 05/01/2017 & 05/08/2017

May opens with a pair of stories and a pair of poems from Strange Horizons, all of them interested in the lines between achievement and destruction, success and oblivion. The stories look at two strikingly different situations stitched together with a thread of oppression and the looming threat of violence. These pieces are about struggle, whether through art or through organized action, and show characters moving according to their inner drives and needs. The poetry is interesting because both pieces take on an almost archaic feel in order reveal very modern concerns and warnings. There's a lot to see and experience with all this content, so I'll just jump right into the reviews!

Art by Matthew Filipkowski

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #216

The first issue of 2017 from Beneath Ceaseless Skies is, well, it's not exactly the happiest of issues. Both of these stories feature protagonists thrown into situations where they aren't in control. Where they lose people important to them. And where the very worlds around them roil with chaos and conflict. And in the midst of that there are moments of compassion, of hope, only to be lost, only to be taken away. And so the stories become about how the characters cope or how the characters fail to cope. These are stories filled with trauma and the whispering of secrets, and if you're looking for happy endings, well… To the reviews! 

Art by Jinxu Du