Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #169

Art by Francesca Resta

It’s another Big issue of Clarkesworld Magazine, with four short stories and three novelettes. And there’s perhaps a theme that runs throughout the pieces, that of family. Explored in some interesting ways, the pieces all seem to circle around what makes a family and what might tear it apart. The stories are not always incredibly happy, many of them unfolding in post-disaster scenarios, but that’s not unusual for the publication, nor is the fact that this is once more an entirely-science-fiction issue. It makes for a lot of possible worlds, a lot of future we’d probably do best to avoid. And it’s just a lot of strong work, so I’ll get right to my reviews!

Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #165

Art by Viko Menezes

The June Clarkesworld hits a mid-year stride with five stories (two short stories, two novelettes, and one novella) that bring on different kinds of science fiction, from deep space federation drama to much closer to home terrestrial time travel story. There are multiple takes on future and science fictional systems of governing and organization and how those organizations (ranging from out of control capitalism to a kind of micro-managed religious order) impact the characters, walling them in, making them want to push back against those walls, with sometimes dramatic results. It’s a fantastic issue, and I’ll get right to my reviews!

Quick Sips - Uncanny #33 [April stuff]

Art by Galen Dara

The April content from Uncanny Magazine offers up three short stories and two poems (as well as a bunch of nonfiction that I don’t cover), and it’s a rather heavy much of stories. From genocide to doomed timeloops to a slow decline in the dark of space, to the aching loss of destroyed books, to having to leave a dying planet behind, all the works deal with loss in some ways. All of them find characters who aren’t quite sure what to do in the face of their dreams turning to dust in their hands, or threatening to. They have to find ways to move forward, both to honor the past and dead, and to find ways to maybe keep living, keep going, even through some intense damage. It’s an emotionally difficult but of works, but it shows how moving and powerful short SFF can. So let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #162

Art by Thomas Chamberlain-Keen

It’s something of a surprise to find that the March Clarkesworld has six new fiction pieces and none of them are translations. What it does feature are six science fiction stories that range from wry and fun to grim and gutting. A few of the stories return to settings previously established (in stories I believe also came out at Clarkesworld), while others do some very new things. And there’s still plenty of ground to cover, with three shorts and three novelettes, and a few running themes that people might want to be aware of, most notably substance abuse. But there’s a lot of beauty, a lot of messy relationships and characters, and some fine reading. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Mithila Reviews #11 [part 2]

Art by Edward Hicks (1848)

I’m finishing up my look at the most recent issue of Mithila Review, today checking out two short stories, one novelette, and four poems. The pieces cover a lot of thematic ground, from transplanted mythology/folklore to sea monster hunting, but I think there is a sense of resonance for me with an examination of how to live in an oppressive world. Of how to navigate the tricky and sometimes impossible landscape of capitalism or other corruption. How to exist while being near powerless, and how to try and keep hold not just of yourself and your family, but your soul as well. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Uncanny #31 [November stuff]

Art by John Picacio

I’d say that it’s a short month from Uncanny Magazine, but despite there being only two stories and two poems, one of the stories is a whopper of a novella, so wordcount-wise it’s a very robust issue. And the novella is certainly a story that captures some of the feeling of the uncanny, strange and mixing science and magic, focusing on a girl tossed back in time, struggling with her own desire not to screw up the timeline and her desire to prevent a tragedy from happening. And the story doesn’t re-tred old ground in providing a wonderful murder mystery time travel adventure, full of shadows intense and unsettling. The rest of the stories and poems round out a strange but rather lovely and haunting feel that for me personally fits with the time of year, with the first tendrils of winter digging in, and the sudden shortening of days and deepening of night. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #158

Art by Tomas Kral

November brings two short stories and three novelettes to Clarkesworld Magazine, most of them science fictional though some with fantasy elements thrown in there as well. There’s actually a strong focus on survival in this issue, on humans outliving (or not) some ecological or man-made disasters on Earth and having to decide what to do next. Having to decide whether to hold on and milk survival of every last drop of joy (and despair) or to embrace that humanity might be doomed, and that maybe it’s not the ultimate loss in the universe.

Quick Sips - Diabolical Plots #55

Art by Joey Jordan

September brings a slightly larger release from Diabolical Plots, with three original stories covering magical schools, strange competitions, and vending machines of questionable morality. They walk the line between fun and poignant, between charming and wrenching. The pieces look at familial relationships and personal ambition against the desire to be a part of a community. In each, a character must handle being confronted with disappointment, with an unexpected complication. A family crisis, a educational reality, an immigration nightmare. Not all of the complications have simple fixes. But they all push the characters to reexamine their situations and try to find ways forward in a world that doesn't work quite the way they thought it did.

Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #155

Art by Roman Kuteynikov

It’s another full issue from Clarkesworld, with six stories (four short stories and two translated novelettes) that cover a wide range of pasts, presents, futures, and never-wases. The stories are mostly science fictional, though there’s one fantasy and one alt-history, and they examine hope and progress, what makes a person human or makes them...different. It features naturalized aliens, uploaded consciousnesses, artificial wombs, and colonies on Neptune. And through it all it remains fairly philosophical, wrenchingly visceral, and intimately emotional. There are spills and chills, laughs and more than one heartwarming moment, so let’s cut the chitchat short and get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Diabolical Plots #53

Art by Joey Jordan

The two stories in this month's Diabolical Plots bring two very different moods and styles. One is a slice of the absurd, a satire of politics and social media and authoritarianism. The other looks at a situation no less corrupt, no less dominated by abuses of power, but with an entirely different feel to it. It's dark and it's visceral and it's rather disturbing, looking at punishment and justice and religion in some uncomfortable ways. Both do interesting things with their worlds, though, and work to expose hypocrisy of systems that don't lend themselves to introspection. Let's get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Uncanny #29 [July stuff]

Art by Julie Dillon

This month’s Uncanny Magazine gets dark. From monsters and murder to abuse and death to magic and exploitation, the fiction features a number of characters facing their own demons. The dark places inside themselves, and the dark forces outside seeking to use them for further harm. Who are seeking to devour them, to corrupt them, to twist them. The works don’t have a lot of bright spots to them, and poetry gets in on the darkness as well, featuring doomed astronauts and haunting songs. The issue on the whole is difficult for me, visceral and tragic, though not entirely without warmth. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 04/01/2019 & 04/08/2019

Two short stories and two poems open up Strange Horizons’ April content, and it’s an incredibly strong bunch of short SFF. The fiction looks closely at homes and at monsters, at people who are trying to escape in some ways the burdens of their histories and who instead find they are trapped by the need to return. Forced into systems that they don’t necessarily want to be in. And it pushes them then to confront the monsters without and within in order to try and work toward healing and hope. It’s a bracing and beautiful batch of fiction and poetry, and I’ll get right to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Uncanny #27 [March stuff]

Art by Christopher Jones

Three short stories and two poems usher Uncanny Magazine’s March offerings in with style, revolution, and heartbreak. The pieces move around survivors. Not people who have outlasted others, but those who are surviving their own personal hells and oppressions, their own personal griefs and losses. They are survivors by necessity, their worlds condensing in a squeeze of despair that makes everything seem impossible. And yet at the same time, these stories work to show people helping people. Showing main characters able to move to more active resistance and freedom because they are not alone, because they have the support they need to make their stories about more than just enduring the hardships they face, but rather excelling in the face of them to find healing and hope for the future. So yeah, let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #150

Art by Arthur Haas

There’s lots of news in this March issue of Clarkesworld Magazine, plus six new stories (five short stories and one novelette). Mainly, the publication will be adding more translations to its offerings, replacing reprints with new translations of Korean SFF. I trust this doesn’t mean that the Chinese translations will stop, though the current issue again doesn’t have a translation. What is here are some stories that deal very poignantly and viscerally with grief, with oppression, and with people reaching out to other people. That finds people dealing with loss in very profound ways but working through those losses to try and find community, or joy, or love, or purpose. The stories feature moments great and small of people starting something, taking a chance and sparking change. And life. And hope. So without further delay, let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #147

Art by Pascal Blanché

December brings a whole lot of fiction to Clarkesworld Magazine, with well over forty thousand words spread over three novelettes and two short stories. A lot of the stories focus on corruption and pollution and people trying to find happiness and freedom in situations where great harm has been done both to the planet and to human rights. Where people have become cogs in the machine of human exploitation. It’s not exactly a cheery issue, but some of the stories at least reach through the fog and smog of pain and isolation to show the strength and necessity of human connection to push back against the tide of crushing corruption at work in the world. Let’s get right to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Fireside Magazine #60

Five Tuesdays in October means five new stories from Fireside Magazine, featuring interesting twists in form and expectations. From battles entirely fought inside the minds of special warriors to a man deeply effected by loss, from a paper on self-driving cars to a split narrative on charms, the pieces often look at symbol and metaphor becoming literal. That there is a power that comes from approaching a difficult and incorporeal idea by putting it into physical reality. And it's a strange and moving collection of stories this month, leaning dark perhaps to go with the season's spookier connotations. Whatever the case, it's a solid issue that I should get to reviewing!

Art by Saleha Chowdhury

Quick Sips - Mithila Review #10 [poetry]

With the fiction done yesterday, it’s time to look at the poetry from the latest Mithila Review! And wow, there’s a lot of it. Seven poems and all flesh out themes of cycles and birth and death, family and resistance and war. These pieces together seem to me to speak to the strengths of language and poetry—to capture the mercurial and the non-literal, to evoke sensation and meaning, and to make brilliantly alive all those things that might be obscured by darkness. Poetry is often a light to shine on truths otherwise too difficult to face, and even in the storms of violence and tragedy, poetry can find beauty, and hope, and connection. So yeah, let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #144

Clarkesworld keeps things a little light this month, maybe as a slight reprieve as convention season winds down, with two short stories and two novelettes. For me, the stories have a lot to with movement, with generations, and with harm. They find characters on the run because of the violence they were brought up to value, and having to decide to reject it or revel in its flavors. The pieces explore family and connections and hope, and the impulse to reach for the stars, be they celestial bodies or human celebrities. It’s a rather complex, moving, and sometimes hilarious issue, and I’ll get right to the reviews!

Art by Arthur Haas

Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #141

June brings three novelettes and two short stories to Clarkesworld, with an interesting look at humanity, alien worlds, and human connection. For each of the stories, the setting is another character to contend with. Either in the form of an oppressive state, a far-flung world, the cold of space, or even an Earth that-might-have-been. And the characters in the story must navigate these worlds, surviving the many dangers, seeking to find connection where there seems only hostility. It’s a goal that is not always successful, and is occassionally laced with tragedy, but there’s also some hope to be found as well. That sometimes, even against the most overwhelming of situations, people can find each other. By and large it’s not a very cheery collection of stories, but it’s an interesting mix and I’ll get right to reviewing them!

Art by Sean Andrew Murray

Quick Sips - Fireside Magazine April 2018

Spring might finally be arriving, and at Fireside Magazine that means the stories are about rebirth and new beginnings, even as they’re about decay and endings. For me, at least, spring always brings to mind thaw. A thawing of the world after the long freeze of winter. Which means new growth, new green, but also means revealing all the death that the snow concealed. The roadkill, the rot, the dead leaves not yet turned to mulch. And these stories find characters at this point, seeing all around them the evidence of death and pain, and having to make the decision to also see the life. To see the good, and to try and foster that good, to help it grow. These are stories that show people pushing back against the pressure to die, to be silent, and embrace a future full of the possibility of failure, yes, but also full of the hope of success. To the reviews!

Art by Dawid Planeta