Quick Sips - Anathema #6

So I might have missed when this latest issue of Anathema dropped on the last day of the year. My apologies! I’m super glad I caught it, though, because it’s an amazing bunch of stories, featuring six different works that explore grief, loss, and a palpable powerlessness. The characters are dealing with things that cannot be changed (or that seem like they cannot be changed) and finding out what they can do about it. That sometimes means learning how to accept things and try to move on, though that’s complicated by grief, by pain, and by the fear of losing more. It’s an emotional and often devastating read, and I’ll get right to those reviews!

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 12/17/2018 & 12/31/2018

You know, I kinda thought I was done with the year when I didn't see a new Strange Horizons issue out on the 24th. But, of course, the best laid plans of mice and reviewers and all that. So instead of having just one story and one poem to cover for today, it's one story and five poems. Strange Horizons certainly is sending the year out in style with extra poetryrific experience. For my part, I'm already drinking mimosas on New Years Day and I will be damned if I'm going to let that stop me from closing out my reviews of 2018. So let's get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Terraform December 2018

Well, Terraform got one of its stories in just under the wire, meaning I'm a little late in posting this today because of the holiday and everything. But the month certainly brought a rather...apocalyptic bunch of stories forward, focusing on dramas both personal and global and keeping the tone dark and foreboding. From the ways that devices can be used to gather data on consumers (for both good and ill) to ways that the planet has to be completely re-imagined if it's to survive humanity, the pieces are perhaps a little doom-and-gloom, though not without some heart and some hope for the future. Fitting, for the final works of the year. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Serial Box: Ninth Step Station [episodes 1-2]

So I’ve never really read a serial story before, but when I was approached by Serial Box to look at Ninth Step Station, a collaborative serial novel by Malka Older, Fran Wilde, Curtis C. Chen, and J Koyanagi, I just couldn’t resist. The premise mixes near-future politics with procedural driven police mysteries. Add a touch of cyberpunk, a dash of international tensions, and a pair of women interesting in both peace and getting at the truth, and it’s a recipe for a wonderful new project that will be launching in 2019. Because of the nature of the project, these early reviews are going to be out before the series is released (January 9), but as the series kicks off I'll slowly fall behind the schedule of the episodes. BE AWARE THERE ARE LIGHT SPOILERS IN THE REVIEW SECTIONS discussing some elements of the series. If you don't want any spoilers, please only read the No Spoilers sections and the Keywords. So yeah, let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sip Reviews - Fireside Magazine #62

Art by Clare DeZutti

Closing out 2018 in style, the December Fireside Magazine brings four short stories, including a few surprises that continue the publication’s tradition of taking chances with form and style and voice. Namely, it has a choose your own adventure-style story that is a complete delight. Online it’s presented as a hypertext piece, with links to the various parts. In print, though, as part of Fireside Quarterly, it’s a delightful piece woven through the entire work, a sort of treasure hunt of bureaucratic nightmares. And it shows the dedication to making the print book something to pay special attention to, what with the gorgeous fold out art and continuing dedication to pushing the envelope of what print short SFF can do. But before I gush too much about that, there’s a lot of other work to get to as well, much of it having to do with isolation, relationships, and cats. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #267

Art by Tyler Edlin

The last Beneath Ceaseless Skies issue of 2018 brings a pair of novelettes defined by violence, age, and exhaustion. Featuring characters who have had a history of violence and fighting, and who want to make an end of it. Who want to find a way that doesn’t involve killing or spilling blood. And who are pulled back in regardless, because of what they are confronted with, because of the systems they live with that require blood and pain and exploitation. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Apex #115

Art by Ronnie Jensen

It’s beginning to look a lot like winter in this latest issue of Apex Magazine, with three short stories that capture the feel of decline, loss, grief, and a desire to escape. The stories look at place, both in terms of physical location (a city, an island) but also in a more psychological sense. They look at people who feel trapped by their own thoughts and feelings. By the sense of loss or grief or decline around them. And they all yearn for escape, for release. How they go about working for that, though, is very different, and often quite dark. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Shimmer #46 [part 2/2]

Art by Sandro Castelli

It’s happened. Shimmer Magazine has put out its final issue. And though the stories will be coming out on the site through April, I’m closing out my look at the giant final issue today. There are six stories, from authors old and new to the publication. And I have to say, for a publication that has always leaned toward contemporary fantasy, these stories show that Shimmer has always been into science fiction as well. Because a lot of these stories take on some classic sci fi tropes, from time travel to resurrecting dinosaurs to space exploration. These are stories full of ghosts, which is wrenching but appropriate. Firstly, because Shimmer has always been interested in ghosts, in hauntings. And secondly, because the publication might be gone, but its presence is going to be felt for a long time to come, a ghost full of words and worlds to revisit. A memory and a promise of magic and stars. And okay I’m not crying you’re crying. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Nightmare #75

Art by Chainat / Fotolia

The stories in Nightmare’s final issue of 2018 is focused very tightly on violation. On women who are targets and who have been hurt. Who have been put into a situation where they don’t really have many choices left. They can fight or they can submit, and often that choice is rather loaded because there’s so rarely an expectation of victory. And loss can be so terrible. But the stories both take on this idea in very different ways, one of them featuring a woman fighting against the pressures to give in and the other…not doing that. Which makes for two stories that could almost not be any more different, but that provide an interesting contrast. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Samovar 12/03/2018 & Strange Horizons 12/10/2018

Art by Caroline Dougherty

December brings a new Samovar to the world, as well as a new issue of Strange Horizons. Between them, they feature two short stories, a novelette, and two poems. And the works as a whole are strange ones (perhaps not so surprising, given the name of the publication), featuring ghosts, post-apocalyptic horrors, and a rather shocking take on prophecy. They reveal characters who think they know what they’re about—inventors, judges, inmates—who find that the shape of their worlds, be it a tiny cell or a vast and untamed world, are not what they thought they were. And they have to deal with the changing definitions as best they can. Some find it easy to shift, to edit the rules of their existence. Others find it much more difficult, if not outright impossible. So let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Uncanny #25 [December stuff]

Art by John Picacio

It’s a month of ghosts, cyborgs, and mages at Uncanny Magazine this December, with three stories and two poems fleshing out a vibrant range of short SFF. The pieces very much represent a wide swath of genre work—one contemporary fantasy, one near-future science fiction, one mix of fantasy and horror and science fiction. The poems look at language and at loss and rebirth. And together there’s an interesting take on family and vulnerability, showing characters trying to find ways of dealing with a new and possibly destructive present while changing their assumptions and focusing on adaptation and perseverance. It’s a great bunch of works, and I’ll get right 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 - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #266

Art by Tyler Edlin

As the year nears its end, Beneath Ceaseless Skies takes a moment to step into the dark forest in these two short stories from the penultimate issue of 2018. The pieces follow characters who are compelled to enter the woods, to revisit old feelings and old fears as they face the unavoidable and often unjust rules that draw a wide line between the natural world and the civilized one. Both main characters travel not so much because they want to, because each has their own reasons to want to avoid the shadows of the trees. But they go, because of their devotion to those they care about, because of their ties to their families, and for themselves as well, to prove that they can, and to make a stand. They’re two rather bittersweet stories, full of hope but also an acknowledgment of issues that cannot be easily defeated, shadows that linger among the tall trees of the forest. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - GigaNotoSaurus December 2018

GigaNotoSaurus closes out 2018 with a novella, a military science fiction about trauma, growth, and healing. And while it might walk the border of a sort of inappropriate humor and a heartbreaking tragedy, it manages to resolve into something that isn't quite either. That, out of the horrors that the story reveals, something new and delicate and beautiful can grow. And it's by no means an easy read, but it does a lot of really interesting things with naming and with memory and with hope. Plus it has an awesome alien goat slug thing. Let's get to the review!

Also, this month marks a new transition for GigaNotoSaurus, with the arrival of new editor Elora Gatts. Rashida J. Smith has done a stellar job with the publication, and I'm saddened to see her go, but also excited what the future holds for the this awesome venue!

Quick Sips - Flash Fiction Online December 2018

It’s a month of literary original stories at Flash Fiction Online, focusing on family and more specifically on dysfunction and the breaking of familial roles. Because, as the stories show, those roles can become prisons. They can become suffocating with how little seems possible, how little the future offers for them. And yet when people try to push outside they face the specter of violence, of coming up against the expectations and investments of parents who rely on their children at times to give meaning to their own lives. Which is difficult and real and well handled in these stories. So yeah, to the reviews!

Quick Sips - The Dark #43

Art by Anna Mei

Christmas comes a little early with a special all-original issue of The Dark Magazine, featuring four new short stories. The pieces go a bit weirder and meta than I am used to seeing from the publication, but there’s no question that they are indeed dark. From the end of the earth to a storm that twists reality, from death and revenge along the highway to a family with a dark legacy, the works find characters who really never expected to find themselves in the situations they are in. Who couldn’t really prepare for the darkness they walked into. But who are hell bent on not giving in to the gravity of their destruction. Not that they can always do much about it. But there is a resilience I feel in these stories, and will to keep going. So let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #103

Art by Marcel Mercado

December brings a somewhat dark collection of short SFF to Lightspeed Magazine, though in some unexpected ways. Women seek to thrive following the collapse of nations. A scientist goes looking for answers deep beneath the waters and finds some she did not expect (or want). A river goddess desires a man but has some very strange demands for their relationship. And baking with grandma takes on a positively wicked edge. Many of the stories feature women stepping out of their expected roles and navigating a landscape defined by misogyny and violence. Some find ways to flip the script, while others are pulled down under the weight of history and injustice. And it’s a wonderful collection of stories that I’ll get right to reviewing!