Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #255

Sickness links the two new stories in the latest issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies. In the first, the sickness of the main character is what gets her to embrace a new life, a new opportunity, which eventually allows her to escape the pain and despair she was living with. In the second, sickness is what surrounds the main character, taking away those he loves, and waking him up to the corruption that is the true sickness of the city he lives in. With both stories, sickness provides the goad to do something, to take action to not only escape a bad situation, but to help others to escape as well. The stories are rather different aesthetically, but they show characters acting to try and spare others from having to feel the pain that they did. So yeah, let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Mihály Nagy

Regular Sip - Kaiju Revisited #4 (from Apokrupha Press)

This is the third Kaiju Revisited novella that I'm looking at, though it's the fourth in the series. Somehow I missed the third, and with my schedule I'm not sure if I have time to go back for it. For now, I do want to visit this story, which is a genre-bending, fast and furious story that still manages to hit some powerful emotional moments and craft a world that is all-too-real and, in that, all-too-depressing. But there's also a buddy-adventure aspect featuring an adorable baby dragon named Bear that keeps things from teetering entirely into the void. It's a strange read, but one worth unpacking, and before I give too much away, let's do just that with the review!

Art by Christopher Enterline

Quick Sips - The Dark #27

August brings a pair of rather strange stories to The Dark Magazine, including one that’s much longer than I’m used to from the publication. Both stories look at different kinds of hunger, different ways that the main characters seek to fill up an emptiness inside them. For both characters, the emptiness has something to do with the loss of their mothers when they were quite young. For one, that loss is a trauma that he can’t seem to heal from. For the other, the loss opens up a void that cannot be filled, that is filled with anger and uncertainty. These are stories that do a good job exploring place and grief, the characters trying to find some map to lead them toward peace and fulfillment. How the characters follow those maps, though, is quite different. So let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Tomislav Tikulin

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #86

The July Lightspeed Magazine offers up a pair each of science fiction and fantasy short stories that balance hope and despair, pain and longing. The stories examine injustice, characters caught in moments that they want to escape, situations that are deeply unsatisfying. For some it’s a humanity that has lost its spark, and for others it’s a world that doesn’t allow them to be themselves. In some the pressure is external, a threat or invasion, and in others it’s the seeming-injustice of chance. Whatever the characters and whatever the stories, though, the pieces all examine what it means to be discontent, to be angry and hurting. To want change. And the stories differ widely in how that hope is portrayed, and how close the characters are allowed to come to it, but all the pieces are certainly interesting, and it makes for a fascinating issue I should just review already.

Art by Reiko Murakami

Quick Sips - Apex #96

The May issue of Apex Magazine features two original stories and one reprint that explore trauma and distance, time and space and hope. It’s an issue that’s about the telling of stories and the reaching back for some semblance of comfort and closure. It features characters who are living on borrowed time, who are fighting against the weight of the forces that have doomed them. For most of them, it’s not a doom that is avoided, either, but that comes with the power and relentlessness of a train, of a storm, of a sun exploding. These pieces explore darkness in different ways, revealing it as both a source of comfort and fear. So yeah, join me as I jump into the reviews!

Art by Marcela Bolívar

Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #128

The stories in this May issue of Clarkesworld all seem to circle around nature and art and technology, drawing the lines of where humanity’s place in the natural world is. And it shows the ways that humans seek to reach beyond the known and comfortable, how people are constantly striving to do more and be more. For some that might mean rewriting their genetic code, and for others it might just mean chilling in a giant floating whale. Whatever floats your boat. But these are stories that mix moments of intense action and terror with softer moments of study, introspection, and thought. They’re rather contemplative stories, and as such deserve some time and consideration. So yeah, to the reviews!

Art by Julie Dillon

Quick Sips - Apex #90

The November issue of Apex Magazine brings the focus directly to the fiction. Most months feature one or two original stories, but this one features four, and they are all shades of dark and disturbing and good. Which, who knows, maybe the publication is trying to make a case for supporting their subscription drive. Which is going on. Right now. If so, then for me they have definitely succeeded. The stories are strange and they are dark, disturbing, and deep. They look at the twisted side of human art and human civilization, and ask some very difficult questions. There’s also two reprint poems that I decided to look at as well, and all told the issue is quite strong and kinda messed up. To the reviews! 

Art by Ania Tomicka

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #204

The second issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies this month features a pair of stories that look at quests and stagnation, hope and transformation. In both stories characters confront the trajectories of their lives, the directions that seem inevitable but which are made by their choices. And both face regrets and face a future that is full of possibilities and yet defined by duty and care for others. There is a balancing of the selfish desires of life and knowledge that sometimes environments are kinds of prisons. Systems oppress. But belonging is not impossible. These are some complex and moving stories and I'm going to jump right into those reviews!

Art by Martin Ende

Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #117

Anchored by a novella in translation and populated by powerful stories, the June Clarkesworld takes a look at identity and self, harm and loss. The stories all crowd around moments of otherness and bridging otherness, of hurt and soothing hurt, of alien voices and learning to see the human in them. These stories are difficult and raw and imaginative and I almost can't believe that there's The Thing fanfiction but there is and I'm just going to jump into these reviews! 

Art by Vincent LAÏK

Quick Sips - The Book Smugglers May 2016

So the Year of the Superhero is officially upon us with new short fiction from The Book Smugglers. And if this first story is anything to go by then things are going to get…weird. But also pretty great. Tackling superhero-ing on a very micro scale, this first story creates an entire world in the space of a small woodland, the characters mostly insects and the action visceral and intense. It's definitely not what I was expecting—but that's rarely a bad thing and here it means a mostly-delightful tale that I should just review already!
 

Art by Melanie Cook

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #199

By the power vested in me as some random reviewer on the internet, I declare the theme of this Beneath Ceaseless Skies issue of be: walking. Which might seem odd but really, both stories focus on walking. On air. Through the desert. But walking forward and not looking back or looking down. They are about bridges and distances, but not necessarily about maintaining those bridges. More like building them from now to the future. Escaping islands of solitude and stagnation with a drive to move forward. To keep walking even when it defies convention and possibility. To step into the clouds, and the future. It's a great issue and I'm going to get to my reviews! 

Art by Geoffrey Icard

Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #112

The first Clarkesworld issue of 2016 certainly doesn't pull it's punches. Weighing in at over 40k of original fiction, it's on the heavy side, both length-wise and message-wise. The stories are dense, rather subtle, and not overly cheery. But inside these entirely science fictional stories are examinations of inequality and value. Questions of what makes life worth living, and what humanity requires. Stories of love and challenge and pushing the boundaries of human experience while still grasping at what makes us human. So yeah, let the reviews begin!

Art by Julie Dillon

Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #105

Well, not quite as huge an issue of Clarkesworld as last month, but still a very good one with four pieces of original fiction and two pieces of nonfiction that I'm looking at. There is more nonfiction and some reprints as well, and certainly give those a look as well, but there's only so much I can get to in a month so yeah. Really this is an interesting issue, with a lot connecting to a sort of alien presence. In a few of the stories this is stronger than others, but in at least three there is a human character connecting with something decidedly not human, and in the last there is an altered human connecting to a alien realty, to an altered space beyond c. Lots to read and enjoy and some very insightful nonfiction as well. With spreadsheets! And if my profile picture is anything to go by, that might be something I enjoy. So yes, to the reviews!

Art by Liu Junwei

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #172 - Weird Western

Really, Beneath Ceaseless Skies? A special issue released on the last day of the month? I mean, I love the issue, but I'm afraid for Monthly Round considerations I'm considering it a May read. However, did I mention that I love the issue? Yes? Well it's true! And the issue even breaks the old BCS pattern of two stories per issue. There are three! But then, this is a special issue, so it makes sense. Also, the image below does not do the cover justice. It is amazing but I couldn't seem to get all of it so you'll just have to go to the site and check that one out. Very worth it! The three stories all take different tracks when it comes to approaching the Western theme. Only one really has a gun fight in it, but they all use the place and setting of the West to good effect, and all manage to capture a bit of that feel, the Weird Western style that makes them unique and interesting. So to the stories!

Art by Ignacio Bazan Luzcano