Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 08/06/2018 & 08/13/2018

Two short stories and two poems flesh out the first two weeks of Strange Horizons' August offerings. And, to be honest, the pieces would have to be really trying to be more thematically different from one another. The fiction starts off with something lighter and fun and then veers sharply into the bloody and horrific. The poetry is a bit more linked, circling around relationships, the first blush and long contentions and the hope and the way that society sometimes gets in the way and fucks things up. It's a varied and interesting collection of short SFF, showing how such disparate works can be united by the speculative and the strange, in every shape that takes. To the reviews!

Art by Shel Kahn

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 07/02/2018 & 07/09/2018

Two new issues of Strange Horizons means two new pieces of short fiction (one short story, one novelette) and two new poems, all of which look at distance and drive, humans and aliens. For the fiction, there's not a whole lot to link the pieces together, one of which looks at language and abuse, the other at speed and drive and competition. Similarly, the poem isn't incredibly similar either, one looking at the inhuman at the end of a long mission, the other at changes in body and relationship while also showing those changes striking toward a more stable truth. What does link everything together, though, is a wonderful and moving style, and a range of speculative visions all reflecting back the ways people are hurt by others, and the way people hurt themselves, all reaching for connection, community, and belonging. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 01/29/2018

A fifth Monday in a month typically means something special from Strange Horizons, and January definitely brings something special in this week’s issue focusing on Trans / Nonbinary SFF. Two original stories and three poems anchor an issue that is very aware of perception, identity, and defiance. In many of the pieces, the authors explore the ways that the world, that society, seeks to force people into neat lines, into binaries and labels. How systems evolve to coerce people into erasing themselves or others for the sake of the comfort and profit of the dominant. These are sharp stories that reveal characters struggling under the weight of those seeking to punish them for existing. And yet not giving up. And yet finding that they’re not alone, and don’t have to be alone. And yet carving out something for themselves. It’s a fantastic special issue and without further delay, the reviews!

Art by Alex Dingley

Quick Sips - Lackington's #15 [Diseases]

Lackington’s is back with a new issue, and this one’s all about diseases. Ick. And yet for an issue devoted to sickness and corruptions of various sorts, the stories are as beautiful as I’ve come to expect from the publication, with prose that sings and stories that provide some complicated and lovely views of disease and those effected by disease. As much as the stories are about sicknesses, too, they are also about conventions, about the ways that we are taught to treat disease, and how effective (or not) those treatments can be. Often times, the stories show that diseases are but symptoms themselves of deeper maladies, ones that cannot be easily excised, that must be confronted and dragged into the light, dissected and examined and exorcised. My diagnosis? Review time!

Art by Gregory St. John

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 09/18/20017 & 09/25/2017

Okay, so it’s a rather huge two weeks from Strange Horizons / Samovar, in part because THEY FUNDED 2018! Woo! So on top of the regular content there’s more bonus stories and poetry. And, well, on top of that, the last release of September is a new issue of Samovar! Now, because of time constraints I’m not going to be looking at the reprinted translations (there are two, one from the bonus content and one from the regular issue), but I definitely recommend you take a look at both of them. That still leaves me with three stories and four poems, though, so it’s a full review. The content gets a bit strange, I admit, but hey, it’s in the title of the publications. These are also rather emotionally heavy stories about war and revenge, about how the narratives we tell can shape the universe around us, for good and ill. And the pieces over all just go to show that Strange Horizons is a great publication and I’m so glad they funded. To the reviews!

Art by Odera Igbokwe

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 12/05/2016 & 12/12/2016

These two weeks of content from Strange Horizons are a little light on nonfiction, but definitely plenty heavy when it comes to stories and poems with depth, grace, and stunning SFF elements. From self-destructing sentient starships that die across fields of stars to quieter pieces about love, loss, and transformation, these pieces definitely had me on the brink of tears more than once. These are pieces that show the heart of SFF, and the loneliness of it as well, the vast spaces between worlds that mirrors the vast spaces between people, everyone reaching out and only a precious few finding some connection to withstand the forces of creation and destruction. So let's get to the reviews! 

Art by Mahendra Singh

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 06/27/2016, 07/04/2016, & 07/11/2016

It's probably no real surprise that in the pieces for the first half of Strange Horizon's Our Queer Planet there is a sense of longing. A hunger. To see and be seen, to comfort and be comforted. To reach out and act on desires that are dangerous, to fly in the face of convention and doubt. These stories and poems and works of nonfiction are affirming and powerful. Beautiful and refined and raw and bleeding and staunched and just so good. These are stories that I as a reader am hungry for, poems that I want to see more of, nonfiction that helps me both think about my reading and writing and also about my queerness. There's so much good here and I'm going to get to those reviews! 

Art by Alex Araiza

Quick Sips - Lackington's #10 - Governments

There are few enough themed publications left, but Lackington's continues to put out issues of stories linked to a central idea. This issue it is governments that is being looked at. Full disclosure: I have a story in this issue, which I will of course not be looking at but which you can check out if you wish. But the stories are, by and large, deconstructions of government, of ways of governing. They examine the abuses and excesses, yes—the violence and the corruption, certainly. But they also look for hope, for ways of governing better, for fighting against tyranny, and for seeking love in the midst of turmoil. So time to review! 

Art by Likhain