Quick Sips - Serial Box: Ninth Step Station [ep02.09 & 02.10]

The second book/season of Serial Box’s Ninth Step Station has drawn to a close, even if that close is the literary equivalent of shoving the reader out a plane and then just sort of leaving them to fall endlessly (or at least until season 3 comes out). Emma and Miyako have been through a lot this season, and are still keeping some huge secrets from each other. Worse, the line between enemy and ally has become blurred as invader and criminal, military and civilian have all been muddled and obfuscated. The detectives are left having to rely on their best judgment, with only the information they’ve managed to gather on their to help guide them. In such a situation, they might find that even their own actions seem out of control. As partners, they’re supposed to be able to rely on each other, but with the city falling to pieces around them, do they have even that any longer? To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Serial Box: Ninth Step Station [ep02.07 & 02.08]

As the second season draws toward the finale, things in Serial Box’s Ninth Step Station are really heating up. Emma and Miyako are both compromised in some profound ways, but that’s not going to stop them and might not even slow them down as they investigate murders in a Tokyo cracked by invasion and occupation. They have to balance the things they’ve betrayed, the people they stand to hurt, and the people they are determined to protect as they navigated the weaving lines of nationalism, corruption, and opportunity around them. And as the half-way point recedes, the season finale starts to loom, with the promise of something Big lurking closer. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Tor dot com April 2020

Art by Ashley Mackenzie

So I'm used to Tor dot com releasing up to four stories a month, which means this month's six stories represent something of a surge in fiction. Perhaps it's that the venue knows that more people are home right now, and so might be more available to read some great fiction. Whatever the reason, I'm glad, as the stories are a great mix of science fiction and fantasy, featuring portals inside little free libraries, psychic investigators battling malevolent ghost...fish, and a whole cartography of a new and strange world...that's really not all that strange at all. The works are careful and full of quiet longing and intense action, and I'll get right to reviewing this cornucopia of SFF!

Quick Sips - Serial Box: Machina [ep01.09 & 01.10]

The end has come to the first season of Serial Box’s Machina! The serial novel/series has provided its share of ups and downs, surprises and twists, and in these last chapters it pulls out all the stops. The two teams have been at each other’s throats for a long time now, but recent events have turned a lot of the conflict inward, so that both teams need to work out how to move forward without falling apart. Just in time to head down to Antarctica for the final trial. The chilliest continent has often been the backdrop for some great sff horror, and this project might just be following in those footprints, featuring some developments that might be dire enough that both teams will have to put aside their difference just in order to survive. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Serial Box: Machina [ep01.05 & 01.06]

I reach the midway point in my reading of the first season of Serial Box’s Machina and people, if you’re not reading this... Things have been building nicely, but here’s where shit hits the fan. Loyalty is tested and maybe shattered. The competition heats up in more ways than once. And the game changes in some fundamental ways, so that I don’t even know where the hell one of the teams goes from here. It’s beautiful, devastating work, and I’ll just get to the reviews because ahhhhhhh!

Quick Sips - Serial Box: Machina [ep01.01 & 01.02]

So it’s new series time at Serial Box, this time with a science fiction project involving possible Mars colonization and super advanced AIs and...well, mostly a lot of corporate politics, short tempers, and fragile egos. It’s Machina! The setting here is a little involved, with an Earth being rocked by ecological disasters that become background noise to the drive behind the science to reach Mars. In the foreground, though, are the egos and the tech and the warring companies trying to secure the lucrative contract to be the ones to actually run the terraforming and settlement. There's a lot of moving parts, but the series juggles them well from the start and I'll just get to my review already!

Quick Sips - Serial Box: Ninth Step Station [episodes 9-10]

Season one of Serial Box’s thrilling Ninth Step Station comes to a close with its first two-part episode, bringing together basically all of the unresolved elements from the series so far and setting the characters on a collision course with disaster and war. The episodes today stick with the murder mystery premise, but the solutions to these whodunnits aren’t really...straightforward. Instead, they are labyrinths that, if Emma and Miyako aren’t careful, they might get lost in. There’s a lot up in the air as the episodes progress, and the stakes skyrocket when assassinations, military aggression, and systemic corruption make honest police work impossible. And it’s a gripping payoff for readers of the season so far, though also something of a cliffhanger and a reason to very much hope there is a season 2.

Quick Sips - Fireside Magazine #65

Art by Bernard Lee

March brings a four short stories and a poem to Fireside Magazine, each of them full of darkness and light in warring measures. In each piece, people grow up hoping to find a place to belong. A world that matches the hope and brightness of their dreams and the stories they are told. But as they grow they find other fates waiting for them, trying to claim them. Trying to make them victims of the hunger darkness around them. Without the protection of a just system, these shadows do try to take many of the characters. But not all of them fall into the dark. Some of them are able to rise up, to join with others to fight back and seek to build a space to be true to themselves. It’s a defiant, inspiring issue of fiction and poetry that acts as a sort of extended hand to the weary, urging them up and forward to further the fight. So let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Serial Box: Ninth Step Station [episodes 7-8]

Things are certainly heating up in the latest episodes from Serial Box’s Ninth Step Station, with plenty of murder, yes, but also a widening scope and political scene, with politicians and terrorists both making life much harder for Miyako and Emma. There’s some further exploration of each characters romantic lives, as well as plenty of office politics to go along with the global politics they’re trying to keep from exploding back into war. And the series continues to hit its television-like feel, with one “Emma episode” and one “Miyako episode” that give a little each character the chance to grow and be challenged. So let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Uncanny #26 [January stuff]

Art by Julie Dillon

The new year brings a new month of short stories and poetry to Uncanny Magazine, with a fresh focus on broken worlds, battered families, and audacious hope. The pieces here outline pathways of resistance, of fighting back against oppression, of refusing to bend under the weight of damage that has been done to the world. It finds characters struggling against their expected roles and finding ways of living true to themselves even in situations where they can't fully escape the touch of injustice or the lingering scars of devastation. Through it all, though, they find moments of tenderness, compassion, and love, and armed with those they go out into a world they can make better. Not whole, perhaps. Not fixed. But soothed a bit under their careful administrations. 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 - Uncanny #24 Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction! [October Fiction]

It’s the second month of Uncanny Magazine’s Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction! As before, I’m breaking October’s offerings into two parts, the fiction and the poetry, and starting out with the six new stories exploring futures near and far. This month’s pieces definitely focus on some grim realities—hospitals and universities and families and cities where disabled people are not exactly the priority, or at least not in the ways they want. The stories look at characters trapped by circumstance and (largely) by tragedy, brought to a crisis because their situation is getting worse and worse. And in each case, they must make decisions either to sit down and be quiet or to fight back, to try to follow their own hearts. The works are often dark, often difficult, but ultimately I feel reaching for healing and for peace, for a space that the characters can have as their own, which is much more about freedom than confinement. To the reviews!

Art by Likhain

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #261 [part1/2]

It’s another stuffed anniversary issue, this time from Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and once again I’m breaking out my review into two parts (mostly because half the stories are being released in September and half in October). The first pair of stories are an interesting mix, one an invigorating adventure with a cat protagonist and the other a much darker and more difficult look at the ways that misogyny perpetuates tragedy. For their many differences, though, they are linked by a connection to what lurks under the surface. Under the surface of the earth, where gems and sleeping dragons lie. And under the surface of people, where reputation can seem to mean much more than what’s truly lurking in the hearts of people. So yeah, to the reviews!

Art by Mats Minnhagen

Quick Sips - Uncanny #21 [March stuff]

March brings a bit of spring to Uncanny Magazine, with three stories and three poems that feature music and rebirth and love and hope. These are also stories and poems that look at places, though. At haunted houses and magnificent cities and hometowns. That look just as closely at relationships. At the way that interactions build. How in big cities inspiration can seem to grow out of the creativity concentrated in one spot, synergize into something bigger and bigger. How in smaller towns isolation can give way to resentment and fear and depression, but where single gestures can come to mean the universe. These are stories of friends and family, poems of art and love and prayer. And without further delay, the reviews!

Art by Nilah Magruder

Quick Sips - Uncanny #18 [September stuff]

September brings a heavy strangeness to the pages (screen?) of Uncanny, with three original stories and two poems that all are a bit weird in their own ways. Especially the fiction seems to ooze a certain surreal quality that is unsettling even as it’s compelling, revealing worlds where the rules are just a little off, or else mapping areas of our own world where the rules are much different than we might have assumed. There is magic here, but not always the most obvious kind. And there is certainly a pervasive darkness to many of the pieces, a pain at the heart of many of the stories. But there’s also a reach toward empathy, and understanding, and community. Many of the pieces involve a community trying to build a place for themselves, to carve out something from a hostile world where their rules can hold sway. But before I drift too far afield, to the reviews!

Art by Ashley Mackenzie

Quick Sips - Fireside Fiction April 2017

It's another rather full month from Fireside Fiction with four original short stories. Most of them weigh in as flash fiction, but that doesn't mean that they aren't dense and complex. What strikes me most about the stories, though, is their sense of fun (well, for most of the pieces). With one exception, the stories hold a flare for the mischievous, for the sly, for the sarcastic. The characters are wise in their own ways and certainly wiseasses, by and large, but also endearing and sincere in their ways. And the stories feature a range of setting and situations, from corporate time travel to magic schools and resurrections. There's a touch of tragedy to many of the stories as well, but a breath of hope and resilience in the face of destruction. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Shimmer #33 (September Stuff)

The two stories in this month's Shimmer content explore the boundaries between ideas that seem distinct but, upon closer examination, become a bit fuzzy. The space between human and plant, waking and dreaming, shadow and body, male and female. The stories dive into the ways that categories sometimes fail, that treating things with scientific distance sometimes means losing the real point. They are moving and complex stories of magic budding into our world and so I'm going to jump right into reviewing them! 

Art by Sandro Castelli

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #181

Two stories make up this issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and both make a fairly interesting contrast to the last issue, where violence dominated the tales. Here there is one story that is almost entirely free of violence and one story where the violence is...well, quite present but also rather hilarious. Quite a shift from last issue, and yet the stories are filled with a sense of fun, a lightheartedness that makes them charming. Both stories manage to remain mostly light, very hopeful, and left me smiling. So time to review them!

Art by Tyler Edlin

Quick Sips - Uncanny #3 (April Stuff)

Today I'm looking at the April stories and poems from Uncanny Magazine. Three stories and two poems this time. The stories are a mix of longish to incredibly short. All told, though, it's some good material, visiting some popular ideas (circuses, Orpheus) with some new twists. Quick good stuff, so I'll get right to it!

Art by Carrie Ann Baade