Quick Sips - Glitter + Ashes: Queer Tales of a World that Wouldn't Die (Neon Hemlock) [part 1]

Art by Grace Fong

At first I was planning on doing a Quick Collections post for this anthology, recently put out from Neon Hemlock (ed. dave ring). But a confluence of circumstances made me reconsider, and now I’m just going to be doing a full review of all 26 stories. Which...is A Lot. So I’m not going to be doing them all at once. Rather, I’m going to be breaking the anthology up into 4 parts, and reviewing them as I have convenient spots in my posting schedule. First up, the first seven stories! There’s a mix of lengths and elements, but the promise of queer stories about resilience in the face of the end of the world is front and center, delivered on beautifully. To see what I mean, let’s get right to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Baffling Magazine August 2020

The second month of Baffling Magazine brings two (very short) short stories for your enjoyment! Both are fairly dense, fairly sinking works, about characters dealing with a kind of relentless pressure, both figurative and, it seems, physical. They are dealing with loss and erasure, with grief and destruction. They straddle genres, the first more of an underwater science fiction and the second a dream-like piece of weird. It’s a bold second salvo from the new publication, but it works for me, showing definite lean toward short, sharp, and strange. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Fireside Magazine #79

Art by David Plunkert

So first thing first, these reviews are no longer neatly meeting up with the issues as listed on the Fireside Magazine site. I first noticed that last month, where there were more stories in the issue than were released on the website. The spill-over from last issue appears in this issue, and so I'm assuming that the spill-over this issue will appear next issue, and on until it's all caught up. Just an FYI, but I go off the online releases typically when reviewing Fireside so that I can get approximate word counts. So. The good news is that the fiction is still sharp and punchy, the stories short enough to be very quick reads but still hitting above their weight. There are some fun pieces and some harrowing ones, and all in all it's another wonderful month from the publication. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Escape Pod #718-721

It's a busy month at Escape Pod, with four original stories(!), which means the entire month has been originals. Aside from front-loading the year's new fiction, though, it also does a wonderful job of giving an idea of the diversity of science fiction on offer at the venue. The stories range from slightly humorous to absolutely devastating, from sharply satirical to guttingly earnest. There are stories of distant worlds and emperors of the universe that capture a feeling of vastness and stories much more intimate in scope and scale, about loss and desire. So stretch out those reading (and listening) muscles and let's get to the reviews!

THE SIPPY AWARDS 2019! The "Time to Run Some Red Lights" Sippy for Excellent Action!!! in SFF

If you were around for the first Fast and the Furious movie, you might remember the news articles about how people coming out of the movie were more likely to make risky driving decisions. Not that they were just copying what they saw in the movie, but that it left them amped! Well, rounding out my categories that are primarily about an emotional response (horror=pain, ugly-cry=pain), this category is all about EXCITEMENT! FUCK YEAH!!!! So hold onto your butts and get ready for the...

“Time to Run Some Red Lights” Sippy Awards 

for Excellent Action! in Short SFF

As I said yesterday, I'm a bit of an emotive reader. Which means when a story hurts, it hurts. And when a story scares, it scares. But it also means when a story pumps it up, it makes me want to punch the sun in a mech suit the size of a planet! You know, like a normal person. Heh. But I love stories that really make me want to stand up, to run, to arrive somewhere breathless, alive. And these stories do just that, featuring characters fighting with all they have against what seems like an overwhelming situation. A threat to destroy their city, their world; a tournament where dreams are made or broken; an attempt by the actual devil to take the one person in the world you kinda tolerate--these are stories with some high stakes and some intense action.

As for where they came from...kinda all over. From the sadly-on-hiatus Apex Magazine, and from the always defiant Fireside Magazine. From Fiyah, from Tor, from GigaNotoSaurus (which came back from a bit of a hiatus this year). These are often sources for stories that get the blood pumping, the mind racing, the muscles twitchy and electric. So let's get to the awards already!!!

Quick Sips - Escape Pod #710 & #711

The two stories from Escape Pod's December both deal with space, and isolation, and loneliness, and cooperation. Given, they do so in two very different ways, one unfolding on a station that is (now) devoid of human life, but which has also seen the "birth" of something new. The second is very much filled with humans. Too many, perhaps, for the colony they're on, given the series of accidents that threatens everyone. Both find people reaching out to people, though, despite the risk and despite the people involved largely being people who sought a kind of solitude. And the works are at turns heartwarming and wrenching, with a great holiday touch for at least one of them that makes them very appropriate for the season. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Fireside Magazine #67

Art by Matthew Davis

Four short stories and a poem make for a fairly standard month at Fireside Magazine, though it's perhaps a little unusual that none of the fiction falls under 1000 words. It doesn't mean the stories are long, but the extra words give the month a bit more of a melancholy feel. The stories are infused with loss and yearning, with characters moving through a world that is often harsh, often corrupt, and filled with trauma. War, governmental abuse, and complex family dynamics make for a wrenching bunch of stories, and for me there's a sense of wondering what can be done in the face of loss suffered when relatively powerless. How it complicates and deepens hurts. But before I give too much away, let's get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Apex #117

Art by Julia Griffin

February’s Apex Magazine is a little shorter than usual, with only two short stories (though there’s still over 12,000 words of original content), but the pieces definitely don’t feel small. Indeed, they’re about people who are tired of being forced into boxes too cramped and confining. Roles laced with pain and abuse. Situations where hope seems hidden behind a veil. They are done being expendable, being victims, and they are fighting back. Both pieces balance action and heavy emotional lifting, blending wonderfully realized and magical settings with careful character work that doesn’t make light of what they’ve gone through or where they’re going. So let’s jump right into the reviews!

Quick Sips - Glittership March 2018 [er...part 2]

Okay so I jumped the gun a bit on the March Glittership offerings. Instead of one original story and three reprints, there were an additional two original stories (one very very short) and an original poem as well. Which means that there’s enough for me to do a second review just for the ones I missed. And it’s a wonderful collection of Queer SFF, with a breath of weird and a sense of quiet longing. In many of the pieces, at least, we find characters who find value in a quest that might never really be over. Who realize that the quality of a journey is much more often about who you’re with and what you’re doing than it is about where you’re going. So let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #138

March brings four short stories and a new novella to Clarkesworld Magazine. Which means for the second month in a row, the publication is bringing an original novella. It certainly continues the trend of including longer works at online (primarily, for there is a print edition) venues. The stories overall are, well, rather dark. To me, they focus a lot on corrupt systems and how sometimes there’s no real fixing them all at once. How what often happens is that people live and die, are crushed and ground to powder, for a long time before a bad system starts to improve. Not that it can’t improve, but that for many vulnerable people it doesn’t improve fast enough. Which makes for a slew of often very difficult stories, but ones that do hold onto a hope that things will get better, even if we don’t all live to see it happen. To the reviews!

Art by Arthur Haas