Quick Sips - Tor dot com May 2018

It’s certainly an interesting mix of stories for May’s Tor dot com lineup. One novella, one novelette, and three short stories mean that there’s a lot to get to, and whatever your poison (contemporary fantasy, near-future science fiction, far-flung space soap opera, and more) there’s probably something that you’ll like. A lot of the stories are actually a lot to do with aging, too, though not all of them about the same kind of aging. But dealing with the particular trials and tribulations of a certain time in a person’s life (puberty, adolescence, early adulthood, middle age, and nearing retirement). The stories all show the baggage that the characters bring to these epochs, these events, and how that shapes them going forward. How they might be able to overcome isolation and fear and the changes happening to them, and how they might not be able to overcome. So yeah, to the reviews!

Art by Feifei Ruan

Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #121

For this special anniversary issue of Clarkesworld, it seems like there's a single question being asked. Namely, what can you trust? What can you know? It's a fundamental question that cuts to the nature of human experience and perception. Can we be sure of our surroundings? What happens when we know that something isn't real, despite not really being able to tell it with our senses? And what if we just think we know what is real, and the rabbit hole goes deeper still? It's a delightful way to frame a number of excellent speculative stories, mostly all science fiction but still good, still hitting, still interesting complications of what we take for granted and how we perceive and reach for some trace of the real in a sea of uncertainty. So yeah, to the reviews! 

Art by Peter Mohrbacher