Quick Sips - Diabolical Plots #63

Art by Joey Jordan

May brings two new stories to Diabolical Plots, and they're an interesting mix of feels and genres. The first work is a contemporary fantasy exploring abuse and grief, while the second is, well, a second world fantasy about revolution...and skateboarding. Both works find characters dealing with rather oppressive situations, though, and abuses that are intimate and pervasive. Both deal with the traumas of having to live in those situations, and the violence often required to get out of them, to avoid being destroyed. They aren't overly happy tales, but they are both moving and careful and, in many ways, hopeful. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Orthogonal SF: Code

The second issue of Orthogonal SF is out and this time it's focusing on the theme of codes. Not necessarily in the traditional sense of puzzles and ciphers, though. Instead, these stories seem to rely more on language as code. As sensation as code. About interpreting what is foreign, what is alien, and trying to make sense of it while realizing that our lives are codes, are narratives, and how we shape those narratives shapes just not our perception of the universe but the actual shape of the universe as well. These stories are at times opaque and quite stylistic but pointedly so and movingly so and so, without further delay, I will get to reviewing them!