Quick Sips - Tor dot com September 2020

Art by Audrey Benjaminsen

It’s another full month of original fiction at Tor dot com, with four short stories and a novelette. As the seasons change into autumn (here in the U.S. at least), the fiction seems to be shifting as well. The stories are getting a bit more grim, a bit spookier. The works are tending toward horror tropes and elements with vampires, ghosts, monsters, gods, and apocalypses. The works find characters who are trying to get their lives on track following loss, following disappointment, following…life happening. And their attempts run into shadows, into the strange and dangerous mysteries of the world. And if, and how, they come out of those shadows will determine a lot if they can start to recover and heal from what’s happened to them. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Fireside Magazine #83

Art by Melody Newcomb

The latest Fireside Magazine comes with five new short stories, making it large for the publications (but that’s kinda what happens on months with five Tuesdays). More, it tours SFF, moving from future superheroes to past uploaded consciousnesses. From sentient 3D printers to sentient ritual blades. From daring dos in space to a much more terrestrial look at homes and monsters. The works are at turns entertaining and touching, fun and challenging, chilling and inspiring. They cover a lot of thematic ground and make for some great reading, so I’ll get right to my reviews!

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #311

Art by Alexey Shugurov

The latest issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies offers up two short stories that deal very much with memories and with the stubbornness of those in power when faced with an inevitable and dangerous problem that is killing people. In both, the narrators have to deal with being expected to fix a problem that’s become hard baked into the fabric of a place they think of as home. Where actually fixing it would mean breaking it, making it something different from what it was. It also requires the power to actually do something, which only one of the characters actually has. Not that it’s easy. Not that both won’t sacrifice trying to do the right thing. These are two lovely and wrenching stories, and I’ll get to my reviews!