Quick Sips - Glittership Summer 2017 [part 2]

I’m looking at the second half of the Summer 2017 issue of Glittership and it’s another great collection of queer SFF. Because of what I got to last time, what’s left is an original story, a reprint story, and two original poems. I must say I’m an especial fan of venues that mix their fiction and poetry, and this half of the issue features outstanding examples of both. All the pieces in this half of the issue seem to follow a theme surrounding repression and fear. The pieces are about characters moving through a world that is openly hostile to them, where they don’t fit in and cannot full express who they are. Because of fear, because of hate, they have to hide a part of themselves, and the action threatens to rot them from within. In some of the pieces this gives way to acceptance and expression, and in some it…doesn’t. It’s a mix of heartbreaking and heart warming, and it’s all very good, so let’s get to the reviews!

The Monthly Round - August 2017

The Monthly Round is live right now at Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together. Do please go give it a read. It features my favorite short SFF reads from August 2017 and pairs them with tasting notes, drink pairings, and reviews. It's quite fun. Anyway, for those wanting a taste of what this month's list features, here's the run down. Cheers!

Tasting Flight - August 2017

"The Library of Lost Things" by Matthew Bright (Tor)
"Avi Cantor Has Six Months To Live" by Sacha Lamb (Book Smugglers)
"The Wanderers" by Ian McHugh (GigaNotoSaurus)
"unfurl/ed" by Jes Rausch (Strange Horizons)
"If a Bird Can Be a Ghost" by Allison Mills (Apex)
"Our Secret, In Keys" by Suyi Davies Okungbowa (Fireside)

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 08/07/2017 & 08/14/2017

There's a pair of stories and a pair of poems in the first two weeks of Strange Horizons' August content. The stories present brilliant portrayals of minds that are part human and part computer. Minds that have been made into something else—into a ship, into a solar collector. This is not always a consensual act, and the stories look not only of the cost of such a transformation, but how these new beings interact with their world, their civilizations. Through war and extinction, the stories manage two very powerful looks at decay and hope. The poems as well provide a nice array of strange ideas and poignant memories, as they tour a house of birds and the filmography of a dead actor. It's an incredibly two weeks of content, and I will just get to the reviews!

Art by Galen Dara

Quick Sips - Apex #79

It's December and this year it means the results from the Apex Magazine Christmas Invasion microfiction contest. As well as, you know, an issue of fiction that is incredibly dark and rather disturbing. The stories are mostly dealing with the line between the perceived and the real, the line between how people are interpreted and how they interpret themselves. It makes for a very strong issue, one that is quite difficult to read at times. Trigger warnings abound in this issue, so that should tell you something. For me it means that these are stories that might require more than one sitting to take in. But they are very good. Now to the reviews!

Art by Irek Konior