Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #171

Art by Claudio Pilia

About six years ago, the first review to appear on Quick Sip Reviews covered Clarkeworld #100. Now, I’m covering Clarkesworld #171. So…it’s something of a moment for me. The issue brings the normal focus on science fiction, but also manages to weave a theme of home throughout the seven original stories. Home is something that means very different things to different people, and the works explore those definitions, those ideas, those realities through the lens of fiction. It’s not the happiest of issues (which I note only to say that if the publication wanted more happy submissions I’d recommend first publishing happier works) but a rather hauntingly beautiful bunch of stories. To the reviews!

THE SIPPY AWARDS 2019! The "There's Something in My Eye" Sippy for Excellent Making Me Ugly-Cry in Short SFF

The 5th Annual Sippy Awards show no signs of slowing as we move past horror and settle into a whole new emotional destination. That's right, people, it's time to bust out the tissues, because this category is taking aim directly at your feels! I might be something of an emotive reader, but I feel that comes with trying to approach fiction openly and engage with it deeply. I tend to let stories in to where they can hurt the most, because while that can often backfire and leave me hurt and angry, it can also lead me to some amazing emotional connections with stories, which I'm honoring with the...

“There’s Something in My Eye” Sippy Award 

for Excellent Making Me Ugly-Cry in Short SFF

Following horror with this category makes a lot of sense to me, because for me both are about evoking emotions. With horror, that emotion is fear. With these stories, it's probably a bit more about...pain. Which might seem a strange thing to value in fiction. But it's not that the stories are about making the reader feel sad. There are plenty of ways that people seek out pain. Through exercise, through sport, through food--pain is about more than telling person that they've taken damage. It's a powerful experience, one of the most primal things, and a story that can hurt in the best of ways is rare and precious. Because it allows people to experience in a controlled way something they'd probably never want to experience in their own lives. It gives perspective, and it mingles pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, despair and burning hope. It takes a great deal of care, and requires a bit of trust, but these stories I feel earn it and then some.

Publication wise, it's another rather eclectic mix, though Strange Horizons does appear twice. Really that's no surprise for me, as the publication really does a great job at reducing me to a small puddle of tears on the regular. What's doubly appreciated is that Strange Horizons offer ample warnings for people who might not want to take the emotional plunge into a work that deals with such heavy themes.

Quick Sips - Uncanny #28 [May stuff]

Art by Galen Dara

Given that May contains Mothers’ Day, it’s perhaps rather fitting that a lot of the most recent Uncanny Magazine features mothers in SFF. At the very least, the issue takes a keen look at parenting, loss, trauma, and what healing can look like. The stories show characters dealing with their feelings about their parents, about their mothers, their fathers, their sons. About what to risk, and how to put those relationships in context with a larger identity and world. And it’s a dazzling collection of works, at turns heartbreaking and terrifying and fun, and always gorgeously rendered. There’s quite a bit to get to, though, so I’ll get right to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Tor dot com January 2019

Art by Ashley Mackenzie

January sees a return to form for Tor.com, which took most of November and December off of fiction releases. They’re back, and with two short stories and two novelettes covering a lot of thematic ground. From living space ships to food magic, from jinni to wraiths. Most of the pieces deal with haunting, as well, in some form or another. And perhaps more specifically, with people haunting themselves. Holding themselves to the past in ways that are like chains, that offer them no hope or help to move forward. And the stories show how these characters seek to sever the ties with those pasts, with those dreams they have outgrown, so that they can put new ones in their place. The pieces lean dark and quiet, and it’s a wonderful collection of short SFF. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Uncanny #16 [May stuff]

This is another full issue of Uncanny Magazine, with May containing three original stories, two poems, and four different nonfiction pieces that I’ll be looking at. There’s a reprint and another nonfiction piece that I won’t be looking at because I’m not familiar with the text it’s discussing, but otherwise this is a very nicely balanced issues that focuses on resistance and fighting back but knows that there’s no hiding from the despair of oppression and the harm being done. And while many of the stories are quite hopeful, and while much of the nonfiction is about how to resist and how to maintain hope even in a very bad situation, there are also stories that know very well that there is also exhaustion, there is also hurt. And while none of the pieces stop there, some of them do carve out a space to feel that pain and recognize it. To show that it’s okay to hurt and to focus on that, while still leaving a path forward for when healing is possible and the fight can be resumed. It’s a powerful issue and I’ll get to those reviews!

Art by Galen Dara

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

Quick Sips - The Book Smugglers July 2016

The Year of the Superhero continues at The Book Smugglers with a story that complicates the idea of the superhero. That looks at invulnerability and pairs it with a very aching sense of vulnerability. Both of the physical sense, because the main character is not unable to be very injured, and the emotional kind, which is even more complex and moving. The story weaves together the ways we think of strength and provides a touching and great narrative about a failed super soldier and love and family. Time to review! 

Art by Melanie Cook

Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #118

This issue of Clarkesworld takes things to the future and the future is...weird. From far-off worlds where people are perhaps bred to be food to an Earth where people might be made into sentient rosary beads, there's a lot of high concepts zipping along. A lot of violence, too, and conflict. Wars both personal and galactic. There are quests and transformation, small moments of personal discovery and loss. And through it all a nice vision of technology and science and progress, even if it's happening in reverse. It's a great issue that I'm going to review...NOW!

Art by Lasse Perala

Quick Sips - Tor.com October 2015

October at Tor has actually seemed a bit of a reprieve from super-long stories, which is rather nice given the story-load for this month. That doesn't mean that they don't bring the quality, as these four stories are all rather dense reads, building some amazing settings and worlds that seem to flit and bend and dance. The settings are alive, characters in their own rights, and it is quite the treat to discover each one. From the alien world of the Cyclopes to the onion-like layers of interlocking dimensions, the stories bring some startling ideas, and do not disappoint in executing them. To the reviews!

Art by Tommy Arnold

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #61 QUEERS DESTROY SCIENCE FICTION (part 2: the full-length Fiction!)

Okay, so apparently I miscounted when I originally said how many original fiction pieces were in Lightspeed Magazine's Queers Destroy Science Fiction. I had said there were ten stories. There are eleven. Eleven stories that are all worth checking out. I mean, wow. There is so much good fiction here. From stories dealing with the end of the world and cataclysmic war to seemingly smaller (or at least a bit more personally important) moments dealing with online harassment and the loss of a parent, the stories range wide and far. Characters are richly diverse, stories at turns funny and uplifting and heartbreaking and tragic. There is so much to like. So let's get to it!

Art by Elizabeth Leggett

Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #105

Well, not quite as huge an issue of Clarkesworld as last month, but still a very good one with four pieces of original fiction and two pieces of nonfiction that I'm looking at. There is more nonfiction and some reprints as well, and certainly give those a look as well, but there's only so much I can get to in a month so yeah. Really this is an interesting issue, with a lot connecting to a sort of alien presence. In a few of the stories this is stronger than others, but in at least three there is a human character connecting with something decidedly not human, and in the last there is an altered human connecting to a alien realty, to an altered space beyond c. Lots to read and enjoy and some very insightful nonfiction as well. With spreadsheets! And if my profile picture is anything to go by, that might be something I enjoy. So yes, to the reviews!

Art by Liu Junwei

Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #104

This is rather a loaded issue of Clarkesworld. With five original stories, two of them translations, it's a bit longer than a normal issue. Plus, the stories themselves aren't by and large short (two of them coming in over 7k). But it's also loaded in the sense that it packs quite the emotional kick. Rare is it that I'm confronted with so many touching stories all in the same issue. So a very good month for the publication, plus a piece of nonfiction that takes an interesting look at the craft of creative writing. Enough talk, though—to the reviews!

Art by Julie Dillon

Quick Sips - Uncanny #4 (May Stuff)

So the new issue of Uncanny is out. Woo! Of all the various publications around, Uncanny is normally where has the biggest names consistently, which makes sense for some place looking to create a reputation and secure funding. So maybe go and support them. They're having a funding drive and do provide some amazing stories. In any event, the May offerings are indeed many and some intensely entertaining pieces. Three stories, some short and others pushing the short story word limit, but still everything is very readable. Plus some (as always) great nonfiction and an honest-to-god Sonnet for poetry. So a solid month, which I should get on with already!

Art by Tran Nguyen