Quick Sips - Mithila Review #14 [part 2]

I’m taking the opportunity of a slight downtick in things to cover this month to go ahead and finish up my review of the latest issue of Mithila Review. There’s another three stories and three poems, so still a lot of content to get to on top of the reprint fiction and other nonfiction the publication puts out. And the works range widely in themes and length, from a very short almost microfiction to a rather long short story, everything still dealing with some heavy themes, from misogyny and pregnancy to family and abuse. The works lean rather fantasy, though I guess they really lean rather literary, as two of the three fiction works don’t have huge speculative elements. But there’s a lot of strong works to see and experience anyway, and I’ll get right to my reviews!

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #245

Science Fantasy Month continues at Beneath Ceaseless Skies with a special double issue, featuring four stories the bend genres and expectations. And these stories look very much at worlds that have suffered. That have gone through some sort of disaster or apocalypse or major fucking event that have left them more damaged. And the stories explore these broken worlds, revealing how that damage was done, and why, and in some instances how it can be healed (but in most of them it's more about how they cannot be). These are stories of people struggling to survive and, more than that, struggling to find meaning in places where bare survival often takes every possible effort. But they're about reaching for more, and perhaps helping each other get to someplace better. To the reviews!

Art by Florent Llamas

Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #135

The December Clarkesworld Magazine is all about oppression and corruption, about settings that where hope is a fragile, dangerous thing and where the characters are living in equal parts running from their lack of options and toward a future they’re not sure exists. They are dealing with the hurt and despair from having to live in situations that seem crushing, that seem all-consuming, where they don’t really have the power to fight back, where their tools have been made by their oppressors and where any resistance to the situation seems pointless. And yet the stories also look at what resistance in these situations looks like. The stories explore how these characters survive and try to thrive despite everything. Whether by finding an exit they didn’t think possible or trying to make connections in order to make change through cooperation, the stories use their SF elements to explore what it means to hope when hope itself has been twisted into a tool of oppression. To the reviews!

Art by Peter Mohrbacher

Quick Sips - Orthogonal SF "The War at Home"

A new publications has appeared! Orthogonal SF is a new speculative fiction venue (despite the name, these are not all science fiction, which I like FWIW) formed a bit out of spite. And anger. And that does come through a bit in this first issue, which is fairly dark but also nicely balanced. The stories are moving and do have a strong vein of anger to them, as well as the claustrophobic feel of being trapped and trying to get out, with a bit about anonymity and archetypes thrown in for good measure. It's an interesting mix of stories, and I'm just going to get to the reviews, shall I?