Quick Sips - The Dark #50

Art by Tanya Varga

It’s a special anniversary issue of The Dark Magazine as the publication turns 50! 50 issues, that is, and to celebrate there are all new stories, four in total, to terrify, unsettle, and maybe inspire. It’s a nicely paired issue, as well, with the stories looking at complicity and injustice, each one finding characters dealing with how to live in a world that is dangerous, where there are forces that want their destruction. Do they slink back, try to hide? Do they run? Do they try to fight back? Are they crushed all the same? The works show how complicity works in many ways, how it’s often nearly impossible to reject completely, but how sometimes people can resist allowing injustice to continue, and by standing up to it can begin to work towards a world where it doesn’t play as huge a role in society. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - The Dark #43

Art by Anna Mei

Christmas comes a little early with a special all-original issue of The Dark Magazine, featuring four new short stories. The pieces go a bit weirder and meta than I am used to seeing from the publication, but there’s no question that they are indeed dark. From the end of the earth to a storm that twists reality, from death and revenge along the highway to a family with a dark legacy, the works find characters who really never expected to find themselves in the situations they are in. Who couldn’t really prepare for the darkness they walked into. But who are hell bent on not giving in to the gravity of their destruction. Not that they can always do much about it. But there is a resilience I feel in these stories, and will to keep going. So let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 02/06/2017 & 02/13/2017

Two weeks have passed and Strange Horizons has put out both a pair of stories and pair of poems that continue their focus on global and domestic justice. These are stories and poems that look at the harsh realities of injustice. At the way that hatred and misunderstanding and frustration can fuel people to commit horrendous acts against one another. The way that the danger of those acts can push people to hide themselves, to quiet themselves, to censor themselves. These are pieces that remove the censor, that explore what stories are told not to heal wounds but to make them just bearable enough that people won't try to stop those responsible for causing them. It's a rather difficult collection of speculative work, but also moving, beautiful, and important. So yeah, to the reviews! 

Quick Sips - Shimmer #29

I was told a while ago to expect Shimmer to run a few "heavier" Shimmer issues, and I think I finally get what was meant, because the stories this month both weigh in at over or near 5k a piece. But hey, more great stories = fine by me! Both stories available this month are dark and nebulous, ambiguous and mysterious, about the power of loss. In some ways both also look at how gender and gender expectations can become cages and vehicles for pain and damage. They are soft story, horrifying in how they hint at the borders of humanity and...something else, but also in how they distance themselves from the horror they brush against. They are dark water whose bottoms are concealed, that could be any depth at all. And I should get to reviewing them.

Art by Sandro Castelli

Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #106

Ah, Clarkesworld. I can definitely say that there are few publications that put out such a daring array of science fiction and fantasy. Most of the stories this month are science fictional in nature, but each takes a quite different approach to the genre. And, of course, the one fantasy story was such that it more than makes up for being the only fantasy story. Both on Earth and far, far away from it, the stories do a great job of capturing a dark truth about bonds, about groups. These stories are about surviving, are about what binds us together. Many deal with families, with falling apart and holding on, and some deal with societies both small (in the case of a group of tourists stranded on a hostile world) or large (in the case of the city with its suppression of the pain it creates). But all are good and there's even a new translated story to enjoy. So let's get to it!

Art by Julie Dillon

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #174

So apparently this issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies is quite concerned with rivers and prices to be paid. Sometimes the stories in each issue are very different, but these two are very strongly linked thematically. In both there is the crossing of a river, and in that crossing there is a buying into an agreement, a sort of cycle. There is no way to avoid paying for either main characters of these stories, no real way to get around the fact that by accepting help in crossing the river they have entered into a bargain that binds them. And yet both character do manage to twist that bargain into something that changes them and their function and also changes the one that takes them across, giving those characters a release. Interesting apart, this is an issue that begs to be analyzed together. Which I always love to do. Also, despite releasing this issue in the last few days of the month, the stories are fairly short for the publication, which I always appreciate. So yes, let's get to it!

Art by Christopher Balaskas