Quick Sips - Uncanny #16 [June stuff]

Well it’s another busy month at Uncanny Magazine, with three original stories, two poems, and five nonfiction pieces. I was very tempted to just skip the nonfiction, I will admit, because of time concerns, but once I saw it was about Star Trek, food, resistance, and revolution, I kinda had to look at it more in depth. What’s here this month has a great focus on self-determination and strength and stories. About the ways that we write ourselves out of struggles in order to relieve the burden of having to act and the ways that we need to counter that. The stories focus on people being confronted with narratives that don’t leave room for them, where they are often ignored or marginalized, and how they seek to recenter and decolonize these stories to present a more just and more complete vision of the world. And the pieces all do this by subverting tropes and familiar structures and ideas to present wholly new and revolutionary messages. Time travel is revealed as more crutch than cure. Vampirism takes on wholly new levels when crossed with gender and transition. Narrative structure and voice itself is blurred as character and author and reader meet. It’s a lovely collection of works and an amazing call to arms for SFF readers who want to act and fight back against what perhaps is becoming the darkest timeline. So yeah, review time!

Art by Galen Dara

Quick Sips - Uncanny #11 (August Stuff)

The August content of Uncanny Magazine certainly doesn't pull its punches, with two stories, two poems, and two pieces of nonfiction that all hit with a power that leaves a lasting impact. Oh, and if you didn't realize, they're funding Year Three RIGHT NOW! IT IS THE LAST DAY GO!!! Ahem, but anyway...the fiction and poetry especially seem to come from places of hurt and hope. From a world that has failed in a rather fundamental way, that has let people down. That only works for some and for others not at all. Where people struggle to find some plan, some frame that makes it make sense only to have the rug pulled out from under them. These are uncomfortable pieces, mainly, but ones that don't allow the reader to look away, that confront them with the knowledge and the feeling of those hurt. So yeah, to the reviews! 

Art by Javier Caparo

Quick Sips - Tor.com July 2015

Tor.com this month certain tends toward the dark, with pretty much all but of its five stories inky and disturbing. Of course, there's really nothing wrong with that, and the stories do provide a wide range of approaches to darkness, to suffering. And there is a much lighter superhero story thrown in to bring a bit of lightness and fun into the mix. Really these stories seem to be about dealing with the past, with past trauma in most of the stories but the past more generally. A dance unfinished, the looming ghosts of past experiments, the forgotten nightmares of a time before humans, the origin of a superhero steeped in loss, and the tragic childhood of a woman from a very messed up family, the past refuses to stay buried in these stories. So let's get to the reviews!

Art by Jeffrey Alan Love