Quick Sips - GigaNotoSaurus February 2020

I’m not going to sugar coat it, people. The February short story from GigaNotoSaurus hurts. Like, a lot. It’s a gutting near future science fiction story where people’s consciousnesses can be saved even when their bodies die. Which might seem like a pretty positive bit of medical technology. But like with all medical tech, it’s only as positive as people have access to it. As people aren’t made to suffer and pay and go into debt just to afford necessary medical care. And well, it’s not the world we live in now and it’s not the world of this story. But it’s also just a fantastic story about two women put in an impossible situation, and their love, and their pain, and just everything. Fuck. To the review!

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #97

June brings four original stories to Lightspeed Magazine (one novelette and three short stories), many of which deal with oppression and voice. With characters who have survived something, or who are trying to survive something systemic and violent and difficult. Who don’t know how they can keep going, or what their struggles matter in the face of larger tyrannies. And yet each of these stories is hopeful in their own ways, where characters are able to find some way to move forward, to keep going, to stay alive even when everything around them seems to be hungry for their deaths. It’s a fairly difficult and dark set of stories this month, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t very good. So let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Reiko Murakami

Quick Sips - Flash Fiction Online April 2018

Continuing the newer tradition of coming out with fairly thematically linked issues, Flash Fiction Online presents an April full of fools. Or maybe fooling. Also aliens. Yup, all three stories feature alien beings, and in most of them there’s also a vein of something...well, of someone pulling one over on someone else. Maybe it’s an actress tricking an alien monster to spare Earth, or a group of alien agents trying to set up first contact on the sly, or even the own paranoid post-drunken-weekend-in-Vegas thoughts of a man who might have just married an extraterrestrial. In any case, the stories are largely bright and fun, even when they brush against planet eating and possible invasion. So without further delay, to the reviews!

Art by Dario Bijelac

Quick Sips - Shimmer #36 [April stuff]

The two stories from Shimmer’s April offerings are heavy with grief and the weight of the past. The weight of expectations. The weight of the family business. These are stories of people finding themselves swept away by the tides of other people’s lives and deeds. Subject to them and wounded by them, unsure if they can set those old hurts aside, unsure how to escape the hooks of the past and the obligations heaped on them by the generations that came before. For both main characters a time has come to both face the past and the future, and these stories do a wonderful job of capturing that moment with hope and despair, magic and possibilities. To the reviews!

Art by Sandro Castelli

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #83

This issue of Lightspeed Magazine definitely skews a bit more science fiction than fantasy, even in the stories that appear in the fantasy section. Exploring the space where magic meets science, the stories show just how…energetic SFF can be, and just how subdued and ponderous. The stories are balanced well, from a piece that takes a screaming look at the possible end of the world on the eyeball of a giant god to a heartwarming story about the allure of time travel and the problem of being too caught on the question of "what if?" These are stories that look at people reaching back to try and find some way to fix things that might not be broken. That feature characters trying to find, amidst their own hesitation and fear and regret, some way forward. And before I give too much away, let's get to the reviews!

Art by Odera Igbokwe

Quick Sips - Flash Fiction Online February 2017

February can be a month of love and Flash Fiction Online has certainly taken that broad idea and twisted it mercilessly, presenting three stories that each challenge the clean and saccharine nature of love that is often peddled this time of year like a box of unwanted cordials. The stories move from the doomed love of sentient appliances to how love marks us to how…well, just gonna skip that last one. These are stories which offer a lot of very different takes on love. Some of them touching, some of them humorous, and some of them something else entirely. So yeah, "love" is in the air and I'm ready to get to these reviews! 

Art by Dario Bijelac