Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 12/16/2019 & 12/23/2019

I'm not actually sure if Strange Horizons is done for the year with this short story and two poems, or if there's a surprise waiting for me on Monday (*puts head in hands, weeps*). Maybe there will be a new Samovar! Or a special issue! Or maybe this is it. Whatever the case, the works are wonderful and focus on conflict and division, at governments and change and devastation. The works find characters dealing with their worlds being torn apart and (maybe) put back together again. But always with a price, a cost in human lives. These are some bleak-at-times works, but they reveal the beauty of the human spirit, and hope, in the face of even the worst situations. To the reviews!