Quick Sips - Tor dot com August 2016

I want to concentrate on the ways that I like the stories from this month's Tor dot com offerings. There's a lot here, especially for fans of a certain kind of epic fantasy. For my money, though, the stories that shine are the ones that step back and witness the meetings between worlds. The ties that bind people together across species and across space. Stories that imagine humans seeing something completely different from themselves and not recoiling in terror. Or at least not entirely. This is something of a mixed month for me, personally, but I'm sure that there will be lots of people who find something valuable in each of the stories. So yeah, to the reviews! 

Art by Jaime Jones

Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #111

For it's December issue, Clarkesworld's gift to you and me is a month of great fiction. Four stories anchor the issue, all of them science fictional in nature. This issue manages to mostly stick to hope, most of the stories finding a way forward despite ugliness, despite despair, despite adversity. And all of them tell some fine tales about the edges of space, about the edges of human achievement. About people surviving and thriving in environments that could easily kill them. It's a full issue of fiction, plus an interesting nonfiction piece dealing with a topic I have OPINIONS(!) on, the Classics. So let's get to it!

Art by Peter Mohnbacher

Quick Sips - Apex #76

It's interesting to me how varied issues of Apex Magazine can be. One week it's have four pieces of fiction and four poems and the next four pieces of fiction and one poem and here there are five pieces of fiction and two poems. It does keep things new and fluid, changing, and at least I can trust everything to be high quality. This month the theme seems to be isolation, the characters mostly dealing with life on their own, cut off from help by choice, by pain, by the elements, by disorder. The issue does an excellent job of exploring the idea of being alone, cut off, different, and how people react to those who are alone. So review time!

Art by Ekaterina Zagustina