Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 10/11/2018, 10/15/2018, & 10/22/2018

The Strange Horizons fund drive is in full swing, which means extra fiction and poetry as they reach closer to their goal. Along with two regular issues, that means two novelettes and two poems to look at today, all of them building interesting worlds around hurts, around injustices. That might be the more mundane march of capitalism toward a future defined by its inequality and greed, or it might be a vivid world that has developed in the ocean, where those people who were cast away have built a society for themselves only to find the toxic influences of the very people they hoped they'd escaped lingering and infesting them. It's a dark collection of works but ones with sparks that cannot be completely extinguished, and there's a strong hope to themes on display. So let's get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Tor dot com April 2018

It’s a rather full month of stories from Tor this April, and also one that leans heavily towards fantasy. From gifting someone prophetic penmanship to alternate histories with hippopotamus riders, from cities full of corruption and song to cold waters full of blood and bone, the pieces look at magic and people trying to find connections in a dangerous and mysterious world. Many of the pieces focus on relationships, on main characters in love or looking for love or falling out of love. Their partnerships might be full of violence, or full of hope, or full of music, but they all show people trying to find ways to be together. And it’s a rather sweet (and occasionally creepy) collection of stories, perfect for the first breath of spring. Let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Alyssa Winans

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #218

The first issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies' February offerings serves up two pieces about women in difficult situations. Women of magic and of power who have been tasked with using their abilities to fight against the weight of oppression. To fight against a cruel king. To fight against a cruel cost. Both women find themselves at a moment when victory seems distant, when the eye of justice seems to have gone blind. And both women have to find their own ways to move past their grief and their loss and use their magic to pave a way forward. To keep fighting. These are moving stories of resistance and struggle, and I'm going to jump right into my reviews! 

Art by Florent Llamas

THE SIPPY AWARDS 2016! The "Time to Run Some Red Lights" Sippy for Excellent Action!!! in SFF

Welcome back to the Second Annual Sippy Awards! The short SFF awards that no one wanted is still going on for some reason! I've shipped my favorite relationships. I've shivered in fear of my favorite horror. I've bawled until I was nothing but a husk of raw feels. And now I'm back again. I'm better than ever! Because it's time to get exicted!

SFF has the power to tug at our hearts, but it also has the ability to get our heart pounding. To get our blood hot and our fists clenched. There's a lot of SFF that tends toward the cerebral side of things, but there's also SFF out there that sweeps everything onto the floor, tips over the table, and uses it for cover in a sudden blaster battle. And today I want to look at the stories that shoot first. That jump out into the open air without a parachute. That drive a hundred miles an hour in heavy traffic because there are cyborg-ninjas on motorbikes who will destroy the future unless you get the enchanted chinchilla back to his home dimension.

Ahem, well maybe not exactly that last one. Still, these are stories that do that cool slow walking away as the explosion happens. That tell the others to go on ahead and then ready their shotgun, waiting for the enemy to round the corner. It's time for…

The "Time to Run Some Red Lights" Sippy 

for Excellent Action! in Short SFF

Quick Sips - Tor dot com October 2016

October has been a surprisingly full month for Tor dot com, which saw the release of six original stories. It's also a nice mix of science fiction and fantasy and horror, each story reveling in worlds richly detailed and masterfully fleshed out. These are not often easy stories, with recurring themes of death and rebirth, but there is a strong vein of control here as well. Of being able to tell your own story. Of escaping the confines of the expected, the cage of the acceptable. These are stories about pushing boundaries and reclaiming identities, and I'm going to start the reviews…NOW! 

Art by Jasu Hu

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 03/14/2016 & 03/21/2016

It's March and spring is upon us! At Strange Horizons that means stories of water melting and things awakening. Of fairy tales and danger and loneliness. Of the resolve to do something. From a far future where the world has been irrevocably changed to a time much closer to our own when the weight of living might open doors best left closed, the stories are dark and layered, about human interconnections and separation, responsibility and the will to life and death. The poetry takes on almost mythic overtones, setting a few creepy and unsettling scenes, and I apparently have a lot to say on the piece of nonfiction. So yeah, lots to review. Let's get to it!
 

Art by Luke Spooner

Quick Sips - Terraform December 2015

It is only slightly odd when none of the fiction published at Terraform turn out to be flash fiction. Though the publication normally keeps things pretty short, it is rather notorious at breaking its own rules. Regularly stories stretch long, and here again we have no story under two thousand words and one that nearly makes it to six. Not that I'm really complaining. There's even a graphic story this month, which I think might be a first for the publication. All in all, lots to see and lots to review. So let's go!

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 08/03/2015 and 08/10/2015

Two new weeks of Strange Horizons means two new short stories and two new poems. In a rare show of restraint (more because work is kicking my ass) I will be skipping over reviewing the nonfiction. I still recommend everyone go and check it out, but as both of the columns dealt with texts that I'm not familiar with, I'm not the best of judges on how well they succeed. They're interesting reads and make me want to do more, but as it is I did look at the fiction and poetry and it's a great collection of interesting characters and ideas, strong images and haunting messages (sometimes literally). So before I go on too long about it all, to the reviews!

Art by Geneva Benton