Quick Sips - Tor dot com January 2020

Art by John Anthony Di Giovanni

Welcome to Tor dot com's January, which turned things up to eleven with three short stories and three novelettes. That's...a lot, thanks in large part to the release of three linked stories on the same day (pretty sure that was a novel's worth of words in the same setting out at once, so yeah, lots). The stories are a mix, as always, though fantasy dominates, with historical fantasy and slipstream leading the way and the lone science fiction piece balancing things out. There's a lot to get to, a lot of versions of our world to experience, so I'll cut to the chase and get going with my reviews!

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #100 [part 2 - fantasy]

The anniversary fun continues with a look at the Lightspeed Magazine #100 fantasy fiction! By and large, the fantasy stories found in the issue range a bit shorter than the science fiction (with all five stories being short, and one of those crossing into flash fiction). They also deal a lot with ghosts, and loss, and longing. Indeed, a great deal of these stories focus on relationships and what happens when they end or are in danger of ending. They show people whose connections have been severed by death, by grief, by violence, and how those wounds can perhaps be healed by compassion and love. It’s a rather lovely if dark bunch of stories, heavy with sorrow but rising toward something lighter (though no less strong). And with all the fiction to look at, I should get right to the reviews!

Art by Galen Dara

Quick Sips - Uncanny #14 (February Stuff)

The pieces in the February content from Uncanny do a great job of giving a wide ranging view of what makes up short SFF. From stories about love and immigration and Poe to a poem about being hot for Mars to nonfiction that educates and challenges, the issue provides a stunning arrangement of SFF that pushes the boundaries on narrative form and style. Plus there's a story just in time for a certain romantic holiday that is incredibly appropriate and rather fun. The story brings the laughter and the tears and the raw silences and does it in a way that is inspiring and imaginative. So yeah, let's get to the reviews! 

Art by John Picacio

Quick Sips - Nightmare #48

The stories in this issue of Nightmare Magazine are a mix of older tropes and newer innovations. The many faces of haunted houses. A very different take on cults and Heaven. These are stories that don't flinch away from difficult topics—death, suicide, grief, despair—but the stories also show or hint at the other side of that, of the only power able to cut through the oppression of loss. Hope. They show the utter hell of hopelessness and the redemption of hope, of escape, of finding power to move on and move toward a future that might be brighter. So to the reviews! 

Art by Luis Molinero

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #76

The September issue of Lightspeed Magazine is all about crime and punishment. About people running from their pasts, running from authority, running from justice or injustice alike. In each of the stories there is a looming threat of some sanction. Police officers trying to maintain a status quo or a corrupt government trying to quash transparency or some nebulous force urging surrender or an actual crocodile waiting for the right moment to… These are stories that complicate crime and resistance, activism and revolution. And though they are unified by their focus on characters running from pursuit, from punishment, they show very different motivations and outcomes. So, without further dithering, to the reviews! 

Art by Reiko Murakami

Quick Sips - Uncanny #8 (January Stuff)

Today I'm looking at the latest from Uncanny Magazine, which kicks off it's second full year. It's once more brought a strong mix of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, looking at the things that bring us together, the things that keep us apart. The fiction revels in the strange and magical, the poetry is dark as shadow, and the nonfiction is sporting a pocket protector and a letter jacket. It's a nice mix of elements, nothing really dominating thematically but each piece strong, honed, and giving each space to succeed on their own. So time to get to some reviews!

Art by Priscilla H. Kim

Quick Sips - Tor.com October 2015

October at Tor has actually seemed a bit of a reprieve from super-long stories, which is rather nice given the story-load for this month. That doesn't mean that they don't bring the quality, as these four stories are all rather dense reads, building some amazing settings and worlds that seem to flit and bend and dance. The settings are alive, characters in their own rights, and it is quite the treat to discover each one. From the alien world of the Cyclopes to the onion-like layers of interlocking dimensions, the stories bring some startling ideas, and do not disappoint in executing them. To the reviews!

Art by Tommy Arnold

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #65

More than anything, this issue of Lightspeed prompts me to examine my definition of strange. Because these stories are all a bit...well, some of them get very abstract. Surreal. From the science fiction to the fantasy, this month is about outlines and sketches, about things that jar and upset and beg to be examined deeply. Four stories, as normal, and all of them with a nice heaping helping of strange. Of Weird. And all the better for it. So time to review!

Art by Blaithiel

Quick Sips - Nightmare #33

The middle of the month means a new issue of Nightmare Magazine, and this issue definitely brings it with the dark and rather disturbing. Of course, the two stories approach horror in two very different ways. One is a sort of fairy tale filled with a sense of justice and things unable to stay buried. The other slips on the classic trappings of survival horror to offer up a bit of a thrill ride with plagues and things more dangerous still. It's an interesting month of horror, and I'm jumping right in!

Art by Okan Bülbül

Quick Sips - Shimmer #24 (March Stuff)

So today I'm looking at (mostly) all the March releases from Shimmer magazine. Why the qualification? Because technically there's a story coming out on March 31st. And yeah, I can't get to that this month. So that story will be reviewed as if it is a April release (also for purposes of the Monthly Round) because it would be too difficult to put off making decisions for that until the 31st. That said, on to the stories!

Art by Sandro Castelli

Stories:

"The Scavenger's Nursery" by Maria Dahvana Headley (4400 words)

Trash is an interesting topic for thought and discussion, but in this story, where trash has become sentient and entire landfills stand up with a will to life that rivals our own, trash is frightening as hell. Because trash is everywhere. There are islands of trash floating in our oceans, and the world is, if you'll pardon my pun, littered with landfills and trash heaps and it's not something that most people want to think about. It gets swept under rugs for a reason. It's picked up and disposed of and we forget about it. But this story doesn't really let that happen. This story shows the trash unwilling to be the silent partner in our destruction of the earth. Instead, it takes the wheel, staking its own claim to the planet as dominant, as superior. It's a great way of approaching trash, by having them magically gained a sort of awareness, like all our neglect paved the way for them to quietly amass the right parts. The story focuses on a few characters while also giving an overview of the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine...). It's a poignant and powerful narrative, the way the trash seems to mimic us while also doing something deeper, taking what we throw away and creating something with it, creating life with it. I'm not entirely sure on all my thoughts about the ending, but it's definitely a set of powerful images, from the landfills standing up, our past returning, to that last bit of trash and the whisper of strange voices. An excellent story.

"The Cult of Death" by KL Pereira (3145 words)

A young girl with a voice that kills tries to find her way in a community that really doesn't like her in this story. The community, staunchly Catholic, has sort of infected her with guilt, with the belief that she is responsible for the deaths the result from her voice. More, they make her believe that her voice is a punishment for her being evil. As a child, she doesn't have much choice but to believe them, and she ends up hating herself, wishing that God would take away her voice. Until a woman with prosthetic hands and feet enters town. Another outcast, the girl and Marsha, the woman, form a bond when the girl discovers she can speak with Marsha with her full voice. They confess to each other and Marsha teaches the girl that she doesn't have to be ashamed or guilty about her voice. That her voice is a gift that she should use. That she can do good. Told in a second person, the girl becomes the reader, because it's likely true that everyone is guilted by society, pressured and blamed for things that they are not responsible for. It's an effective method of telling the story, and flows seamlessly, to the point that I would forget about the second person voice at times. It's a softer story, but interesting and well told and definitely worth a look.

Quick Sips - Uncanny #3 (March stuff)

Today I'm looking at the March stories from Uncanny Magazine. And this month there's the added treat of including the Valentine's Day story that they ran. I was tempted to do a separate review for that at the time, but February was a full month so instead it's being included here. So yeah, let's go!

Art by Carrie Ann Baade

Stories:

"The Lamps Thereof Are Fire and Flames" by Rosamund Hodge (5107 words)

This story takes a little while to pull itself together, but wow, when it does it is a dark fairy tale done oh so right. Mostly it seems a re-imagining of Snow White, only my god is this one more depressing. And it's told over generations, with numerous players. Mostly it's the tale of three women who fall under the spell of Love, or of something preying on them who calls himself Love. At first he seems such a good thing, but he cares only for the fairest, and his love is not safe. It is destructive, to the point where the women, the Queens of a kingdom, keep trying to escape him, so that one sends her daughter away without her heart in hopes that she will be spared the curse. Alone without a heart, she is taken in by seven women who become her friends, and one of them, Leaf, becomes her best friend. There is not much of a happy ending for them. More matricide follows and Leaf is killed by her friend by way of a spell and becomes a magic mirror. But the mirror tells the story of how all of this started, and so in the end

"Those" by Sofia Samatar (5048 words)

This story, a bit like the last, is told mainly as a spoken story. Unlike the last story, though, where the narrator was also the storyteller, this one breaks those roles into two people. The narrator of the story is Sarah, a young woman caring for her aging father, who is the storyteller, who tells her of his time in Africa working on a plantation along with an old friend George. The story meanders a bit, as the old man is easily distracted, taking asides to explain events that happened back then, when he and George and the overseer were the only white people around and when he fell in love with a local girl, Sarah's mother. The story is ponderous and seems to be about the way those locals are treated, the natives that are dehumanized and made into "Those." Because even though Sarah's father married a native from that area of Africa, he still obviously had his issues with her people, as a retelling of an attack on the plantation shows. How he describes it isn't lost to Sarah, who lives in a sort of fog of racism and fear. The story moves until she begins to be more bold in public, until she's about to go a church that might help her feel more like she belongs. The language of the story is strong, subtle. The way the ants are describes and paralleled to the native Africans, how that casual racism gets to Sarah, twisting her dreams. A bit of an understated story, it still manages to hit hard with a great last line and image.

"Translation Corporis" by Kat Howard (3239 words)

This one's a bit of a weird story about a girl and then woman, Lena, who is secretly...host(?) to a city building itself for her. The city, which seems to live inside her, takes her favorite places out of the real world and incorporates them into itself along with pieces of Lena. Some of her blood, a rib, her iron, all are taken out of her body and she weakens, starts seeing doctors. To the city, this is a good thing. It is growing and becoming more realized and it wants to open itself for her. For Lena, it's not quite so good, because it seems like it could kill her. There's a lot of religious imagery taking place in this story, saints and women whose relics are stolen. Again and again the idea that you have to be dead to be a saint comes up. So in many ways it feels like Lena is not long for the world. When she finally disappears entirely, though, and enters into the perfect city, she doesn't linger. She doesn't stay. She takes back herself, takes it all back so that the city collapses. It's a nice way to show that she's not going to let anyone make a saint out of her. She tears it all down and leaves, not willing to be made into a city. And for all the city weeps and is (literally perhaps) broken up by this, she's unapologetic. It's her body, after all, and she never volunteered to have it made into a city. An interesting story and one I might revisit, as I get the sense I might have missed something. Still, solid work.

"Ivory Darts, Golden Arrows" by  Maria Dahvana Headley (3544 words)

This is definitely a bizarre story, out of time and out of place. Hypothetically it takes place on Earth, in America (from the reference to the Pony Express), but it also takes place in a magical fantasy realm between two mountains. And Miss Kisseal is a postmistress not to be trifled with. The story is kind of crazy, with Miss Kisseal out delivering mail to all sorts of people on both mountains and between and having to deal with a whole lot of people looking for love. The entire area is terrible at love, so when Cupid comes calling and shoots Miss Kisseal with an arrow, things have gotten weird. What happens next, though, is both amazing and sexual and strange as hell. It's a well done story that had me smiling along with the personality of the writing and the characters. It might not make too much literal sense, but the story does a great job of capturing a feeling. Maybe it's the feeling of getting a love letter in the mail from a secret admirer. Maybe it's the feeling of being struck by a magical arrow on a cold, cold day. Whatever it is, it's the feeling of Valentine's Day and it's cute and affirming and fun.

Poem:

"Deep Bitch" by C.S.E. Cooney

This poem has an interesting form to it, an interesting flow. In theory it's a conversation between a person and a (perhaps supernatural) talking dog. But then, that explanation of this poem doesn't really do it justice. More, it seems a conversation between a person and their inner fire, that deep part of them that doesn't want to be nice, that wants to rip and tear and be satisfyingly selfish and free of the constraints of societal expectations. A conversation between a person and their personal deep bitch. And in that it seems to click for me. Here is a person very concerned with how they are perceived, with doing the right thing. In some ways it's about a person with some privilege worrying about it, not wanting to take advantage of it. But, obviously, it's a harder road to walk than just pushing forward with complete ignorance and lack of care. So here this person is complaining to to their inner voice, to their Deep Bitch. And their Deep Bitch has absolutely no time for their whining. That part of them is action, violence, and need. And it sees that what the person is doing is just complaining, that it doesn't need her. Or, the person realizes that they have no reason to invoke the Deep Bitch. Yes, things are hard, but things are hard for many people, and the person backs away from the Deep Bitch, saving it for a time when it will truly be needed. It's a nice poem, the way it spreads away from the confines of the left alignment, the way it evokes violence and need. It's striking and I recommend giving it a careful read.

Nonfiction:

"Afrofuturism Rising" by Ytasha L. Womack

This piece is mainly an overview and brief history of what Afrofuturism is and where to find out more about it. Which is awesome. I names names when it comes to authors in the field which is great for knowing what to go out and buy already. It also discusses identity and the power of having a term and language to define what it is you're into and about. Because having that language allows you to connect with others about it, allows you to identify a certain way and find some solidarity there, to find out that you're a part of something that has a deep history and tradition. It talks about empowerment and optimism and just generally gets me excited to read some of the texts referenced. I find the idea of language effecting identity to be fascinating and quite true, too. That having something to call your movement makes it seem more real, less easy to be dismissed. It connects it to more people, gives it power. So yeah, good stuff.

"Family Matters: How Geek Communities Turn Dysfunctional" by Stephanie Zvan

This is a great and rather nuanced look at communities as family and how people can get really upset about them. This isn't specifically about geek communities, but given the space it appears in it's easy to see how what's being brought up applies. And really it's a call to be mature and listen and, more than anything else, try. It recognizes that trying is not a very fun things, that it's draining and that most people in these communities are doing so because they want to belong. They are working, mostly unpaid, to belong and so when things happen that causes strife they are too personally invested to be truly detached from it. Which is true. I know I'm super invested in things and when I hear something that feel like it's pushing me out or telling me I'm not wanted in the communities that I work hard to belong to, I do feel threatened. I do want to push back. And this gives some different options, urging stepping back and thinking, taking time, perhaps even seeking external help. It's worth reading and thinking about, surely.

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #57

Today I'm looking at the latest issue of Lightspeed Magazine. Four stories as always, two science fiction and two fantasy. And this month the stories range a bit more in length, from under 2k to over 11k. So that's a little unusual, but the quality is still up to par. So here I go!

Stories:

"Red Planet" by Caroline M. Yoachim (1926 words)

This story shows a blind biologist struggling with the restrictions to immigrating to Mars. Perfectly capable of doing lab work and living and doing everything she needs to, she's still prevented from going to Mars and participating in the xenobiology program there. Only then the opportunity comes to get an experimental treatment to become sighted so that she can pass the test and immigrate. It's something she's never really wanted, sight, and the experience leaves her depressed, not wanting to give up what she's worked for. Only she still wants to go to Mars. So she goes through with it, and learns to see, and gets accepted. And then, along the way to Mars, she decides to take her sight away using a magnetic device that would cause her implants to fail. It's an ending that I can understand. I can understand her wanting to meet this challenge on her own terms, and without having to give into her principles. She doesn't want to have to deal with sight. She doesn't want people expecting her to use her sight. And though she's interested in color, interested in certain things, she decides it's better to be in darkness, to return to what she was. That part of me asks why she didn't just keep her eyes closed reinforces the idea that she never would have been free of the expectation of using her sight if she didn't physically remove it. So well done, story.

"And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead" by Brooke Bolander (11123 words)

This is a fast and furious story about a female cyborg named Rhye killing a bunch of things. Well, not really. Really it's more about a female cyborg named Rhye who's really, really good at killing a bunch of things finding herself in a situation where she has to trust someone else, where she's confronted by the totality of her life and realizes that she's not the kill-everything-and-fuck-the-world machine she thought she was. Because her partner in crime, Rack, has gotten his head blown off. Which doesn't really kill him, as his mind is engaged in trying to deal with a particularly nasty security system, but which makes things...complicated, and makes Rhye face herself and how she feels about Rack. Kind of literally with the facing herself bit, as the security system is based off a younger version of her, one that has nothing to lose and doesn't care if she lives or dies. It's a fun story, as Rhye is a fun narrator, all action and violence and it's fun to watch the carnage. With it, though, there is also a gooey center of her growing a bit and realizing that she's growing, realizing that she doesn't want to be alone anymore. Not that she can't still kill everything. But with someone with her. It's a fun blast of a story, and makes it's longer length pass quite quickly. Indeed.

"And the Winners Will Be Swept Out to Sea" by Maria Dahvana Headley (5718 words)

Stories like this normally make me wonder if I'm missing some reference. Probably it doesn't matter, but I do wonder if there is some particular story behind the monsters here or if the rituals and the characteristics are all original. Whatever the case, this is a story about a water creature who falls in love with a man and then loses him. Only she doesn't really lose him in the ways she thinks, and they rediscover each other in a different form and decide to try again, to keep going. The story is melancholy, told to the man that she has lost. It's a strange, poetic style, and not one that I would have looked for at Lightspeed. But here it is, and it works fairly well, diving through the depths of loss and grief and time. There is a weariness that is conveyed quite strongly, with the water creature not wanting to keep going. She is old and doesn't know if living is worth it anymore, but she manages to keep going. Parts of this are a little hard to figure out, or were for me, but overall it's a lovely, lonely story that I enjoyed.

"Things You Can Buy for a Penny" by Will Kaufman (4198 words)

This story is more a series of stories, of people visiting the wet gentlemen at a magic well and making wishes in hopes that their lives will improve. And for most of them, it does. Not all, but th wet gentleman is certainly more considerate than a monkey's paw. The wishes he grants are perhaps edged but they are honest, at least in my mind. And the stories go deeper, echoing Tim's journey to the well, sinking down layer by layer. The voice and the imagery all is well done, evoking an older time without really setting a time or place. There is just a sense that this is an old story, that it goes back and back, a cycle. Which is why it's a little difficult to see too much horror in the story. It reads mostly like a horror but being the wet gentleman doesn't seem like a terrible thing. Once freed, he doesn't seem evil. And there's the sense that Tim will escape the same way, so to me it's more just a fairy tale-esque fantasy, one with some grim elements but ultimately one that just shows that some things never change, that people always seek creatures granting wishes.