The Monthly Round is up!!!

You know the drill! My monthly recommendations (and drink pairings) for May 2016 are up over at Nerds of a Feather.

This month my picks are:

Tasting Flight: May 2016

"Breathe" by Cassandra Khaw (Clarkesworld)
"Director's Cut" by Matthew Bright (Harlot Media)
"1957" by Stephen Cox (Apex)
"How High Can Your Gods Count" by Tegan Moore (Strange Horizons)
"Three Points Masculine" by An Owomoyela (Lightspeed)
"Ye Highlands and Ye Lowlands" by Seanan McGuire (Uncanny)

Shots:

"Now Watch as Belinda Unmakes the World" by Lynette Mejía (Flash Fiction Online)
"Espie" by Richard Larson (Terraform)

"Nobody Puts Baby in a Chamber" by Alexis A. Hunter (Mothership Zeta)

Check out my full pairings and reviews over at Nerds of a Feather and, as always...

Cheers!

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #200

Beneath Ceaseless Skies is officially 200 issues old! Which wow, is quite the accomplishment, and the celebration means a double issue filled with fantasies that reveal worlds distant and magical or much closer to our own (and still, yes, magical). Characters struggle with guilt and moral dilemmas where there are no good options. People try to heal in the midst of conflict and violence and history and people come together, find comfort in the press of bodies, in moments of small compassions. It's a great collection of tales, well worthy of a celebration. To the reviews!

Art by Martin Ende

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 05/16/2016, 05/23/2016, & 05/30/2016

Okay, so closing up May is proving to take longer than anticipated, but the good news is there's tons of great stuff from this month to enjoy, including another three weeks of content from Strange Horizons. Three fiction pieces, three poems, and a pair of nonfiction makes this a rather weighty post, and it's definitely not any lighter when you look at the subject matter. Loss and growth and guilt dominate—characters stuck in cycles and wanting to know where to go, what to do, where their place is. And with all this great content, I should just get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Terraform May 2016

There is a part of me that stares in shock at the stories in this month's batch of Terraform SF offerings. Not just because they are rather shocking, about dangerous unknowns and the human tendency to push forward without thinking things through the most thoroughly. But also because all of these stories actually stick to the under 2,000 word guideline. Which means all of these stories know how to hit and bow and clear the stage, know how to reveal a future that teases, that compels, but that leaves so much deliciously unanswered. Time to review!

Quick Sips - Plasma Frequency Q2 2016 Part 1

May might be over but I'm perhaps a little behind on reviews so the May-train keeps on running with a look at the first half(ish) of Plasma Frequency's second quarter issue. Website issues have prevented some of the stories from being available and an art issue has prevented the issue itself from being ready yet, but I'm hoping both of those things will be fixed soon because these stories are quite good. Full disclosure: I have a story in this issue, which is available to read on the website now. Obviously, I will not be looking at it. But the rest of the stories are fair game, and present a fascinating array of science fictional visions circling around, well, circles and cycles of loss and resistance. Time to review!

Quick Sips - Tor dot com May 2016

Things have calmed down just a bit at Tor dot com for May. The first few months of the year have been packed with stories, but things are finally settling into more of a one-a-week pattern (which for this tired reviewer is probably healthier). As always, though, there's a great range of stories, mostly novelettes—fantasies and subverted fairy tales and contemporary dramas and science fiction journeys. Most of the tales, though, for being richly imagined, are very intimate in scope, about families and about people and about loss. And yes, okay, about giant murderous angels in need of thwarting. So without further dalliance on my part, to the reviews! 
 

Art by Kevin Hong

Quick Sips - The Book Smugglers May 2016

So the Year of the Superhero is officially upon us with new short fiction from The Book Smugglers. And if this first story is anything to go by then things are going to get…weird. But also pretty great. Tackling superhero-ing on a very micro scale, this first story creates an entire world in the space of a small woodland, the characters mostly insects and the action visceral and intense. It's definitely not what I was expecting—but that's rarely a bad thing and here it means a mostly-delightful tale that I should just review already!
 

Art by Melanie Cook

Quick Sips - Harlot Media May 2016

Today I'm back looking at a new serial fiction from Harlot Media, a new favorite place to go for some edgy but beautiful speculative short fiction that flirts with the erotic and delivers with power and imagination. This story explores early (and much more recent, too) cinema and the institutional erasure and/or censoring of positive queer content, and stands in defiance of the "classic queer tragedy." And if this is what I can expect from Harlot going forward, then I'm certainly tuning back in to whatever they have out next. To the review!
 

Quick Sips - Nightmare #44

This month's Nightmare Magazine looks at the distance between monsters and men. Between gods and devils and ambition and destruction. In both stories humans find themselves face to face with…well, I don't want to give too much away. But needless to say the stories look at the evils plaguing humanity, and the horrors that are strictly human-made, and then asks what place supernatural horror and horror writing have in such a world. Where starvation and murder and torture aren't exactly rare. What purpose does the scary story hold? Both stories have answers to that, though they take very different tracks to get to their destinations. But I should really get to those reviews! 

Art by Daniel Sherekin

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #199

By the power vested in me as some random reviewer on the internet, I declare the theme of this Beneath Ceaseless Skies issue of be: walking. Which might seem odd but really, both stories focus on walking. On air. Through the desert. But walking forward and not looking back or looking down. They are about bridges and distances, but not necessarily about maintaining those bridges. More like building them from now to the future. Escaping islands of solitude and stagnation with a drive to move forward. To keep walking even when it defies convention and possibility. To step into the clouds, and the future. It's a great issue and I'm going to get to my reviews! 

Art by Geoffrey Icard

Quick Sips - Fantastic Stories of the Imagination #234

The May/June Fantastic Stories of the Imagination is out and, as always, provides a pair of punchy stories that provoke and challenge. Both stories this issue represent somewhat new directions for the publication. One is a solidly science fictional story but with a healthy dose of the bizarre and is definitely not for the faint of heart, and the second story is interesting both because it's about the shortest story I've noticed from the publication and because it's solidly fantasy. Both stories manage to do a lot with the space they have, though.

And I want to mention that FSI is running a Kickstarter right now for the first of a series of planned Take Over issues, this one called Queers Take Over FSI.  It looks like an interesting idea and I can certainly say that since they've relaunched I've quite enjoyed the content that FSI puts out and hope they continue for a good long while. But okay, to those reviews!

Quick Sips - Mothership Zeta #3

The editorials in this issue of Mothership Zeta swirl around the idea of fun. And the stories of the issue do a fine job of illustrating the many ways that fun can work. A fun that is funny and a fun that is fast and action-packed and a fun that is clever and witty and a fun that is earnest and uplifting. The stories move well, from light to darker to transcendent, each piece well selected and placed in the larger flow of the issue. And all told each story made me smile at something, a clever line or a funny situation or a breath of hope, and if fun was the goal, then I'd say the issue is a success. To the reviews! 

Art by Elizabeth Leggett

Quick Sips - Mithila Review #3

A brand new Mithila Review is out and the editorial is a call for submissions. Get on it, any writer peoples out there! Because the publication continues to be a great mix of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, with perhaps the most SFF poetry I've seen per issue outside of, you know, solely poetry publications. This month features two flash fiction stories (both reprints but new to me and I wanted to cover them) and eight poems from five different poets! And the idea of between-ness is still at the front of each of the pieces. Between genres or between histories or between worlds. Between apocalypses and between the natural and the manufactured. And there's a nice mix of humor and tragedy, art and longing. And I should just get to those reviews! 

Art by Abdulrahiman Appabhai Almelkar

Quick Sips - Apex #84

At first glance the May issue of Apex Magazine could be accused of playing it safe. Time travel? Monsters? The issue is packed with classic SFF tropes, and yet there's nothing about this issue that I would accuse of being cliche or tired. No, these are stories that take those classic elements and twist them until they howl, until their screams become something that rings through the halls of night and off the page and into the brains of the reader. This is one of the shorter issues of the year but it more than makes up for it with stories that grip and don't let go. That, just when you think you have a handle on them, dip down again into someplace deeper, darker, calling you to follow. So follow if you dare, dear readers, it's time to review!
 

Art by Robert Carter

Quick Sips - Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #28

I'm adding a new publication to my review pile this month with the twenty-eighth issue of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly. It's a publication that I've admired from afar for a while and provides both fantasy fiction and poetry. This issue is a bit of a difficult one to approach, though, as two of the pieces are continuations of stories that began in the last issue. And one of those is technically the second half of the third story in a series of stories. So, without the context to feel fully comfortable jumping into it, I'm not going to be looking at "." but I certainly encourage to check it out and see what they think. Because I'm skipping that one, though, I will be looking at the entirety of the other 2-parter. Confused yet? I swear next issue will hopefully be hiccup-free. As for this issue, it presents a nice mix of fantasy tales, from fairy tales to fantasy horrors to near-grimdark military pieces. But each piece captures or complicates the idea of the title, the idea of heroic fantasy. To the reivews! 

Art by Jereme Peabody

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 05/02/2016 & 05/09/2016

I'm actually rather surprised that there isn't a bit more to cover from these two weeks of Strange Horizons, but as what is here is excellent you won't hear me complaining. One story, two poems, and a very revealing nonfiction piece are, in this instance, more than enough to absolutely blow my mind. The story is deep and fun and dark and has an ending like a hammer shattering a walnut. The poetry is a mix of love and scenery and place and destruction, about the way things fall apart and how we are poorer afterward. And the nonfiction looks at SFF reviewing and is just a great resource for people wanting to know a bit about the landscape (and some of its systemic problems). It's a heady mix, and I'm going to get to reviewing it!

Art by Nora Potwora

Quick Sips - Uncanny #10 (May Stuff)

Just when I think I might have Uncanny Magazine figured out, it throws a curve-ball. Maybe that's a bit dramatic (and this month has certainly been one for publications taking some chance). But where normally I feel Uncanny keeps things rather grounded in the "real world" with a flavoring of the fantastic, the unusual, the uncanny, this month things get a bit more...out there. And certainly more dark. The fiction, at least, is about reaching out and touching something different, dark, and unhuman, and finding a sort of destruction in it. They are shocking pieces, filled with death and life and difference, and it's a bit of a tonal shift for the publication, but an effective one. Add in some thought-provoking nonfiction and a sweet (pun intended) poem, and the month's offerings maintain an interesting balance. So time to review it all!
 

Art by Galen Dara

Quick Sips - GigaNotoSaurus May 2016

This month's offering from GigaNotoSaurus is not exactly for the faint of heart. It is not exactly a happy sort of story, nor a short one. It is an experience, though, appropriately weighty and dense with a fully realized world (all contained inside an insulating dome). Drifting through age and love and loss and struggle, the story doesn't offer any easy answers, but it certainly knows what questions to ask. So yeah, time to get to that review!

Quick Sips - Shimmer #31 (May Stuff)

So May over at Shimmer Magazine apparently means a bit of a break from business as usual and the beginning of an issue that takes things in a science fictional direction. Not that Shimmer never does sci fi, but the entire issue is dedicated to it, and the first three stories of the issue show just what kind of stories to expect. Namely, sci fi stories about creation and growing up. About loyalty and abuse and manipulation and brainwashing and all things beautiful and ugly. The editorial eludes to an emphasis on voice, and the voices of the these stories are equal parts wounded and desperate and alone and yearning. So time to review!

Art by Sandro Castelli

Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #116

There might not quite be as many 10K+ word stories in this month's Clarkesworld Magazine as last month, but it doesn't mean it skimps on quantity or quality. Five original stories, all but one over 6K (all but two over 8K), means that this is still a dense brick of an issue, with stories that build expansive worlds and meticulously chip away at the safety of the reader. Once again all five original stories are science fiction (which for this publication isn't exactly a surprise), and showcase some stunning trips through space and time. Visions of humanity reaching out and touching something. In some, the act is constructive. In some, naïve. But in all of them the stories show how space shapes humanity, and how humanity shapes space. How we fit ourselves in to that vast emptiness and find something about ourselves. So time to review! 

Art by Peter Mohrbacher