Quick Sips - Diabolical Plots #65

Art by Joey Jordan

July brings two new stories to Diabolical Plots, and they’re both about abilities that make people different. And the responsibilities of those who have such abilities. To work proactively for good. To save those who can be saved. To put their own safety, their own lives, on the line, because even if they didn’t cause what’s happening, they have to be involved with trying to fix it. Otherwise they become part of the systems that failed them, part of the cycle of difference and exploitation and fear and violence they claim to want to end. So yeah, let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Nightmare #90

Art by Patila / Adobe Stock Art

Both of the stories in the March Nightmare Magazine deal with urban legends. With how they might start, and how they spread. And both of them rather directly examine the power of the darkness, the dangers that come from speaking into it seeking an answer. The issue is superbly paired to infect and spread, the nature of urban legends made a kind of contagion that can leap from person to person. Where even if a legend started its life as pure fiction, something can happen to it, believe fleshing it out, giving it very real teeth. It’s a creepy, a series of warnings, but let’s just walk past the boldly printed signs saying “Stay Out” and see what the reviews bring!

Quick Sips - Nightmare #84

Art by Chorazin / Fotolia

The two stories of Nightmare's September issues take on horror tropes old and very, very new. From a found text detailing a strange being hidden in the distant past to a new game craze sweeping a future where immersive gaming is possible, the stories deal with situations where a story takes on a life of its own. Where the whispers in crowded markets and quiet, dusty libraries lead to a monster who looks like a man. Where the corporate greed of game makers to create the most perfect (and profitable) gaming experience waken something hiding at the edge of the collective unconscious. The stories are disturbing and visceral, and pack in some shock to go with the creeping dread. To the reviews!

THE SIPPY AWARDS 2018! The "Time to Run Some Red Lights" Sippy for Excellent Action!!! in SFF

Welcome back to the Fourth Annual Sippy Awards! Some part of you might be wondering, “why?” The answer: to celebrate short SFF across different styles that make excellent use of various elements to shine as examples of why I love this field. There’s no panel of judges or voting population, just me and my inflated ego and love of short SFF. Given how most short SFF awards focus on length, I wanted to look instead at how stories use different elements to stand out and be powerful. This year I’ve already shipped some excellent relationship, cowered before some excellent horror, and bawled from the some emotionally devastating reads. Which means today it’s time to put the pedal to the metal with...

The “Time to Run Some Red Lights” Sippy Awards 

for Excellent Action! in Short SFF

These are stories that got my blood pumping, that made me want to run outside and punch an eagle in the face. Or, perhaps more accurately, they made me want to climb into a mech suit and punch the moon! I mean, come on, the moon is pretty smug up there, always looking down on everyone. Just saying. Anyway, the action doesn't always have to be traditional battles and brawls. Some of these stories are about a chase, or a race. Some are about war and the struggle of the individual against the weight of history and press of injustice. But these stories run hot, fast, and furious, and I think that stories like that deserve to be seen, because they do show how much fun and thrilling short SFF can be without sacrificing nuance or meaning.

As to the venues, there's perhaps less surprises here as they have been in other categories. All the venues are pro-paying and rather high prestige. Uncanny and Strange Horizons are both making second appearances in this years Sippys, and Lightspeed punches its ticket along with both Clarkesworld and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. It's not that, in my opinion, any of these publications are more action-focused, but when they choose to go for it, they do brilliantly. So let's get to the awards!

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #104

Art by Reiko Murakami

A new year brings some familiar faces to Lightspeed Magazine, including two new stories from larger works that have appeared before at the publication. More than that, though, the stories have a certain focus on them, of growth and cycles and family. Of people in situations where they are questioning the givens in their lives—the rules and the goals that they’ve always thought they were working towards. For some of them, this moment of crisis and examination causes their outlooks and their motivations to crack. For others, though, it allows them to remember what they are doing and why they are doing it. The stories look at cycles, at the ways that people fall into patterns of harm and isolation, and how they can seek to break through that and forge into uncharted territory, toward a future made better by their efforts. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Uncanny #24 Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction! [September Fiction]

Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction! is here!!! And with it comes a whole heck of a lot of fiction and poetry. To be specific, ten stories and ten poems. But, because this is also a regular issue of Uncanny, the work will be released publicly over two months. And so, to keep things manageable for me, I’m going to be tackling this extra-big issue in four parts—September fiction, September poetry, October fiction, and October poetry. So let’s dig in! The first half of the issue’s fiction is up and features five short stories touching on aliens, assistive devices, families, and a whole lot of disabled characters getting shit done. The work in these focuses primarily (for me, at least) on occupations and growing up. About facing down intolerance and violence and finding ways to find community, hope, and beauty in a universe that can often be ugly and cruel. So let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Likhain

Quick Sips - Uncanny #23 [July stuff]

It’s dinosaur time at Uncanny Magazine, with the first half of the special shared-universe series of stories. These works (the fiction, at least) sets up a Jurassic Park-esque world, except instead of using DNA to recreate dinos, there are portals and a bit of magic going on. And some of the stories take on the world-building of the setting a bit more than others. In that respect the issue starts strong, with back-to-back stories about the history and development of the dinosaur programs and science as filtered through the very personal lenses of characters struggling with betrayal, loss, and identity. And really the stories as a whole show just how much space the setting opens up to explore. Basically, I love it all, and I can’t wait to see what’s in store for the second half of the issue! Until then, to the reviews!

Art by Galen Dara

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #254

The two novelettes from the most recent Beneath Ceaseless Skies find characters looking for ways out of oppressive situations. People who have dealt with the loss of their parents and other family members, and who seek through building families of their own to try and find a place of safety in an unsafe world. Unfortunately, both main characters also discover that even just trying to be questions the foundation on which injustice is built, at least in their cases because of who they are. And so trouble comes looking for them, and both must decide if they will try to bend to the will of those with power or if they will embrace a power of their own, even if it leaves a trail of bodies in their wake. Let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Mihály Nagy

Quick Sips - Uncanny #22 [June stuff]

Uncanny meets June with three stories and two poems and a decidedly dark tone. In these pieces people struggle with big issues. With systems and environments that are broken, that are hungry for blood. Where monsters and demons lurk. And they are settings where the characters are expected to accept their victimization, where if they struggle it will only hurt them more. Only, of course, these characters don’t accept that. Instead, they push back against these environments and when they meet someone who might have the power to change things, they seek to use that power. To convince it or take it in order to remake the world. Or to right a wrong situation. The stories are often violent, and uncomfortable, but they also shine with resilience and with care, and with the hope that things can get better. To the reviews!

Art by Julie Dillon

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #97

June brings four original stories to Lightspeed Magazine (one novelette and three short stories), many of which deal with oppression and voice. With characters who have survived something, or who are trying to survive something systemic and violent and difficult. Who don’t know how they can keep going, or what their struggles matter in the face of larger tyrannies. And yet each of these stories is hopeful in their own ways, where characters are able to find some way to move forward, to keep going, to stay alive even when everything around them seems to be hungry for their deaths. It’s a fairly difficult and dark set of stories this month, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t very good. So let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Reiko Murakami

Quick Sips - Fireside Magazine May 2018

It’s a full month of fiction at Fireside Magazine, with five original releases (five!). Most are flash fiction, but all of them are powerful and ready to fight. For me, so many of these stories are about resistance. About the refusal to play along with the rules so long as those rules are unjust. These stories are full of characters who find, either through others or on their own, that the way the world works often only works because people accept it. Which means that if the system is broken and corrupt, and people are willing to break the chains holding them down, are willing to believe in a system that doesn’t carry such harm with it, they can start to make that a reality. Here we find characters struggling against prophecy, against rules, against the threat of loss, all to reach somewhere better and freer. It’s a wonderful bunch of mostly very short fiction, so let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Maggie Chiang

Quick Sips - Nightmare #66

March is apparently a month for doomed dogs at Nightmare Magazine, where the pair of original stories explore systems of oppression, cycles of violence, and young girls who just want to have fun with their doggos. Which…doesn’t really work out well for them. At least, both stories look at the ways that societies can almost passively abuse young girls. The ways that expectations and obligations (girls always lie, girls must sacrifice, etc.) merely create opportunities for predators to prey on them. These are two uncomfortable reads, that feature a looming and omnipresent threat of violence from beings very willing (gleefully so, in fact) of following through. But before I give too much away, let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Vukkostic / Fotolia

THE SIPPY AWARDS 2017! The "Time to Run Some Red Lights" Sippy for Excellent Action!!! in SFF

Welcome back to the Third Annual Sippy Awards! Some part of you might be wondering, “why?” The answer: to celebrate short SFF across different styles that make excellent use of various elements to shine as examples of why I love this field. There’s no panel of judges or voting population, just me and my inflated ego and love of short SFF. Given how most short SFF awards focus on length, I wanted to look instead at how stories use different elements to stand out and be powerful. This year I’ve already shipped some excellent relationship, cowered before some excellent horror, and bawled from the some emotionally devastating reads. Which means today it’s time to put the pedal to the metal with...

The “Time to Run Some Red Lights” Sippy Awards 

for Excellent Action! in Short SFF

The name comes courtesy of the outrage that followed the original release of The Fast and The Furious. No joke, I remember a bunch of articles about how, upon leaving the movie, people were basically much more likely to speed and engage in...not good decisions. Likewise, I’ve seen studies about how listening to music effects how we drive. So I wanted to find the stories that left me feeling amped up. That made me to go fast and take chances. In a weird sort of surprise, most of them are from the very beginning of 2017. Not sure what that means, but there you are. In any event, please make sure your seat belts are securely buckled and that your tray tables are in their full and upright position. In 3...2...1...GO!!!!

X Marks the Story - January 2018

X Marks the Story is now live at The Book Smugglers. This is the spiritual successor to The Monthly Round and covers five recent short SFF stories that I loved from late 2017/early 2018.

So thrilled to have my column go live. Please go check it out at The Book Smugglers! Links to just the stories are below:

“When The Night Blooms, An Artist Transmutes: A Three-Act Play” by Nin Harris (published in The Dark Magazine #31, December 2017)
“The Weight of Sentience” by Naru Dames Sundar (published in Shimmer Magazine #40, November/December 2017)
“The House at the End of the Lane is Dreaming” by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor (published in Lightspeed Magazine #91, December 2017)
“The Heaven-Moving Way” by Chi Hui, translated by Andy Dudak (published in Apex Magazine #104, January 2018)
“The Epic of Sakina” by Shari Paul (published in Fiyah Literary Magazine #5, January 2018)

Cheers!

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The Monthly Round - December 2017

This is the last one, as I'm starting a new monthly recommendation/review column at Book Smugglers called X Marks the Story (the first of which will be out next Wednesday). But please join me for the final Monthly Round over at Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together.

As, for those who just want links...

Tasting Flight - December 2017

“When The Night Blooms, An Artist Transmutes: A Three-Act Play” by Nin Harris (The Dark)
“The Weight of Sentience” by Naru Dames Sundar (Shimmer)
“The Birding: A Fairy Tale” by Natalia Theodoridou (Strange Horizons)
“The House at the End of the Lane is Dreaming” by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor (Lightspeed)
“An Incomplete Timeline of What We Tried” by Debbie Urbanski (Terraform)
“The First Stop Is Always the Last” by John Wiswell (Flash Fiction Online)

Cheers!

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Quick Sips - Lightspeed #91

December finds Lightspeed Magazine wondering about what ifs. Because the four original stories all seem to circle around the idea of what if? The characters feel the pull to embrace something that is in some ways against the very core of their beings. A cyborg chef, a religious woman tempted with a dark cure, a young woman trying to break her (literal) programming, and a person faced with doors into other words. For some, they can embrace this pull, can travel boldly into other worlds or find the obsessive joys of cooking meat. For others, they define themselves by how they resist, how they refuse to take the easy road, even if I seems the entire reason they exist. For all of them, though, the stories unfold as they confront their roles and seek to find ways to retain who they are in the face of a world, or worlds, that want to change them. Some are more successful than others, but all make for great reading. To the reviews!

Art by Christopher Park

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #89

Well Lightspeed is getting in on the novella game this month, with a sci-fantasy novella alongside two sci fi short stories. Which, the magazine does shine in the ways that it brings science fiction and fantasy together, which makes the new project in keeping with what I’ve come to expect and appreciate from Lightspeed. In my opinion, though, it’s the shorter works this month that stand out a little more, capturing setting with a present and pervasive darkness but also finding something bright within. A spot of kindness. A small connection. Of course, in all of these pieces the worlds revealed are not exactly kind, and find characters just trying to make their own way. Mostly, trying and failing. But there’s some beauty in the trying, and some hope that won’t be killed. So let’s get to reviewing!

Art by Reiko Murakami

Queer Smut Reviews - Nasty: Fetish Fights Back, eds. Anna Yeatts & Chris Phillips

Welcome to the second installment of Queer Smut Reviews. So make sure you’re wearing your protective poncho and buckle in, because it’s a rather wild ride. I’m looking at a collection of short stories today, Nasty: Fetish Fights Back, edited by Anna Yeatts and Chris Phillips of Flash Fiction Online. It’s smut for a good cause, too, as a portion of proceeds go to Planned Parenthood (which is even more important now, given all the health things going down right now). There are 27 stories in all, which...wow. And full disclosure, I wrote one of them. So really I’ll only be mentioning 26 stories in this review.

Now, I tried to look more closely at the stories that were specifically SFF. That doesn’t mean I just skipped the rest, but you’ll probably notice that my reviews are more robust for the SFF stories. This is both because smutty SFF is exactly what I want to be looking at and because if I wrote long thoughts on them all my hands would fall off. It’s a rather great collection, though, and I definitely recommend that people pay attention all of the stories. Part of the reason I want to look at smutty SFF with a critical lens is much the same reason that this collection exists—to try and bring people together to resist the idea that sexuality and bodies are topics that don’t belong in polite conversation. Where the stories shine the most, I feel, is where they look at consent and transparency, people talking to people and negotiating to make sure everyone is safe and getting what they want. Where I think the stories falter a bit is when they neglect that.

But enough stalling—let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Questions: Merc Fenn Wolfmoor

Hello and welcome to the second installment of Quick Questions, everyone's favorite interview series they don't remember exists! I'm here today with short fiction writer extraordinaire Merc Fenn Wolfmoor to talk stories, time travel, AND SO MUCH MORE! But before we begin, let me introduce...

THE PARTICIPANT

Merc Fenn Wolfmoor is a queer non-binary writer who lives in the Minnesota. Favorite things include: robots, dinosaurs, monsters, and tea. Their stories have appeared in Lightspeed, Fireside, Apex, Uncanny, Shimmer, and other fine venues, with reprints included in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015, Wilde Stories 2016, Heiress of Russ 2016, and Transcendent 2016. Merc likes to play video games, watch movies, read comics, and wear awesome hats. You can find Merc on Twitter @Merc_Wolfmoor, Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/mercrustad) or their website: http://amercrustad.com. Their debut short story collection, SO YOU WANT TO BE A ROBOT, is out from Lethe Press in May 2017.

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #81

February is a month of love but you might not know it from reading the latest issue of Lightspeed Magazine. Though all of the stories do show a certain amount of love for tropes. For classic stories. This love, however, comes with an edge. Destroys even as it embraces. The stories all take on some classic ideas. Superheroes. The End of the World. The Chosen One. The Gunslinger. And they manage to tell stories that at the same time celebrate these kinds of stories for the imagination and the hope that they can inspire…and they also tear them apart. Subvert them. Twist them. What is left are stories that are fun but obliterating, funny but bleak as fuck. It's a great issue, though, and I'm going to get right to my reviews!

Art by Alan Bao