Quick Sips - Uncanny #25 [December stuff]

Art by John Picacio

It’s a month of ghosts, cyborgs, and mages at Uncanny Magazine this December, with three stories and two poems fleshing out a vibrant range of short SFF. The pieces very much represent a wide swath of genre work—one contemporary fantasy, one near-future science fiction, one mix of fantasy and horror and science fiction. The poems look at language and at loss and rebirth. And together there’s an interesting take on family and vulnerability, showing characters trying to find ways of dealing with a new and possibly destructive present while changing their assumptions and focusing on adaptation and perseverance. It’s a great bunch of works, and I’ll get right to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Uncanny #13 (November Stuff)

The November content from Uncanny Magazine does a lovely job of showing the power of stories. Of narratives. Of how the ownership of those stories is importance and empowering. How, when the narrative begins to slip away, it can be used to isolate people. To exploit people. To erase people. And only when people can control their own stories, can have their own agency, can there be justice. Can there be hope. Can there be the recognition that people are all people and that the roles they think are absolute might only be a narrowing of their perspective, and when the blinders are pulled away their world suddenly becomes larger, richer, and more rewarding. These are not all easy works of fiction or poetry or nonfiction, but they are all powerful in their own ways, and I'm going to get to reviewing them. 

Art by Julie Dillon