THE SIPPY AWARDS 2016! The "I'm Sleeping with the Lights On" Sippy for Excellent Horror in Short SFF

Welcome back to the Second Annual Sippy Awards! Last week my heart melted as I went through my favorite SFF relationships. This week…things het a bit more creepy.

Those who know me know that I am a scaredy-cat. Horror movies? Yeahmaybenotthanks. But I will admit that I am still drawn to being scared. To being frightened. It's something that gets the heart racing and the blood pumping. And, in SFF, things aren't even as simple as a serial killer on the loose. From cosmic horror to body horror to monsters to…cooking? SFF horror definitely knows how to keep things interesting and innovative. And today I want to honor those stories that make me want to hide under the covers and wish for sunlight to save me from the dark. Which means, of course, that's time for…

The "I'm Sleeping with the Lights On" Sippy

for Excellent Horror in Short SFF

Quick Sips - The Dark #18

The original fiction from November's The Dark Magazine focus on willful ignorance. On disbelief. In both stories the main characters are trapped in situations because they are not believed, because they are coded as women. They are stripped of their agency, convinced that what is happening to them is just and right and their own feelings of dread, pain, and despair are somehow unwarranted and wrong. These are stories that look at how women are ignored, silenced, and abused, and how institutions reinforce this, legitimize this, even at the expense of the people they are supposed to protect. It's a disturbing pair of stories with a heady atmosphere of violence and death and it makes for a compelling issue that I'm about to review!

Art by Vincent Chong

Quick Sips - Nightmare #49 People of Colo(u)r Destroy Horror!

People of Colo(u)r Destroy Horror is official here, courtesy of Nightmare Magazine's October release, which means double the amount of original fiction to keep you up at night. The stories are…well, the stories show the range of speculative horror, with three mostly-contemporary pieces and one historical fantasy, all of which shine lights on very different aspects of horror and fear. The fear of the Other, of the foreign, and the invasion from the unknown. The fear of the self and the uncontrolled darkness a mind can harbor, that a mind can spin into tales to terrify, willingly or otherwise. The fear of anonymity, of the crush of circumstance and time that can strip people of their hope and humanity. The fear erasure, of dissolution, of death, of injustice. These stories know how to set the scene and each left me shaken, uneasy, and inspired. So yeah, without further hesitation, to the reviews! 

Art by Reiko Murakami