Regular Sip - "The Convergence of Fairy Tales" by Octavia Cade [Book Smugglers]

Today I'm looking at the latest novella from The Book Smugglers. This is part of a new initiative that they are running and if this work is anything to go by, it is going to be awesome. The piece overall unfolds across five chapters. Five sections. Five fairy tales. And as that is the case, I decided that my review would look at each section in turn. Be warned, because of the linked nature of the story, SPOILERS ABOUND after the first section. So yeah, to the review! 

Art by Kristina Tsenova

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #211

October ended up being a big month for Beneath Ceaseless Skies, with a special issue on top of two regular issues, and the last made it just in time for Halloween. Appropriately, the stories in this issue veer into some dark territory, evoking settings that are steeped in some spooky and surreal landscapes. The characters are acting out battles both metaphoric and intensely literal, and through it all there is an air of isolation being cut through by companionship and friendship. Both stories feature women who are prisoners of sorts to the past. To traditions that they have not wholly chosen on their own, and in both stories the characters have to face that and decide how they want to live going forward. So yeah, let's get to those reviews!

Art by Raphael Lacoste

Quick Sips - Lackington's #11 Possessions

Just ahead of the release of their next issue, Lackinton's has dropped the paywall on their Possessions issue and it's a great collection of rather dark stories. Perhaps rising from the complex nature of possessions, from how people can own things, how people can own people, how things can own people, how entities can inhabit people, how people can own ideas and stories…there are a lot of ways that these tales circle around what it is to have possessions, and what it is to be possessed. Most of the pieces are solidly fantasy, the magic alive and well and further complicating the theme but also giving it a wild fire that casts some wicked shadows. There's a lot here to enjoy, so I'm going to get to the reviews! 

Art by P. Emerson Williams

Quick Sips - Terraform October 2016

This is certainly an eclectic month for Motherboard's Terraform, with stories that show the great range possible even within the narrow range that the publication aims for. From bizarre stories of dogs and the defense of Earth to more tender stories of identity and relationships in the digital age, the stories reveal different aspects of humanity. Humanity the confused. Humanity the hopeful. Humanity the resourceful. Humanity the doomed. It's a great mix of views about where the future might take us, focusing on things that seem huge and making them achingly personal. It's a fine bunch of tales that I will review now! 

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 10/17/2016 & 10/24/2016

Things have mostly settled back down following the Strange Horizons, though they do have a brand new look that is a huge change from their old layout. Also, I accidentally missed the translated story from earlier in the month, so I have rectified that by including it here. There are two stories, then, and two poems, all of which seem to evoke the idea of travel. For some it is a physical thing, the pursuit of a quest, the arch of a journey. For others the travel happens between possibilities and universes, or between times, showing how the distance we travel away from the past can make it vulnerable, can make us vulnerable by extension. These are works that warn and that inspire, and I'm going to get to reviewing them! 

Quick Sips - The Sockdolager #7

You know, it probably shouldn't surprise me that the latest issue of The Sockdolager, coming as it does so close to Halloween, is incredibly dark. But I will admit that I was expecting something a bit more lighthearted. What I got was an incredible issue filled with stories told with clever flourishes and an occasional sense of fun, yes…but stories that nonetheless are dark and darker and oh my glob I think I need to spend some time staring at funny cat videos now. Shock aside, though, these are some amazing tales, that lift and sink and inspire and depress. These are stories that fit in with the season, with dying of summer and the creeping nearness of winter. These are stories that I wholeheartedly recommend, though perhaps aren't for the faint of heart. To the reviews! 

Quick Sips - Apex #89

It's October at Apex Magazine, which means that there's extra reasons to revel in some dark SFF. Halloween! And while neither the stories nor the poetry evoke the holiday directly, they do bring the darkness and bring the horror and don't let up. The prose is…well, it's violent and full of monsters and uncomfortable truths. About the people who get overlooked and how the abuses the world creates lead to monsters. Lead to death and tragedy. The poetry looks a bit more at the past and the future, reaching and touching the unknown through shared experiences, through the constellations of what joins us as humans. Today also kicks of Apex's subscription drive, so be sure to give that a look! It's a spooky issue and I'm going to jump right into the reviews! 

Art by Denis Corvus

Quick Sips - The Book Smugglers October 2016

The Year of the Superhero at The Book Smugglers might be winding down, but that doesn't mean there isn't a few more surprises in store for 2016. Which is why I hesitate to post this review. Not because I didn't love the story (spoiler alert: I did!), but because I worry that there might be a release later in the month to coincide with Halloween and I'm worried by posting this I'll miss it. But these are the risks of a reviewer. What is here is a story that sets up the fourth and final book the Extrahuman Union series. These stories are always gripping and this one brings in action and angst and identity, the main character stuck between being broken and being...something else. It is a profound story that makes me quite excited to read the novels, but until then I should really get to that review!

Art by Kirbi Fagan

Quick Sips - Fireside Fiction #37

Surprise, I've added a new publication to my review pile! I've been paying attention to Fireside Fiction for some time now and as a few publications have closed of changed their release schedule I found a spot had opened up and didn't have to debate long what to fill it with. The fiction of this issue is, well, dark. From outright horror to heartbreaking science fiction, these are stories with a shadow falling across them, where what moves in the darkness is vague but moving closer. Each piece features someone brushing against both loss and the unknown. Grief and the struggle for relief. These are sharp stories with a great weight and a powerful force. So yeah, time to review them! 

Art by Galen Dara

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #210

The stories in the latest issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies are not exactly for the faint of heart. They are violent stories, and in some ways they are about the triumph of violence over peace. But they take very different meanings and paths when dealing with that idea. Because in the first peace is something artificial and corrupt, hiding a violence that is ongoing, and ending the peace means allowing that old and infested wound to perhaps heal. And in the second, peace is something that seems impossible, that seems naïve and stupid, and through the actions of the story peace is something that seems to be put out of reach, the wound only further infected and festering. Side by side they make an interesting contrast, and I'm just going to get to the reviews! 

Art by Raphael Lacoste

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 10/03/2016 & 10/10/2016

The Strange Horizons fund drive is nearly over, but that doesn't mean that the fiction, poetry, and nonfiction have slowed down. Indeed, I'm looking at two stories, four poems, and two nonfiction works today. The stories focus on change and history. On progress and what is lost and what is gained in the slow march of years and opinions. The poetry mixes resistance and loss, folktales and tenacity. And the nonfiction looks at gaming and communities. It's a very full two weeks of content and an amazing publication. If you haven't already, maybe considering contributing to the drive. And now, to the reviews! 

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #209

It's a special anniversary issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies and I'm treating the entire issue like it came out in October (though technically some of the stories released in late September). There's double the fiction to enjoy, which means twice the amount of worlds to explore. For me, it means a return to a few settings that I've very much enjoyed in the past, and also the introduction of a few that I wouldn't mind returning to. The stories are about resistance and identity. About facing choices about how to be, how to live, and then having to live with those choices. The stories are full of conflict, of looming war and exploration and intrigue, and there's a lot to see and take in among the worlds revealed, even those that look an awful lot like our own. To the reviews! 

Art by Raphael Lacoste

Quick Sips - Uncanny #12 (October Stuff)

This month's offerings from Uncanny Magazine bring a bit of everything. Two original fiction pieces, two poems, and two works of nonfiction covering fairy tales and AI insurrections and ghosts and desires and distorted realities and lineages of SFF. The fiction is gripping and challenging, difficult and unflinching. The poetry is moving and all about desire and nostalgia and looking back. And the nonfiction is about perception and how it can be changed, either in the brain or by those around you, and how that can effect the inroads to SFF. It's a full month and a nice balance of the strange, the heartbreaking, and the affirming. So yeah, time to review! 

Art by Kirbi Fagan

Quick Sips - GigaNotoSaurus October 2016

The October offering from GigaNotoSaurus certainly captures the feeling of autumn. At least where I live, autumn is a time of slowing down. Declining. It's something that creeps across the land. Temperatures start to drop. Leaves start to change color. Nothing happens all at once. Instead there is a gradual loss happening, a march toward something bigger, more definite. And this story captures that feeling, showing a character moving slowly around a single event in his life, waiting. Unlike where I live, the story doesn't show what happens next, doesn't drop into winter or lift back into spring. It shows this achingly beautiful and tragic moment and lets it linger, and I should just get to my review! 

Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #121

For this special anniversary issue of Clarkesworld, it seems like there's a single question being asked. Namely, what can you trust? What can you know? It's a fundamental question that cuts to the nature of human experience and perception. Can we be sure of our surroundings? What happens when we know that something isn't real, despite not really being able to tell it with our senses? And what if we just think we know what is real, and the rabbit hole goes deeper still? It's a delightful way to frame a number of excellent speculative stories, mostly all science fiction but still good, still hitting, still interesting complications of what we take for granted and how we perceive and reach for some trace of the real in a sea of uncertainty. So yeah, to the reviews! 

Art by Peter Mohrbacher

Quick Sips - Flash Fiction Online October 2016

For another issue the stories of Flash Fiction Online seem to focus on parents and children. On being haunted. By the specter of ridicule and Otherness, by an actual friendly ghost, or by a past and future that seem to hold nothing but regret. These stories bring a bit of darkness and strangeness and fit rather well with the autumn season. With things winding down. With endings and declines but with the hope of something more. These stories are dark without being bleak, strange without being completely indecipherable. From monsters to ghosts to…house-children, this issue certainly is unique. To the reviews! 

Art by Dario Bijelac

Stories:

"The Monster on Her Cheek" by Rebecca Roland (861 words)

This story is about a woman, Jane, and her child, a child born with a sort of disease or deformity that takes the form of a monster that is attached to the child's face. The monster is…well, a little thing, but otherwise doesn't seem to do anything. The fear and the tension comes from the way that the woman fears she will be treated, that her child will be treated, because of the monster. The story does a lot of interesting work in looking at how people are judged for the deformities and diseases and differences their children are born with. That parents don't want to be seen as bad because of those differences in part because theey have bought into the idea that those differences are a mark of sin and shame. The story reveals a woman afraid of going out because she might face name-calling and judgment, and so she stays in while others try to convince her to go out. And the story draws Jane toward a point where she can let her own prejudices against her child and against herself drop away so that she can embrace her child for who they are. I like the message of the piece, that you have to accept your child, that a lot of what allows harm and ignorance to continue is our own internal biases and especially for parents that can lead to some awful treatment of children by parents. So I like that Jane has to learn to stop blaming herself and her child first, that she has to see that they deserve to exist, that in some ways she didn't understand that until she was so connected and she has to try and do better. Act better. Which starts at home. So yeah, it's an interesting and rather dark story with a warm, gooey heart. A fine read!

"Three Rules for Befriending Ghosts" by Benjamin Thomas (924 words)

This is a rather fun story about a man and a ghost haunting him and the rules that define their relationship. To me, it shows two people desperate to connect, desperate to find someone who will respect them. To respect their rules. Those simple things that are required to have a friendship, to have any sort of relationship. Because despite Mandy being dead, being a ghost, the story is all about how willing the main character is to respect her rules. They are not complicated. They are not difficult. But still they require the main character to have a boundary and not cross it. That once he knows what she wants he has to stand by her or risk losing the friendship. And it's a great way to show what's required to form a bond with another person, to illustrate the ways that it's possible to overstep and how easy it can be, caught up in something personal, to be selfish and break one of the rules. But how it's equally possible to stop and consider and refuse to use a friendship as a weapon. And I love how the main character is described as lucky to be haunted, to have this opportunity to bond. Because anyone is incredibly lucky to have a good friend. Because those friendships can keep us sane, can keep us from being alone, can lift us up and affirm us. But it takes something. Effort. Trust. And the story does a nice job of bringing that all together with a touch of the ghostly. A great story!

"Offspring" by Brenda Anderson (778 words)

This is a…rather strange and disturbing story about being a parent, about surviving grief, and about the distance between animate and inanimate life. In the story a man at a sort of sentient house for…grief counseling (maybe) learns that his emotions have inadvertently entered the house and taken root. The house is pregnant and he is the father. And…and what follows is a picture of the man trying to flee from that, trying to get away and find some sort of peace where peace doesn't seem possible, trying to avoid the knowledge that he has a child out there. The story deals with regret and with surprise, with suddenly discovering that you're the parent of a child you never expected but in a way that's…well, certainly new. This house-child is one that he wants to deny but cannot, that haunts him even as he seeks to run from it. At the same time, this is a difficult story for me to parse, personally, because the nature of the conception is so strange and because the nature of his situation is rather nebulous. Well off enough to move and stay employed but not well off enough to avoid having to be held in some sort of prison or care facility following the death of a close friend. What is more certain to me is that the story circles around the man's past, his losses. As an older man he looks back and sees no legacy, and the house-child becomes some way to connect to a future he won't see, a past he never lived. I can't tell if it's hopeful or not, to be honest, but it's an interesting and moving piece that I certainly recommend people check out for themselves. Indeed!

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Quick Sips - Shimmer #33 (October Stuff)

The October offerings from Shimmer Magazine capture a feeling of isolation. Of loneliness. The bittersweet reality of being alive, of having survived something huge, only to find that they are alone and wanting to change that. And in both stories the main characters do, do work toward a reunion, toward a community that accepts them and where they can be themselves. But the stories concentrate more on the longing than on the finding, and as such are on the sadder side, though it is only with such a lack that hope can be more fully felt, and both stories are hopeful, showing characters striving to overcome, striving to remember themselves when the world seems set on blending them into everything else. So without further delay, the reviews! 

Art by Sandro Castelli

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #77

This month's Lightspeed Magazine features a rather full lineup of original fiction. Full not necessarily in length, because it's about average for the publication, but definitely full in terms of exploring genre and in terms of emotional weight. These are story that hit and lift, some with a subtle form and style and some with an aching wound of feeling and horror and regret. These are stories that look at hope in the face of despair, at healing in the face of disappointment and injustice. At what it takes to keep going after being betrayed by someone who was supposed to have your back. The stories are beautiful and expertly rendered and it's time to review them so let's go! 

Art by Sam Schechter

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

Quick Sips - The Dark #17

The two stories of this issue of The Dark Magazine take on some deep subjects, namely death and history. And not just death, but suicide and loss. And not just history, but torture and oppression and erasure. They both look at the wounds left over by loss, by violence, and both concern people and places being haunted. Not being allowed to move on. Having to deal first with what has happened, what has been taken, before healing can begin. These are stories with some definite punch and a strong creepiness and I'm going to jump right to the reviews! 

Art by Tomislav Tikulin