Quick Sips 03/19/2021

Just go ahead and ignore me whenever I say I’m done adding publications to cover. I’ll stop saying it, because I apparently can’t resist having a bit of time and immediately going to track down more to read. Just the way I am, I guess. And this week I’m adding some more…again. Both Hexagon Magazine and the Future Fire and new to my coverage, though neither are terribly new to me personally. It’s nice to be able to add them to my reading, though, and already I’ve found a lot of great stories in them. Further, here’s the first time I’m adding stories from a single author collection, but I do plan on continuing that trend, so that while I’ll only be covering the original stories, I’ll still definitely be able to keep up with some that might otherwise have slipped by. Otherwise not too much to report.

NOTE: This will be a recurring note that will run with every Quick Sips. First, please note that I don’t necessarily mention every story or poem out in an issue. I am giving myself permission to either DNF stories, or else finish and just not comment on them. Please don’t assume it’s because I disliked the work! There are many reasons I might chose not to comment on a piece, and I reserve the right to do just that. Second, you might notice the notations at the end of the micro reviews and wonder what the [c# t#] is. These are for the Scales of Relative Grimness and a full explanation of them can be found through the tab at the top of the page or through this link. With that said, let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Collections - Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora (Volume One), ed. Zelda Knight and Ekpeki Oghenechovwe Donald

I’m back looking at a short fiction anthology that brings together thirteen works of speculative fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora. Domunion, edited by Zelda Knight and Ekpeki Oghenechovwe Donald (and published by Aurelia Leo), doesn’t limit itself to just one kind of genre, or even one kind of form. It includes science fiction and fantasy and horrors and blends of all of the above. It includes a poem, as well, and stories range from fairly short to quite long. The lack of a specific theme, though, doesn’t mean that certain elements don’t recur.

Quick Collections - The Book of Shanghai: A City in Short Fiction, ed. Jin Li & Dai Congrong

So I admit I wasn’t quite sure what I was getting into when I agreed to look at this anthology. I’m no stranger to translated fiction, but my reading is heavily SFF, and this collection doesn’t pretend to be trying to be entirely that. Most of the stories are fiction, many with moments of weirdness, of dream-like fluidity, but few are really speculative in nature. Rather, the anthology seems to be (from what I gather from the introduction and from the mood and themes of the stories) an exploration and a sort of mapping of the city of Shanghai, its literary movements and moments--a feel of what the city is to those writers who know it, who might bring it to life in some ways as a character. And so we have The Book of Shanghai: A City in Short Fiction from Comma Press.

Quick Collections - Weird Dream Society, ed. Julie C. Day, Chip Houser, & Carina Bissett

Today I’m looking at a rather large anthology of dark and strange fiction, benefiting RAICES. The stories are mostly reprints (entirely reprints?), but in their curation and presentation they capture something new. There are twenty-three stories in total, from a wide range of authors and genres, but at its core I feel that the anthology is what it says on the cover, a collection of weird, dream-like stories that capture a sense of loss and yearning in their recognition of the grim realities of the world, and those places between our world and a speculative reality lurking beneath it. Few of the stories deal explicitly with immigration, but the project as a whole does turn a critical eye on borders, and the dangers, joys, and devastation that can come from crossing them. The anthology can be pre-ordered now, and will be on sale May 26, 2020.

Quick Collections - The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper

[So a little housekeeping first, and a bit of an introduction. It’s been a while since I’ve looked at a collection or anthology here at QSR, mostly because of how I review for the blog (each story individually and substantively). It’s just so much work to do that for a collection of works that appears in book format on top of the other reviewing work that I do. I used to do these kinds of reviews, then, at Nerds of a Feather or The Book Smugglers, but I have had absolutely no energy to reach out to try and rekindle those ties, and so for ease I’ve decided to just make a new series her at Quick Sip Reviews that will focus specifically on collections and anthologies that I can get to. I won’t be breaking the books down into individual reviews, but instead looking at them as a whole with maybe some additional notes on works I really connceted with. These will be slightly different than my Regular Sip reviews, which look at singular longer works. But I’ve been reading a lot of collections lately, and I want a space to think too much about them!]

So my first introduction to Cinrak came in the form of “The Wild Ride of the Untamed Stars” (which appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies #252). And okay, a queer capybara pirate was a bit strange to run into, even at a SFF publication, but I was also almost immediately charmed. Anthropomorphic animals speak to the part of my heart that is a secret furry and I loved the adventure, the movement, the sense of a larger world and story. And here, finally, I get to find more of it. Not all of it, mind. The collection is not a linear novel but a mosaic one that checks in with Cinrak throughout her career, giving enough of the big events to capture a sense of scale and scope and continuity, but leaving enough unsaid that there’s still very much a sense that the myth and legend of Cinrak stretches much much farther, covering adventures that we’re only left hoping are covered in another collection some day.

Art by Dian Huynh