Quick Sips - Escape Pod #748-751

September sees a return of original content to Escape Pod, and does so in rather dramatic fashion, with seven(!) new short stories, including the four winners of the annual flash contest. With that many stories, there’s a lot of science fictional visions on display, looking at time travel, post-apocalypses, aliens, AIs, and much more. The worst also range from happy to heartbreaking, from hopeful to kinda bleak. But the works show some wonderful interpretations of what science fiction can mean, what they can include, and I am all here for it. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Diabolical Plots #61

Art by Joey Jordan

The two original stories in March's Diabolical Plots feature new takes on older settings and ideas. From the size-changing potions of Alice in Wonderland to the horrors of Lovecraft. Neither piece exactly allows those texts to exist without complication or challenge, though, and the focus for me is on providing new lenses through which to examine some of the failings and problems of those older texts. And in doing so the stories seem to offer some commentary on generational shifts and changes in attitudes, and the ways that the older generations can fail the younger. So yeah, to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Unlikely Story 12.5 - The Journal of Unlikely Observances

The latest offering from Unlikely Story is out, and this time it's The Journal of Unlikely Observances. The call for this issue included a list of elements, a certain number of which had to be in each story. Water fights. Resurrections. Celebrations. What comes out of those guidelines is a very fn and mostly joyous issue. Now, full disclosure, I have a story in this issue as well, and as my custom I will not be looking at it here. But that still leaves a bunch of stories to see and experience and love. Stories that touch on what it means to live and be free and imagine a different world. Stories that touch on death and rebirth and cycles and history. Stories that I should really just start reviewing! 

Art by Linda Saboe