Quick Sips - Escape Pod #765

Well I wasn’t really expecting a final story from Escape Pod in 2020, but it was a year for surprises, so what’s one more? Appropriately, the story itself is about a New Years celebration, and for me is a lot about connecting with what you love, and taking steps to prioritize that love and what makes you happy. Which is wonderful and warm and a fantastic way to step into the new year. So yeah, without further delay, to the review!

Quick Sips - Tor dot com June 2020

Art by Goñi Montes

Tor slows down only a little for June, putting out three stories that crack and sizzle, that sink and sprawl. From near-future science fiction to contemporary horror to quasi-historical fantasy…weirdness, the works all take different swings at revealing a world rife with dangers and corruptions but also community and possibility. The tones of the stories couldn’t really get more different, though each has its shadows and grimness. Some are hopeful and defiant, others gutting and haunting, still others ethereal and luminous. Yet through it all the works represent some stunning glimpses into humanity, and those who live parallel to human, in a world that is often harsh, but also often beautiful. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Uncanny #29 [July stuff]

Art by Julie Dillon

This month’s Uncanny Magazine gets dark. From monsters and murder to abuse and death to magic and exploitation, the fiction features a number of characters facing their own demons. The dark places inside themselves, and the dark forces outside seeking to use them for further harm. Who are seeking to devour them, to corrupt them, to twist them. The works don’t have a lot of bright spots to them, and poetry gets in on the darkness as well, featuring doomed astronauts and haunting songs. The issue on the whole is difficult for me, visceral and tragic, though not entirely without warmth. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Uncanny #21 [March stuff]

March brings a bit of spring to Uncanny Magazine, with three stories and three poems that feature music and rebirth and love and hope. These are also stories and poems that look at places, though. At haunted houses and magnificent cities and hometowns. That look just as closely at relationships. At the way that interactions build. How in big cities inspiration can seem to grow out of the creativity concentrated in one spot, synergize into something bigger and bigger. How in smaller towns isolation can give way to resentment and fear and depression, but where single gestures can come to mean the universe. These are stories of friends and family, poems of art and love and prayer. And without further delay, the reviews!

Art by Nilah Magruder

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #246

The science fantasy month continues at Beneath Ceaseless Skies with three more stories (one short story, one novelette, and one novella). Where the last two issues focused (in my opinion) on AI and apocalypses respectively, these stories feel a bit more about corrupt systems and violence to me. Each features a world where things…well, they work, to some extent. Unless they don’t. There is a balance, but it’s not a balance that benefits everyone. It requires some people to forego their freedom, to be subject to violence and perhaps death at the whims of some larger power or purpose. In each, there is a resistance to just letting things go the way they have been. And in each, the result is much different, showing how these systems deal with threats, and how much people are willing to risk to escape them. To the reviews!

Art by Florent Llamas

THE SIPPY AWARDS 2017! The "Where We're Going We Won't Need Categories" Sippy for Excellent I Don't Know What in Short SFF

Welcome back to the fifth and final category of the Third Annual Sippy Awards! It’s doesn’t have the history or prestige of the Hugos or Nebulas or...well, any other award, but I like to think the Sippys represent a much needed niche in the award season. For me, at least, it’s a chance to celebrate the stories I loved from 2017 and remind myself that not everything is about the Big Awards. Sometimes it’s rewarding to just love what you love, and make no excuses for it. In that vein, the Sippys were born, and I definitely encourage everyone: don’t be shy about celebrating the stories you loved. Make awards for them, write reviews about them—have fun and add a bit of joy into the universe.

But I digress. I’ve shipped my favorite relationships, hidden under the covers from the scariest horror, wept until the world was awash in my tears at biggest heartbreaks, and drove fast and took chances with the most pulse-pounding action! Which leaves just one category to go, and it’s...

The “Where We’re Going We Won’t Need Categories” 

Sippy Awards for Excellent I Don’t Know What in Short SFF

What does it mean? Well, part of the point of this category is...I’m not sure. These are stories that defy conventional definitions and categorization. These are the ones that slip between genres and expectations. They’re...well, a lot of them are weird, but beautiful. Haunting, but fun. Deep and complex and brilliant in the ways they innovate and inspire. So without further delay...

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #92

It’s officially 2018! Yes, I know that might be a little late, technically, but I’m kicking off the year with a look at Lightspeed Magazine, with four stories that explore, well, exploration. That look at place and the roles that people play. In most, these roles are pushed onto characters against their wills. Expectations or absences that the characters struggle to make sense of, even as they also have to find ways to stay true to themselves. It’s also something of a strange month of stories, with sentient cities, post-disaster flood plains, a plethora of reincarnated memories, and a magic word that solves problems, as long as they’re the right problems. I’m changing my reviewing format up a bit, too, so my apologies on any adjustment oddness. Please bear with me and let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Alan Bao

Quick Sips - Uncanny #16 [May stuff]

This is another full issue of Uncanny Magazine, with May containing three original stories, two poems, and four different nonfiction pieces that I’ll be looking at. There’s a reprint and another nonfiction piece that I won’t be looking at because I’m not familiar with the text it’s discussing, but otherwise this is a very nicely balanced issues that focuses on resistance and fighting back but knows that there’s no hiding from the despair of oppression and the harm being done. And while many of the stories are quite hopeful, and while much of the nonfiction is about how to resist and how to maintain hope even in a very bad situation, there are also stories that know very well that there is also exhaustion, there is also hurt. And while none of the pieces stop there, some of them do carve out a space to feel that pain and recognize it. To show that it’s okay to hurt and to focus on that, while still leaving a path forward for when healing is possible and the fight can be resumed. It’s a powerful issue and I’ll get to those reviews!

Art by Galen Dara

Quick Sips - Uncanny #15 [April stuff]

It’s another full month of SFF from Uncanny, and another month full of pieces that look rather specifically at resistance. At least, the three nonfiction pieces all revolve around the idea of resistance and how SFF can be an invaluable tool to bridge between cultures, people, and experiences. There’s a bit of a surprise novella in among the fiction, paired with a flash work, and both look at the profound impact that loss can have, that disaster can have, on a person and their life. How it can make an ambivalent person dedicated. How it can make a peaceful person a killer. And the people it equally beautiful, exploring the boundaries between religion and consent, history and human folly. It’s a well rounded issue, and I’m going to get right to the reviews!

Art by Julie Dillon

Quick Sips - Uncanny #12 (September Stuff)

What can I say about the September content from Uncanny that will convince you enough to go out and read it now? Star Trek nonfiction? There are two and they are amazing and I would love this month's offerings for that alone but there's also three pieces of fiction that delve into relationships and love and yearning and dysfunction and are definitely worth checking out and there is a poem that has left me desperate for a flavor I've never know, a food that I can almost taste and it is so good. Seriously, everything is good this month and this is just the thing for people looking for some great SFF fiction, poetry, and nonfiction! To the reviews!

Art by Kirbi Fagan

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 05/16/2016, 05/23/2016, & 05/30/2016

Okay, so closing up May is proving to take longer than anticipated, but the good news is there's tons of great stuff from this month to enjoy, including another three weeks of content from Strange Horizons. Three fiction pieces, three poems, and a pair of nonfiction makes this a rather weighty post, and it's definitely not any lighter when you look at the subject matter. Loss and growth and guilt dominate—characters stuck in cycles and wanting to know where to go, what to do, where their place is. And with all this great content, I should just get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #195 Science Fantasy Month 3

The month of Science Fantasy continues with another extra-large issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies. These stories take things in a slightly different direction. They're about land and about family, about growing up and digging in and trying to find a better way, even if it doesn't always mean an end to violence. The stories are complex and haunted—by ghosts, by intentions, by the land itself. The past returns in these stories and helps to inform a future that might be brighter, that has the hope of changing things, ending or at least easing oppression. It's another great issue, and I'm just going to jump into the reviews!

Art by Sung Choi

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #69

The February Lightspeed Magazine is here and it's quite an impressive array of stories. Four tales, as usual, two science fiction and two fantasy. The science fiction takes a look at visions of the possible future. Dystopic, some might say, but more about finding humanity in isolation. More and more people are little islands, and the science fiction explores that, in some literal and metaphoric ways. The fantasy is all magic realism this month, a pair of quasi-portal fantasies that touch on the need and the want to get away, to escape. Plus I get to rant a bit more on my ongoing thoughts concerning "Millennial fiction." So to the reviews!
 

Art by Elizabeth Leggett

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #63

This month Lightspeed Magazine delivers an incredibly solid issue ripe with brilliance and emotion. Leaning a bit more toward the fantasy side of things, even the science fiction seems a bit touched by the fantastic, providing a stirring series of stories that move from nostalgic to biting. Two of the stories touch on the broken promises of the past, the broken ideals that people working hard are rewarded. Instead they look at how working hard is often exploited and even resented, and how to make a difference sometimes you have to break the agreements that have failed, have to forsake the bonds which time has rendered abusive. It's a strong issue, and I should just get to reviewing it.

Art by Reiko Murakami

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #61 QUEERS DESTROY SCIENCE FICTION (part 1: the Flash!)

So there is a slight conflict of interest with my review of the latest Lightspeed Magazine, which is the special Queers Destroy Science Fiction Issue. Namely, I'm in it. My story, "Rubbing is Racing," is one of the flash stories. Which I will (obviously) not be reviewing today. And there was a little voice in my head that said that maybe I shouldn't review the rest of the issue either (but probably because the issue is HUGE and will take a lot of time and not because it is anything other than awesome). But I think I will have satisfied objectivity simply by not reviewing my own story and leave it at that. As I said, this issue is HUGE. It's as big or bigger even than most anthologies. As such, there is no way that I could read it in the same space I normally read just four short stories. There are ten short stories and (including mine) twelve flash fiction stories to read. Which means, unfortunately, that I'm not going to be reviewing the nonfiction. You should really read it, though. Nonfiction is great, but I don't have the space this month. That said, and from the title of the post, you might have figured out that I am splitting my review of this issue into two parts. The first part is the flash fiction. The second part, to come later in the month, will be the full length fiction. So watch for that. Reviews this month for Lightspeed might also be a little shorter than my normal just because there are so many. I apologize for that. Hopefully they are still useful. So onto the reviews!

Art by Elizabeth Leggett

Quick Sips - Apex #72

This month's Apex seems to be a lot about the stories that we tell ourselves, the stories that cover over the truth. At least the fiction definitely seems that way. There are literal stories that cover up uncomfortable truths, both through the suppression of memories and through the "misremembering" of events. But there is also a drive to face the truth, to face the past head on and deal with it. That it's necessary for moving on, for getting better. In all the stories there is a sense that the characters need to face their mistakes, that they are stronger than their guilt or grief, that they can do something. And, of course, the poetry is amazing. A solid issue, so let's get to it!

Art by Beth Spencer

Quick Sips - Uncanny #3 (April Stuff)

Today I'm looking at the April stories and poems from Uncanny Magazine. Three stories and two poems this time. The stories are a mix of longish to incredibly short. All told, though, it's some good material, visiting some popular ideas (circuses, Orpheus) with some new twists. Quick good stuff, so I'll get right to it!

Art by Carrie Ann Baade