Quick Sips - Tor dot com September 2020

Art by Audrey Benjaminsen

It’s another full month of original fiction at Tor dot com, with four short stories and a novelette. As the seasons change into autumn (here in the U.S. at least), the fiction seems to be shifting as well. The stories are getting a bit more grim, a bit spookier. The works are tending toward horror tropes and elements with vampires, ghosts, monsters, gods, and apocalypses. The works find characters who are trying to get their lives on track following loss, following disappointment, following…life happening. And their attempts run into shadows, into the strange and dangerous mysteries of the world. And if, and how, they come out of those shadows will determine a lot if they can start to recover and heal from what’s happened to them. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #102

Art by Galen Dara

It’s an issue of return in this November issue of Lightspeed Magazine. Two short stories and two novelettes make the issue a bit heavy, and for me a big theme running through the pieces is the idea of cycles and returns. Returns to childhood dreams, to classic books, and to familiar settings. There’s a look at childhood and how children are often confronted by some very upsetting things that they can’t quite handle, that they certainly shouldn’t have to deal with. And it’s a rather dark issue, centering death and abuse and trauma and a shift of the familiar for the strange, for the new and dangerous. Even so, there’s a beauty and a light that shines through a lot of these stories, where children can find their way through the darkness to someplace safer and free. Where even if there is loss, that loss can be honored, and remembered. And yeah, let’s just get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - People of Color Take Over Fantastic Stories of the Imagination

It’s a bittersweet moment to announce that with this special People of Color Take Over Fantastic Stories! issue, the publication is closing down. It’s certainly a sad moment to see FSI closing down, but this is one hell of a way to go out. There are four original stories that I will be looking at, but I very much encourage everyone to check out the reprints and the nonfiction, because it’s all amazing and you should do yourself the favor of reading it. The stories themselves seem to focus on the tenuous nature of safety and space. Many of the characters find themselves relatively happy despite being marginalized, despite being at risk of violence and bigotry. They find jobs that they like, and people who accept them, and a place to be, only to find that all of it can be taken from them, and that sometimes the only thing they have left is the power to lose the rest, to gamble it away in the hopes that everything is not completely lost. And I love how the stories work together and flow and I guess I should just get to the reviews!

Art by Victo Ngai

Quick Sips - Uncanny #15 [March stuff]

March seems to be particularly concerned this year with two things. Horror and resistance. Probably not surprising, given everything. But these are certainly themes that run strong through Uncanny’s March offerings. With three stories, two poems, and two nonfiction pieces, many of the works linger on darkness and fighting back against adversity. Against oppression. Against wrongs both personal and societal. These are works that are very aware of our current moment but also reach beyond it, also capture something to bring forward, something hopeful and resilient and defiant. There’s something beautiful about the way the works all push us toward confronting loss and building communities. It’s a wonderful issue and it’s time to review it!

Art by Julie Dillon

Quick Sips - Tor dot com September 2016

September brings a certain return to form for my enjoyment of the stories from Tor dot com. Meaning, I like them. Quite a bit. The four stories provide a moving and often dark picture of the world. Of cities and the dangers lurking in and around them. Of songs and their power and their transformative essence. Of resistance and the call of standing up to the overwhelming press of danger and corruption. Of finding oneself suddenly in a very precarious situation and having to fight out of it, though not always alone. These are great pieces that explore humanity brushing against something…different. The great unknown. A monster from the night. Living cities. They are fascinating and powerful and it's time to review them! 

Art by Linda Yan