Quick Sips - Flash Fiction Online May 2020

Flash Fiction Online is celebrating Mother’s Day with an issue full of SFF stories dealing with motherhood. Now, not all of them are precisely happy, but they show the many ways that mothers give for their children, and sometimes how those children give in return. The pieces move from near future science fiction to dark contemporary fantasy, all of them dealing in some ways with sacrifice and care. In each, there is a person who is sick or otherwise trapped, and it’s down to their family to try and free them, or at least be there with them to make what’s happening a bit more bearable. There’s a mix of light and shadow, hope and grimness, and it’s a great way to complicate and interrogate a topical holiday! To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Translunar Travelers Lounge #1 [part 2: With a Twist]

I’m back looking at the inaugural issue of Translunar Travelers Lounge, this time taking a taste from their With a Twist offerings. The section promises new takes on classic tropes (at least as I read it) and I can definitely say that it delivers. A ghost story with a musical (and romantic) embellishment. A post-disaster story with a badass librarian and a few overdue books. A fairy tale with its own defiant happily ever after. A kaiju story with a human heart. A time travel story with a meta filter. There’s lots of interesting ideas to explore, and I’ll happily do just that with my reviews!

Quick Sips - Flash Fiction Online October 2018

October’s Flash Fiction Online seems to me to focus on some strange and dramatic resolutions. Whether it’s from a living dead woman to finally be buried and done, or a supervillains deciding that it’s time for villainy (and heroism) to be snuffed out, or even a father who seems ready to battle the entire universe to solve a mystery near to him and his family, the stories all focus on moments of strangeness that come amidst other strangenesses that people have already accepted. Being dead and hollow while still alive. Heroes and villains fighting for dominance in an endless cycle. Ethereal gorillas watching everyone. And the stories represent a moment of change, and attempt to cut through the strangeness and re-establish a status quo that’s more...well, more normal. It’s an interesting issue and I’ll get right to the reviews!

Art by Dario Bijelac

Quick Sips - Fantastic Stories of the Imagination #231

The longest name in short SFF is back this month and Fantastic Stories of the Imagination offers up a pair of stories, one about as long as they publish and the other about as short. The two tales are quite different in tone, in message, but both do present science fictional looks at space travel and both are, admittedly, quite good. There is a feeling in both of feelings just below the surface, of characters facing situations they didn't exactly expect when venturing into space. Both in some ways also explore the idea of people who leave Earth behind still being connected to it, and in that it's a rather thematically tight issue of the publication, at least where original work is concerned. But enough of my ramblings. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Flash Fiction Online August 2015

This month's Flash Fiction Online features three stories, all of which focus on twisted visions of the future. The editorial calls these summer stories, and I can't really disagree, as the stories show humid swamps of form cities, bugs that eat light, and birds devouring groves of apples. Climate change, mad science, and horror all mingle in these stories, which provide a nice, if mostly science fictional, reading experience. But perhaps I should just get to the reviews!

Art by Dario Bijelac