Quick Sips - Breathe Fiyah

Art by Eli Minaya

A collaboration between Tor and Fiyah Magazine, this special Breathe Fiyah issue features eight short stories (entirely flash fiction) by Black writers exploring race, oppression, resistance, and revolution through a speculative lens. The stories are largely (though not completely) contemporary, both fantasy and science fiction (with some horror elements thrown in as well at times), and they create a framework, one that ends up resembling perhaps a structure of kindling. Each piece a small addition that, when put together and struck, sets off a blaze. The stories are about resisting, about surviving a world that is actively trying to erase, exploit, and exterminate you. And the works do indeed spark and smolder, ending with a bang that, hopefully, will shake things up, weakening the racist and white supremacist structures that marginalize Black writers. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Fireside Magazine #72

Art by Amanda Makepeace

Well Fireside Magazine certainly takes its Halloween seriously, because this issues is entirely ghost-centric in order to get you into the spoopy mood. The stories explore what it means to be a ghost, what defines ghost-ness. And obviously, spread over so many stories, the place it arrives at isn't homogeneous. There are a variety of ghosts, as there are a variety of people—ghost who remember their lives and those who don't, ghosts who hunger for the living, and those who want only a break from isolation. Ghosts created by violence, and those created by longing. And it's a wonderful celebration of ghosts carried out over the issue. So let's get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Apex Magazine #120

Art by Godwin Akpan

Well this is it. The final (for now) issue of Apex Magazine. It's also a special guest-edited special issue from editor Maurice Broaddus. The stories are a mix of hope and fear, exploring futures torn apart by climate change, xenophobia, corruption, and conservatism. Per the mission statement of the publication, these are stories that walk the edge of bleakness and despair, that do not sugar-coat the violent or cruel depths that humans are capable of plunging headlong into. Through that, though, they explore hope in the has of annihilation, resistance in the face of corruption, life in the face of oppression. The stories see worlds only a step from our own and offer guidance, and dire warnings, of what might come if we don't do something now to spread compassion instead of exploitation. So for the last time (for now) for this publication, let's get to the reviews!

THE SIPPY AWARDS 2017! The "I'm Sleeping with the Lights On" Sippy for Excellent Horror in Short SFF

Welcome back to the 2017 Sippy Awards! For those just tuning in, the Sippys are the coveted awards no one knows about, celebrating short SFF across five categories grouped by theme. Last week I revealed my favorite relationships in short SFF, and this week I’m going in a much darker, direction. So make sure your night light is working, tell yourself that noise you hear is probably just the cats, and get ready for...

The “I’m Sleeping with the Lights On” Sippy Award 

for Excellent Horror in Short SFF

Now horror to me has to do a lot with feeling. About fear, particularly. And stories, especially SFF stories, can approach fear in many different ways. They can get us to look at the mundane differently by treating with teh supernatural. They can remind us of the terror of the unknown, and the unknowable. They can present us with a situation and setting where the rules as we know them don’t apply. Where anything might happen. 2017 was, perhaps aptly, a great year for SFF horror. The world has done a thorough job of showing us all just what a dark and forbidding place it can be, and a bit of that can be seen reflected in the horrors crafted in these tales. But for most of them the stories don’t stop at the revelation of horror. They keep going, reaching past that horror and to a place where ghosts are put to rest, hungers are fed, and we can all live in a better place. So please join me is celebrating this year’s winners!

The Monthly Round - August 2017

The Monthly Round is live right now at Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together. Do please go give it a read. It features my favorite short SFF reads from August 2017 and pairs them with tasting notes, drink pairings, and reviews. It's quite fun. Anyway, for those wanting a taste of what this month's list features, here's the run down. Cheers!

Tasting Flight - August 2017

"The Library of Lost Things" by Matthew Bright (Tor)
"Avi Cantor Has Six Months To Live" by Sacha Lamb (Book Smugglers)
"The Wanderers" by Ian McHugh (GigaNotoSaurus)
"unfurl/ed" by Jes Rausch (Strange Horizons)
"If a Bird Can Be a Ghost" by Allison Mills (Apex)
"Our Secret, In Keys" by Suyi Davies Okungbowa (Fireside)

Quick Sips - Fireside Fiction August 2017

Well September is a busy month at Fireside Fiction. With four flash fiction stories, one short story, and the first three installments of a serial novelette or novella, it manages to pack a lot in there. Given that, it's no surprise that the themes and feels of the stories range quite a bit, from happy in the face of oblivion to heartbroken at the end of a beautiful relationship. The stories look at gods and prophets, loves and robots. These are stories that all explore what it means to be human and what it is that humans create. All the bullshit and abuse but also the beauty and the compassion. It's a difficult batch of stories to fully fit under any thematic umbrella, but the quality is certainly high and the overall feeling rather triumphant. To the reviews!

Art by Daniel Stolle