Both the stories of the latest Beneath Ceaseless Skies feature characters who have lost their parents. who are left with an infrastructure that is largely patchwork and unsound. Who hope, by following the familiar paths, the rituals that have been left for them, they can have something like security, something like safety. While, really, there’s not much of either in their lives, and they are left struggling, scrambling for each scrap they can get, all stressed and lonely and hurting, wanting things they can barely give voice to, much less achieve. It’s a difficult issue but another well paired one, and I’ll get right to my reviews!
The latest issue of Flash Fiction Online is a nice mix of fun and kinda devastating. But the sad is sandwiched between two stories that make it easy to smile, and there’s plenty of charming humor to make up for the more disturbing and violent themes of the middle piece. So it’s a nicely balanced issue that moves well and focuses a bit on science fiction rather than spreading it about with regards to genre, but they’re three very different science fiction stories, and that’s great. To the reviews!
September brings a somewhat grim collection of short fiction to Flash Fiction Online, with three pieces very much about accidents and loss, grief and the slim margins of hope. In many, death rides heavy in shotgun. In some, grief and loneliness seem like they will be too much for the narrators to bear. There is a sharp edge of bleakness in many of the stories, and how they approach grieving and sorrow. But there’s also hope to many of them. That even when you lose someone, not everything is lost. Even when it seems that way. And not everyone who leaves does so entirely, leaving pieces of themself behind in memories, in acts of compassion that linger long after their footsteps have faded to silence. To the reviews!
Summer is still going strong at Flash Fiction Online, but with August comes a slow slide toward autumn, the bright colors of spring now distant and the heat of the summer leaning toward oppressive. To push back against that, here are three original stories that focus on relationships and, mostly, the redemptive potential of relationships—friendships and partnerships that allow people to grow in ways that they might not have been able to do alone. The stories can be heavy at times with fear and uncertainty and hurt, but end up shining with the beauty of the connection they highlight. And the issues doesn’t stay completely serious, offering a lighter, funnier tale to ease the heavier impacts. So yeah, to the reviews!
Fresh off a successful Kickstarter campaign that will allow the publication to do some interesting and exciting things, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination opens 2017 with a pair of short but sweet SFF stories. These are pieces that look at family and relationships, trauma and effort. They show characters given the opportunity to walk away from some important part of their pasts. To put it down and maybe remake themselves. But these stories are about the choice to go back, to stay, to fight on even in the face of rejection, even in the face of overwhelming cruelty. The stories are at turns disturbing and fun, magical and wrenching, and they do an excellent job of exploring the worlds and characters they introduce. To the reviews!
[Note. I am saddened to hear that Fantastic Stories will be closing after their next issue. Fuck.]
