Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #162

Art by Thomas Chamberlain-Keen

It’s something of a surprise to find that the March Clarkesworld has six new fiction pieces and none of them are translations. What it does feature are six science fiction stories that range from wry and fun to grim and gutting. A few of the stories return to settings previously established (in stories I believe also came out at Clarkesworld), while others do some very new things. And there’s still plenty of ground to cover, with three shorts and three novelettes, and a few running themes that people might want to be aware of, most notably substance abuse. But there’s a lot of beauty, a lot of messy relationships and characters, and some fine reading. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #151

Art by Arthur Haas

It’s a full month of fiction and Clarkesworld, with seven stories (six short stories, one novelette), including two different translated pieces (one from Chinese and one from the brand new line of Korean SFF that the publication will be putting out this year). And the pieces by and large focus on the past, and on family, and on trying to recover from the world having gone in some unexpected directions. The characters are looking for people that they cannot find, that are no longer there to be found, and it’s some emotional, rending work, but also full of resilient hope, and audacious survival, and there are tons of moments of tenderness and compassion and love even in settings torn apart by war and violence and loss. And yeah, let’s dive into the reviews!

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 06/04/2018 & 06/11/2018

The first two weeks of June’s Strange Horizons brings a pair of stories and a pair of poems. The fiction is a mix of fantasies, one with magic and ghosts and monsters and the other with a looser grasp on reality. Both feature characters charged with watching over a space through. For one, it’s through elaborate ritual. For the other, it’s by house sitting. In both, there’s a feeling of something being trapped, of something being infested, and of the characters having been wronged. The poetry deals with myths, with mythical creatures, and with longing and endings and beginnings. And all together it makes for a rather lovely but haunting collection of short SFF. To the reviews!

Art by Kelsey Liggett

Quick Sips - The Book Smugglers October 2017

Just when I thought the season was over, The Book Smugglers return for a special Halloween story. It's...well, it's not incredibly Halloween-y, but it is a rather touching and ultimately dark story about utility and purpose and humanity. The story does a great job of building up a weird, slightly magical science fiction setting with a great hook and a devilish ending. It does have something of a ghost story aesthetic going for it, too, so I suppose you can consider it fit for the season. In any event, it's unsettling at times and decidedly creepy and before I give too much away let's just get to the review!

Art by Desirina Boskovich

Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #123

In many ways I feel like this issue of Clarkesworld is about the constructs that we find around us that are little more than fictions we tell to make sense of the world. And sometimes the fictions that we tell, the ways that structure our lives and our realities, don't quite work. We see separation when we could see union. We see estrangement when we could see growth. We see lies when we could see dreams of something better. These are stories that beg us to reconsider the comfort of our held beliefs, to examine how we might be closing ourselves off to the boundless possibilities around us. How we might be missing out on opportunities to grow and heal and know ourselves better. So let's get to the reviews! 

Art by Maciej Rebisz

Quick Sips - Lackington's #11 Possessions

Just ahead of the release of their next issue, Lackinton's has dropped the paywall on their Possessions issue and it's a great collection of rather dark stories. Perhaps rising from the complex nature of possessions, from how people can own things, how people can own people, how things can own people, how entities can inhabit people, how people can own ideas and stories…there are a lot of ways that these tales circle around what it is to have possessions, and what it is to be possessed. Most of the pieces are solidly fantasy, the magic alive and well and further complicating the theme but also giving it a wild fire that casts some wicked shadows. There's a lot here to enjoy, so I'm going to get to the reviews! 

Art by P. Emerson Williams

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 09/21/2015 and 09/28/2015

So I was not really expecting there to be so much out from Strange Horizons these last two weeks. Normally, there's only a piece of fiction, a poem, and maybe a nonfiction per week. Towards the end of the month, like now, there tends to be even less. But there is a fund drive going on. So first, maybe go and check that out. Then realize with growing apprehension that there are three pieces of fiction to look at, five poems, and two pieces of nonfiction. That's a busy two weeks. Luckily it's all quite good, rather dark, and incredibly helpful as far as the nonfiction is concerned. If this is the content that Strange Horizons keeps offering up, then I definitely want to make sure they keep up and running, and I'm sure I'll donate again this year. Plus, there are prize drawings. Amazing, amazing prize drawings. So yeah, get on that while I get to these reviews.