Quick Sips - The Dark #65

Art by chainat

October brings a special treat to The Dark Magazine--an extra original story! And all three of the works in this issue are wonderful, are full of characters pushing back against the oppressive worlds they find themselves in. Not always able to do much. Sometimes able lto escape. Sometimes able to create change. Rarely able to avoid loss, though. Never able to avoid grief. The works offer complex views of delicate situations, and people hoping to get by or else willing to bring it all down around their head. But before I give too much away, let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #125

Art by Grandeduc / Adobe Stock Image

Three short stories and a novelette round out the original content in October’s Lightspeed Magazine. And it’s not exactly a spooky month of offerings, though there is a vampire for those interested. Rather, the stories deal a lot with stories. Stories people tell that help to define the world they move through. Of good and evil. Of hero and monsters. And the stories end up dealing with the ways those stories can be affirming and healing, and the ways those stories can be cages, devices of erasure, pain, and destruction. And the works cover a lot of ground, from post-disaster Chicago to a romance far far away, from a small village in Hungary to an online reality that can be more real than real. To the reviews!

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 - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #313

Art by Vladimir Manyukhin

It’s anniversary time again at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, with a special extra-big issue containing three short stories and a novelette. Because of how the stories are released, it’s basically like having two different issues in one, and that plays out for me in the thematic links between the stories as well, where the first two deal with people investigating strange disturbances that turn out to be much deeper and more perilous than they thought, and the second two deal with people figuring out how much of their desires are what they think other people want for them, and how much are genuinely coming from within. The stories bounce off each other well, building in resonating ways a look into some very interesting (and often grim) fantasy worlds. But before I give too much away, let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Escape Pod #748-751

September sees a return of original content to Escape Pod, and does so in rather dramatic fashion, with seven(!) new short stories, including the four winners of the annual flash contest. With that many stories, there’s a lot of science fictional visions on display, looking at time travel, post-apocalypses, aliens, AIs, and much more. The worst also range from happy to heartbreaking, from hopeful to kinda bleak. But the works show some wonderful interpretations of what science fiction can mean, what they can include, and I am all here for it. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 09/21/2020 & 09/28/2020

I close out my reviews of September’s Strange Horizons issues with a look at one more short story and two more poems. The fiction deals with totalitarianism, with borders, with touch. With a relationship fracturing under the strain not only from without, but from within as well. The poetry keeps things heavy, dangerous, mysterious. Things aren’t all doom and gloom, though, with a bit of humor mixed in as well, and a spot of meta-textuality as one of the poems evokes and complicates a different text (one probably familiar to most people reading this). The publication crosses the three quarter mark on the year in style, with a strong range of works that do not disappoint. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - PodCastle #643

Just a single story in this month’s PodCastle original releases, but that’s not to say it’s does hit above its weight. The story is complex and beautiful, daring and demanding in ways that I don’t often see in short SFF. It deals with transition, with changing a body in magical ways, but the change isn’t just a metaphor for gender transitioning, in part because that’s already literal in the text. Rather, the transition here is more complicated, a way for the main character to reshape her body and get a manner of control and freedom she’s always wanted. It’s stirring and emotionally resonating work, and I’ll get right to my review before I give too much away!