Quick Sips - Serial Box: Knox [ep01.07 & 01.08]

I’m back again covering two more chapters of Serial Box’s Knox. Things are getting I N T E N S E and I’m not sure I can handle much more of this. The series has been so good at building tension while exploring a wonderful cast of characters. Each new person is wonderful and fun and fleshed out and the series has made me care about each and every one of them only to dangle the prospect of their impending destruction over me like the blade of a guillotine. I might literally be on the edge of my seat because I am terrible at suspense but I can’t look away. I must know what happens next, following the chapters as they expertly guide my feels right toward the meat grinder. These chapters continue experimenting with voice and perspective while still keeping Knox firmly in focus, and the result is some seriously nail-biting fiction. to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Serial Box: Knox [ep01.05 & 01.06]

Whoops! I had a suspicion I had it wrong and this one definitely convinces me that I made a rather grievous error in my early review that noted the wrong Great War (curse you unimaginative European war names!) that Serial Box’s Knox takes place after. Not World War II, but World War I. Not that it makes that big a difference, but it does put things in a different context. Completely my bad! Anyway, that out of the way, the action actually does travel back to the war and the mark it’s left on Knox. And how what she went through during that conflict has bled forward into the present case. What fun. These chapters continue the turn into the Weird and Horrifying that the previous chapters were hinting at, and things get mighty strange and ominous here. Lots going on, so I’ll get right into my reviews! 

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #112

Art by Galen Dara

Two novelettes and two short stories means a fairly full issue of Lightspeed Magazine this September, with a focus on history, freedom, and struggle. Often in the stories, characters find themselves being controlled or manipulated, either by another being or by their own insecurities and fears. What results is an issue that looks at people struggling with the implications of their own drives, their desire for freedom over comfort, meaning over survival. There are stories of future incarceration, science gone wrong (or right?), struggles linked by music, and even a Weird Western where magic springs from decks of special playing cards. The worlds are vividly rendered and the characters often wrenchingly portrayed, but instead of just telling you about them here, let's get to the full reviews!

Quick Sips - Tor dot com August 2018

Two short stories and a novelette round out the SFF originals from Tor this month, with a definite focus on science fiction, on futures of humanity interacting with the universe and, perhaps more importantly, with the Earth. Whether that means dealing with the touch of climate disaster and change, or working to move beyond the bounds of our terrestrial home through uploading and flight, or gaining a new and non-human presence to co-inhabit the planet with, the pieces look at how humans see the Earth, and how that perspective shifts as the gaze becomes less incorporated in a human body. It's a month full of strangeness and longing, risks and looming dangers, and it makes for a fascinating bunch of stories. To the reviews!

Art by Victo Ngai

Quick Sips - Uncanny #23 [August stuff[

The second half of the special Dinosaur issue of Uncanny Magazine brings even MOAR dinosaurs, with five new stories and three new poems. Two of the poems aren’t really dinosaur-centric, but the issue as a whole offers up a great diversity in styles and ways of incorporating the source material and expanding the shared space of the issue. Here we are treated to more stories of dinosaurs displaced in time, landing on the Oregon Trail, or in a strange fairy tale, or in the middle of a small town. There’s not quite the same focus on communication and understanding as before, though. Instead, these pieces look a bit more at violence, and hunger, and corruption. They don’t flinch away from showing some dinosaurs getting their feed on, as well as getting their freak on. It’s a strange, rather wonderful collection of short SFF, so let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Galen Dara

Quick Sips - Tor dot com March 2017

First I guess I have to talk about Tor dot com's March project, Nevertheless, She Persisted, which features eleven pieces of flash fiction all centered around that idea, that quote. These are stories that hit and hit hard, some of them blisteringly defiant and some of them steeped in despair. The stories (and poem) show the many facets of the idea of persistence. The power of it and also the crushing nature of having to persist, and persist, and persist, ever and always. The stories run across a wide range of speculative genres and it's wonderful to see the authors taking this central idea and being inspired by it. Using it to say something new and interesting. Making a statement on our current situation and refusing to look away from the uncomfortable truths of it. So yes, it's a wonderful project and makes for a some surprising start to Tor's March.

That's not all that the publication got up to, though. Oh no. This would have been a full month even without the eleven flash stories, as there are also three short stories and two novelettes to look at. And wow. These are some gorgeous pieces that take on some deeply uncomfortable themes and manage to find glimmers of hope even in the most devastating of loss and corruption. They are stories of ghosts and magic, bodies and wars. And before I get too lost in describing them, why don't I just get to the reviews!

Art by Scott Bakal

Quick Sips - Uncanny #13 (November Stuff)

The November content from Uncanny Magazine does a lovely job of showing the power of stories. Of narratives. Of how the ownership of those stories is importance and empowering. How, when the narrative begins to slip away, it can be used to isolate people. To exploit people. To erase people. And only when people can control their own stories, can have their own agency, can there be justice. Can there be hope. Can there be the recognition that people are all people and that the roles they think are absolute might only be a narrowing of their perspective, and when the blinders are pulled away their world suddenly becomes larger, richer, and more rewarding. These are not all easy works of fiction or poetry or nonfiction, but they are all powerful in their own ways, and I'm going to get to reviewing them. 

Art by Julie Dillon

THE SIPPY AWARDS - The "Time to Run Some Red Lights" Sippy for Excellent Action in Short SFF

Hello and welcome to everyone's favorite awards that no one asked for, the Sippys! So far I've managed to ship my favorite relationships, cower in fear at my favorite scares, and totally not cry over my favorite tragic and/or beautiful stories of 2015. And there's still two more categories of Sippys to go! This week is all about the stories that get the heart pumping, that made me lean forward in my seat and read a little faster. Because fourth up is--

The "Time to Run Some Red Lights" Sippy 

for Excellent Action! in Short SFF

There are those who complain that short SFF these days are, well, boring. Too luminous, too poetic, too metaphorical. There are those who pine for the days of the pulp science fictions that prioritized action and plot over subtlety or meaning. To those people I ask: what the fuck are you reading? I have seen zero indication that stories now are any less intense or visceral than those written at any point in the past (that these people who complain about the decline of compelling short SFF often identify as fans of Lovecraft...confuses me). And stories today use action in subtle and profound ways, to entertain of course but also to challenge and to goad, to complicate and to reveal some ugly truths. And today I'm focusing on stories that bring the action, the battles big and small, that manage to take a breakneck pace and a visual flare and craft something deeply personal. And the winners are...

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #57

Today I'm looking at the latest issue of Lightspeed Magazine. Four stories as always, two science fiction and two fantasy. And this month the stories range a bit more in length, from under 2k to over 11k. So that's a little unusual, but the quality is still up to par. So here I go!

Stories:

"Red Planet" by Caroline M. Yoachim (1926 words)

This story shows a blind biologist struggling with the restrictions to immigrating to Mars. Perfectly capable of doing lab work and living and doing everything she needs to, she's still prevented from going to Mars and participating in the xenobiology program there. Only then the opportunity comes to get an experimental treatment to become sighted so that she can pass the test and immigrate. It's something she's never really wanted, sight, and the experience leaves her depressed, not wanting to give up what she's worked for. Only she still wants to go to Mars. So she goes through with it, and learns to see, and gets accepted. And then, along the way to Mars, she decides to take her sight away using a magnetic device that would cause her implants to fail. It's an ending that I can understand. I can understand her wanting to meet this challenge on her own terms, and without having to give into her principles. She doesn't want to have to deal with sight. She doesn't want people expecting her to use her sight. And though she's interested in color, interested in certain things, she decides it's better to be in darkness, to return to what she was. That part of me asks why she didn't just keep her eyes closed reinforces the idea that she never would have been free of the expectation of using her sight if she didn't physically remove it. So well done, story.

"And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead" by Brooke Bolander (11123 words)

This is a fast and furious story about a female cyborg named Rhye killing a bunch of things. Well, not really. Really it's more about a female cyborg named Rhye who's really, really good at killing a bunch of things finding herself in a situation where she has to trust someone else, where she's confronted by the totality of her life and realizes that she's not the kill-everything-and-fuck-the-world machine she thought she was. Because her partner in crime, Rack, has gotten his head blown off. Which doesn't really kill him, as his mind is engaged in trying to deal with a particularly nasty security system, but which makes things...complicated, and makes Rhye face herself and how she feels about Rack. Kind of literally with the facing herself bit, as the security system is based off a younger version of her, one that has nothing to lose and doesn't care if she lives or dies. It's a fun story, as Rhye is a fun narrator, all action and violence and it's fun to watch the carnage. With it, though, there is also a gooey center of her growing a bit and realizing that she's growing, realizing that she doesn't want to be alone anymore. Not that she can't still kill everything. But with someone with her. It's a fun blast of a story, and makes it's longer length pass quite quickly. Indeed.

"And the Winners Will Be Swept Out to Sea" by Maria Dahvana Headley (5718 words)

Stories like this normally make me wonder if I'm missing some reference. Probably it doesn't matter, but I do wonder if there is some particular story behind the monsters here or if the rituals and the characteristics are all original. Whatever the case, this is a story about a water creature who falls in love with a man and then loses him. Only she doesn't really lose him in the ways she thinks, and they rediscover each other in a different form and decide to try again, to keep going. The story is melancholy, told to the man that she has lost. It's a strange, poetic style, and not one that I would have looked for at Lightspeed. But here it is, and it works fairly well, diving through the depths of loss and grief and time. There is a weariness that is conveyed quite strongly, with the water creature not wanting to keep going. She is old and doesn't know if living is worth it anymore, but she manages to keep going. Parts of this are a little hard to figure out, or were for me, but overall it's a lovely, lonely story that I enjoyed.

"Things You Can Buy for a Penny" by Will Kaufman (4198 words)

This story is more a series of stories, of people visiting the wet gentlemen at a magic well and making wishes in hopes that their lives will improve. And for most of them, it does. Not all, but th wet gentleman is certainly more considerate than a monkey's paw. The wishes he grants are perhaps edged but they are honest, at least in my mind. And the stories go deeper, echoing Tim's journey to the well, sinking down layer by layer. The voice and the imagery all is well done, evoking an older time without really setting a time or place. There is just a sense that this is an old story, that it goes back and back, a cycle. Which is why it's a little difficult to see too much horror in the story. It reads mostly like a horror but being the wet gentleman doesn't seem like a terrible thing. Once freed, he doesn't seem evil. And there's the sense that Tim will escape the same way, so to me it's more just a fairy tale-esque fantasy, one with some grim elements but ultimately one that just shows that some things never change, that people always seek creatures granting wishes.