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 - Clarkesworld #160

Art by Eduardo García

Well that’s one way for Clarkesworld to open 2020. Following the pulling of their lead story at the request of the author, the publication will also be issuing a statement (at the time of my writing this it’s still forthcoming). I had written a review of the piece, but it’s my policy to remove reviews at the request of authors, and I’m honoring the author’s request to remove the story from publication as a further request to remove my review of it, in this case preemptively. So I will not be posting a review of the story, at least as things stand now. That said, there’s still a lot of issue to get to, and a lot of the stories this month are linked by themes of death and loss, by family, and by mortality and transformation. There are many characters dealing with the line between human and robot, between AI and person, between friend and monster. To the reviews!