THE SIPPY AWARDS 201! The "I'd Ship That" Sippy for Excellent Relationships in Short SFF

Welcome, dear readers, to the FIFTH ANNUAL SIPPY AWARDS! For those uninitiated, the Sippys are the SFF short fiction awards that no one asked for but I'm giving out anyway! The rules are simple: of all the stories covered by QSR over the previous year, I'm selecting my five favorites in each of five categories. That's 25 stories in total, with 5 that walk away with the prestigious and coveted Big Sip Award. This is obviously the literary achievement that people wait their whole lives to reach, yes? Anyway, these posts will go up, one a day, for the next five days. As is tradition, I'm kicking things off with the...

“I’d Ship That” Sippy Award for Excellent Relationships is Short SFF

I'm a sucker for a good relationship story. They don't have to be romantic. Or sexual. Though most of these stories do feature romance and sex, they also feature characters that interact and orbit each other in intensely beautiful ways. For some of the stories, the connections are between just two people, lovers or friends or something else. For others, the connections flow between more people, or did, and were severed. They feature people striving to find comfort and meaning in their own skins, knowing sometimes that takes help, and understanding, and compassion. And occasionally it takes kicking some ass. Whatever the case, the relationships explored in these stories have stuck with me through a very hard year.

The stories come from all over, and it's probably no surprise that most of the relationships read as queer. But it's not just that which speaks to me. These are stories about people dealing with some crushing situations. And reaching out to each other, and helping each other, protecting each other, boosting each other. Surviving. Thriving. They're beautiful and fierce and I'll just get out of the way and let them speak for themselves.

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #108

Art by Julie Dillon

Two short stories and two novelettes make for a rather full month at Lightspeed Magazine. The thematic threads are at times hard to connect, but I do read a concern with conflict and a deep desire for peace and compassion. That looks different for different people, and the stories reveal how often the ability to have peace is determined by how corrupt the world is where the characters live. For those who are in a place where heroism is very real and the Bad Guys are expected to lose, it seems fairly easy to take on small concerns. When the system is built around colonization, war, and domination, though, trying to just skate by isn't enough, and more decisive resistance is required. It's an interesting mix of work on display, and I'll get right to the reviews!

THE SIPPY AWARDS 2017! The "I'm Sleeping with the Lights On" Sippy for Excellent Horror in Short SFF

Welcome back to the 2017 Sippy Awards! For those just tuning in, the Sippys are the coveted awards no one knows about, celebrating short SFF across five categories grouped by theme. Last week I revealed my favorite relationships in short SFF, and this week I’m going in a much darker, direction. So make sure your night light is working, tell yourself that noise you hear is probably just the cats, and get ready for...

The “I’m Sleeping with the Lights On” Sippy Award 

for Excellent Horror in Short SFF

Now horror to me has to do a lot with feeling. About fear, particularly. And stories, especially SFF stories, can approach fear in many different ways. They can get us to look at the mundane differently by treating with teh supernatural. They can remind us of the terror of the unknown, and the unknowable. They can present us with a situation and setting where the rules as we know them don’t apply. Where anything might happen. 2017 was, perhaps aptly, a great year for SFF horror. The world has done a thorough job of showing us all just what a dark and forbidding place it can be, and a bit of that can be seen reflected in the horrors crafted in these tales. But for most of them the stories don’t stop at the revelation of horror. They keep going, reaching past that horror and to a place where ghosts are put to rest, hungers are fed, and we can all live in a better place. So please join me is celebrating this year’s winners!

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #90

The November issue of Lightspeed Magazine is full of twists and turns, adventures and magic, dark bargains and chance encounters. And, for me, the issue is all about connections. About strangers and family. The pieces as weave around the bonds made between people who might not be related by blood. Who are drawn to each other by care and by shared memory and by the mutual desire for something different. The story is about finding friends in odd places and having that bond, that friendship, become something transforming and affirming and amazing. The stories are not exactly romantic so much as they show how powerful human connections can be, how trust and love go beyond the romantic or sexual and unite people trying to create better worlds, even when it seems impossible. To the reviews!

Art by Galen Dara

Quick Sips - Nightmare #54

The March issue of Nightmare Magazine certainly doesn’t skimp on the stories. Though it’s only the usual pair of tales, the lengths are rather impressive (the shorter is still over 7000 words) and the complexity is amazing. These are stories that don’t really follow the conventional slasher-style tropes of horror. No, instead what we find are familial tragedies, stories of sons betrayed by their fathers, of young people trying to find some way forward even when their lives and their worlds have been poisoned against them. These are stories about old wounds that won’t seem to heal, and about the power necessary to go forward when everything seems broken, ugly, and dark. These are pieces that made me think and made me feel, and I’m just going to get to my reviews.

Art by ilonareny