Quick Sips - Uncanny #36 [September stuff]

Art by Christopher Jones

The latest from Uncanny includes three new short stories and two new poems that speak of space, of people finding themselves in a new place, unsure of the rules, hurting from the baggage and scars they bring with them, trying to find a way forward. A way to stop being hungry--for food, or experiences, for closure, for revenge. The works lean a bit more towards the science fictional side of things (or well, the fiction does), with a slight divergence to a work that...seems to blend science and fantasy. The works are well built, vividly imagined, and have a bit of aching need at their core, and I should stop being vague and get right to my reviews!

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #74

Rarely do I find an issue of Lightspeed Magazine as thematically linked as I do with this month's original fiction. The stories are mostly about cycles, about progress, about comfort and change and perspective. The stories are also about stories, about the narratives we use to change the world and the narratives we tell about the world that keep us stuck in destructive patterns. There are AI and science summer camps and gods and stones. The issue shows a hunger for change, and many different ways that it can be achieved. It's a compelling collection of stories that I'm going to get to reviewing! 

Art by Galen Dara

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #66

This month's Lightspeed Magazine is all about subverting tropes. From a time travel story about love and determination to a sentient ship bursting with faith in greater powers to dragons literally erasing diversity in Medieval Europe, the stories take some common ideas and twist them just so. Everything old is new again and the stories manage to range from subtle to more blatant, but all of them are subversive, all of them worth sinking your teeth into. Which I should get started on!

Art by John Brosio

Quick Sips - Uncanny #6 (October Stuff)

In a month that is dominated by the spooky, the dark, Uncanny Magazine presents a nice array of stories, poetry, and nonfiction that are...reaching. Not light, perhaps, but dense rather than dark, yearning rather than scary. Most of the works have a delicious way of not offering closure, not really offering answers. The endings are all lingering promises. Even the nonfiction doesn't offer a solution to everything, more highlights a problem and a possible direction to go and allows the reader to follow onward, to make the steps themself. It makes for a lovely issue that I should just get to reviewing.

Art by Matthew Dow Smith