Quick Sips - Escape Pod #754-756

Three original stories make for a pretty full month this October at Escape Pod. The works as always interrogate and celebrate science fiction. Here, there are post-disaster dystopias and far off-world military adventures (and horrors). The pieces examine empathy and cruelty amidst corruption, slavery, and colonization. To the backdrop of exploitation, betrayal, and genocide. These are not overwhelmingly happy stories. The characters are caught in places they cannot easily or perhaps ever escape from. But that doesn’t mean they can’t find ways to reach out in kindness, understanding, and love—doesn’t mean they can’t try to find those things for themselves, either. So let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Terraform August 2016

Among other things, this month's offerings from Terraform show the beginning of a project devoted to augmentation. To augmented reality and augmented humanity. To stories that explore, to mixed results, the blurry lines between humanity and machine, the virtual and the "real." That on top of a pair of stories that take a look at settings that delve into the bleak future of climate change and, in some ways, post-climate change, to what the planet might look like if we continue on the trajectory we're on now. All the stories follow through on Terraform's promise of showing startling visions of the future, though perhaps some I fine more compelling than others. In any case, to the reviews!