Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #156

Art by Beeple

September brings just five new stories to Clarkesworld Magazine, but given that none of them are under 6800 words, it’s not exactly a light issue. It’s not light in terms of themes, either, with a lean toward works that explore abuse and damage, with people struggling to find meaning and connection in environments and situations that have been built on misconceptions, corruption, and exploitation. The result is the issue has its share of grim moments, but I feel out of that springs a lot of hope, with characters finding ways to trust and believe in themselves and others, working for a future that can be better for everyone. Or, at least, for the people who are trying to make things better for everyone. And there’s a lot to cover, so I’ll get right to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Terraform September 2018

I'm closing out my September reviews with a look at Motherboard's Terraform, which brings four new looks at rather terrifying possible futures. As usual, the stories range from predictive to outlandish, but all of them lean toward warnings. Signs for people to read and pay attention to. Turn back now. Avoid this possible time when humanity has lost respect for our world and our selves. These are pieces look at the way things could be with an unblinking gaze and invite readers to look into that abyss. It's a nice range of works, too, from far future space extinctions to much more grounded political sci fi, where corruption and injustice are only a step or two beyond what we have now. It makes for a strong month of stories, which I'll get right to reviewing!

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #261 [part1/2]

It’s another stuffed anniversary issue, this time from Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and once again I’m breaking out my review into two parts (mostly because half the stories are being released in September and half in October). The first pair of stories are an interesting mix, one an invigorating adventure with a cat protagonist and the other a much darker and more difficult look at the ways that misogyny perpetuates tragedy. For their many differences, though, they are linked by a connection to what lurks under the surface. Under the surface of the earth, where gems and sleeping dragons lie. And under the surface of people, where reputation can seem to mean much more than what’s truly lurking in the hearts of people. So yeah, to the reviews!

Art by Mats Minnhagen

Quick Sips - Tor dot com September 2018

September is a bit of a...light(?) month from Tor dot com, with only two novelettes released. But given the weight and power of the works, I don't think light is exactly the word for it. Instead, these are stories that look at myth, that look at harm, and family, and abuse. Featuring characters who are not defined by the traumas they've endured, the broken world they have to live through, but have certainly been touched by them. Who, despite everything, are still trying to find a way to make the situation better, to make a better life for themselves and their families. These are difficult stories about inheritance and about hope, and they pack quite the punch. So let's get to the reviews!

Art by Keith Negley

Quick Sips - Fireside Magazine #59

The four stories from Fireside Magazine this month deal with violation and consent, with connections and deceit and fate. There’s a good mix of fun and serious, fantasy and science fiction. There are alien sharks and magic curses, spirits trying to reach out and friends trying to keep each other safe. It’s hard to pin down a possible unifying theme, but I think they all come together in how they reveal the societal pressures at work that try and leave people open to harm. That try to keep people from banding together, from helping each other. And how individuals can push back against that, though often don’t, or often still fall against the pressure to conform, to accept the values and taboos and corruptions of the way things are. So let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Michelle Wong

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 09/17/2018 & Samovar 09/24/2018

It’s a bit of a surprise to close out the month as Strange Horizons and Samovar both have new issues to look at, highlight short SFF both in translation and not. It’s perhaps extra appropriate, though, that even the non-translated work is about translation. Is about trying to be understood across the barriers of ability and culture and language. Is about trying to find a place to be safe and secure and finding that it doesn’t always exist, that sometimes people intrude, and trespass, and violate. And it’s a beautiful if dark collection of works, moving as they do around various kinds of violence and damage. Through systems that are decidedly not just, where people are trying to get by any way they can. But it’s a deep and rich bunch of short SFF that I’ll get right to reviewing!

Art by Kali Gregan

Quick Sips - The Book Smugglers September 2018

September brings a new short story to The Book Smugglers’ Awakenings season of short SFF. And it’s a striking and difficult piece about bodies, identity, and perfection. Or perhaps about the push to perfection, both the reaching for it and the way that for some people the world seems to demand it. Extort it. And how people can become ground to dust by the pressures to succeed and be flawlessly successful. It’s a powerful story, and I’ll get right to my review!

Art by Reiko Murakami

Quick Sips - Mithila Review #10 [poetry]

With the fiction done yesterday, it’s time to look at the poetry from the latest Mithila Review! And wow, there’s a lot of it. Seven poems and all flesh out themes of cycles and birth and death, family and resistance and war. These pieces together seem to me to speak to the strengths of language and poetry—to capture the mercurial and the non-literal, to evoke sensation and meaning, and to make brilliantly alive all those things that might be obscured by darkness. Poetry is often a light to shine on truths otherwise too difficult to face, and even in the storms of violence and tragedy, poetry can find beauty, and hope, and connection. So yeah, let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Mithila Review #10 [fiction]

It’s been a while since the last issue of Mithila Review, and I’m happy to say there’s a new huge issue with tons of short SFF to read and enjoy. Because there’s so much, I’m once again breaking my review of the issue into two parts. And today I’m looking at the first part, covering the fiction! There are eight different stories presented here, covering a nice range of genres, though leaning a bit toward the weird and on stories that unfold in strange cities and desolate wastes. There are pieces that look at escape, at legends, and at food. And overall this is a very visceral issue, one that doesn’t hesitate to unsettle or confront the reader with themes and formats that are difficult. And overall I think there’s a great deal to take away from this issue’s many hungers and truths and warnings. So without further delay, to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Shimmer #45 [September stuff]

September’s Shimmer Magazine releases two very different stories—stylistically, thematically, and tonally. And yet I guess at their core these are stories about three people. In each, a man and a woman meet under slightly unusual circumstances, brought together because of their shared connection to an absent man. And in both, these people who meet awaken something in each other, in such a way that it feels that there’s really no going back afterward. Of course, in one of these cases this is a wrenching, difficult experience. And in the other, it’s a fun and bloody romp. But it’s a very interesting pair of stories, and I’ll get right to the reviews!

Art by Sandro Castelli

Quick Sips - Nightmare #72

The September horror from Nightmare Magazine certainly lives up to the name, bringing two pieces that definitely lean toward the bloody and gruesome side of things, though in very different ways. The first takes splatter horror and runs with it, featuring hungry houses and the people who feed them. The second outweighs the first in terms of atrocities committed, though, if not perhaps on the grisly details. For it, though, the horror is more about how this kind of thing is normalized and even used as entertainment. And together they make for a rather unsettling, rather shocking, but very interesting issue of speculative horror. To the reviews!

Art by Grandfailure/ Fotolia

X Marks the Story - September 2018

It's that time again! I look back at some recent favorite reads, a lot of which feature weirdly specific but wonderful facets. Wise chickens, psychic detectives, romantic Death, and much more! The list and links to the stories is below, but check out the column at The Book Smugglers (with X-tra X-plorations)!

X Marks the Story - September 2018

“The Privilege of the Happy Ending”, Kij Johnson (Published in Clarkesworld #143, August 2018)

“The Barnum Effect” by Celia Neri (Published in Apex #111, August 2018)

“A Taxonomy of Hurts”, Kate Dollarhyde (published in Fireside Magazine #37, August 2018)

“What Man Knoweth”, Russell Nichols (Published at Strange Horizons, August 2018)

“Momento Mori”, Tiah Marie Beautement (Published in Omenana #12, August 2018)

“The House on the Moon”, William Alexander (Published in Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction!, August 2018)

Cheers!

Quick Sips - Apex #112

It’s another rather large Apex Magazine this month, with three short stories and a novelette full of darkness, damage, and families. For most of the works, at least, the focus is on the pressures that people, especially women, face to blend in and accept a world that is so actively harmful to them, loaded against them. That they are pushed into participating in a system that harms and abuses them, without real help in dismantling that system. And for some, this is something to fight against, something to push back against, and maybe win some room, some progress towards a better world. And for others it’s something where any attempt to push back is met with brutal punishment and constant bombardment of abuse and humiliation. The stories map the complexities of desire and hope in settings where darkness holds sway, and they are all beautifully devastating. So, to the reviews!

Art by Joel Chaim Holtzman

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #260

The first Beneath Ceaseless Skies issue of September brings a pair of stories that certainly shake of the summer heat, opting instead of a colder, darker tone and feel. In each we find young women who make bargains that they don’t completely understand when they make them. About finally getting something they want in a setting where women’s desires are often the first thing suppressed in favor of survival and subsistence. Without anywhere else to turn, they get approached by witches, who in turn seek to take more than is offered. In one of the stories, though, the bargain’s toll goes much beyond even the steep price that was set, and in the other the price is still under negotiation, though a negotiation that now involves a gun. To the reviews!

Art by Piotr Dura

Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #144

Clarkesworld keeps things a little light this month, maybe as a slight reprieve as convention season winds down, with two short stories and two novelettes. For me, the stories have a lot to with movement, with generations, and with harm. They find characters on the run because of the violence they were brought up to value, and having to decide to reject it or revel in its flavors. The pieces explore family and connections and hope, and the impulse to reach for the stars, be they celestial bodies or human celebrities. It’s a rather complex, moving, and sometimes hilarious issue, and I’ll get right to the reviews!

Art by Arthur Haas

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 09/03/2018 & 09/10/2018

Strange Horizons opens September with two new short stories and poems. And the feel of these pieces very much faces the bleak and desolate for me. People who are struggling against a world that seems like a hostile waste, where they can't find connection, where those people they care about don't seem to stick around, don't seem to really understand. Where they are pulled by ghosts, of those they have lost and by the ghosts of their past selves, toward ends that mean destruction or worse. It's a rather rending month of short SFF, so let's steel ourselves and get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - GigaNotoSaurus September 2018

It’s a new short story for September’s GigaNotoSaurus, and it’s a dilly of a tall tale, complete with traveling librarians, horses that can ride galaxies, and whole lot of open desolation. The piece looks at the utility of tall tales, the function of them in places like the American colonial frontier, where people were coming across environments so unlike anything they had known that making larger-than-life figures seemed to give them a bit of security, knowing that somewhere out there someone was beating back the loss and the danger and the seemingly random catastrophe of the West. It’s a story of love and adventure and oh so much longing, and I’ll get right to my review!

Quick Sips - Uncanny #24 Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction! [September Poetry]

And now for the poetry from Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction! Now, in years past it has been flash fiction that rounded out the original offerings in the Destroy! issues. But, as Uncanny normally publishes a selection of excellent poetry, this special issue continues the tradition. Now, I find poetry some of the most difficult things to review, in part because they rely so much on what the reader brings to the piece. But I do find it valuable as a reader to approach poetry with a critical gaze, searching for meaning and seeking to understand and examine how I read and respond to poetry. And the selection here is amazing, moving from self and body outward into the universe, which can be beautiful and terrifying and freeing and confining and just, really, it’s a great celebration of speculative poetry that I’m going to do my best to review. So let’s get to it!

Art by Likhain

Quick Sips - Uncanny #24 Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction! [September Fiction]

Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction! is here!!! And with it comes a whole heck of a lot of fiction and poetry. To be specific, ten stories and ten poems. But, because this is also a regular issue of Uncanny, the work will be released publicly over two months. And so, to keep things manageable for me, I’m going to be tackling this extra-big issue in four parts—September fiction, September poetry, October fiction, and October poetry. So let’s dig in! The first half of the issue’s fiction is up and features five short stories touching on aliens, assistive devices, families, and a whole lot of disabled characters getting shit done. The work in these focuses primarily (for me, at least) on occupations and growing up. About facing down intolerance and violence and finding ways to find community, hope, and beauty in a universe that can often be ugly and cruel. So let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Likhain

Quick Sips - Flash Fiction Online September 2018

It’s a very culinary issue of Flash Fiction Online, with three new stories all focused on food and the different ways people approach them. For some, eating is a way of finding comfort in a world that can be often cruel and uncertain. For others, it’s a form of seduction, a sensual experience of temptation. And for still others it’s a way of connecting with and putting to rest the past and the griefs of the dead. These are stories that revel in tastes and smells and strangeness, and though not all of them are necessarily speculative, they are all alive with flavors and very much worth checking out. To the reviews!

Art by Dario Bijelac