YEAR OF GARAK, part 12: Enigma Tales by Una McCormack

We're here. It's not the end, exactly, but it is an end. Of the year, at the very least. On this last day of 2017 I think I can fairly say...it's been hard. On almost every level. It's been hard. But I think this series has made my year at least a little brighter. I hope it's brought you a little brightness in the dark as well.

We've reached the twelfth chapter in the Year of Garak, and are looking at the most recent major Garak project, Enigma Tales by Una McCormack. After everything, I think it's a fitting way to close out the year. With hope. With triumph. With the prospect of healing. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. Please, if you haven't, go and check out the posts so far, including a lot of discussions about everyone's favorite plain, simple tailor. You can find all the posts here: January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November.

To the review!

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 12/18/2017

Taking the last week of the year off means that Strange Horizons closes things out with a novelette and a poem, about difference and transformation. The story focuses on the harm that people can do, on myths and the idea of justice. It's also about hope, though, and about isolation and about survival. And facing the terrible beauty and possibilities of a changing world. The poem takes on a more romantic feel and features two people who shouldn't work, who couldn't work, and yet who somehow do. It's a yearning way to close out the year, which seems rather fitting for 2017. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Terraform December 2017

December comes to Terraform with four original stories, (okay three but I missed the last November piece so that's here too) which cover a lot of ground, from nightmare Christmas to sex in the future, to combat in the Ukraine, to the extinction of human life on Earth. Woo. These are pieces that do a good job encapsulating what Terraform does as a publication—offering up glimpses of possible futures that lean on the technology and trends of today. Some of them...are a bit more successful than others, imo, but they all have something interesting to unpack. So yeah, let's get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #241

With its last issue of the year, Beneath Ceaseless Skies delivers two very dark fantasy stories about expectations and rules, curses and sacrifices. In both characters find themselves playing out roles that have been laid out for them, having to find ways to exist in stifling situations. In both, the main characters must contend with the weight of tradition and expectation. In both, the main characters are faced with strong willed women who want to change things. Who want to break the Rules. And in both stories the main characters have to face what the world is like, what their life might be like, should those Rules shatter. It’s an interesting issue that asks some very difficult questions and reveals some visceral hurts. To the reviews!

Art by Dimitrije Miljus

Quick Sips - Two Stories from Prime Books

In something of a departure from my normal schedule, I’m looking at two short stories released individually from Prime Books. The stories fall heavily into military science fiction, with wars that take place across solar systems and beyond, and soldiers trapped, for all the broad horizons of warfare, into suffocating roles thanks to loss, grief, and the drive for conflict. Nestled into narratives about corrupt empires and delicate subterfuge are themes of family, resolve, and the way that justice blurs into something else in the face of atrocity. These are stories of soldiers facing the unknown, cut off from orders or the immediacy of battlefields, having to change the way they think about conflict, or else be ground up by it. So yeah, without further dalliance, to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Shimmer #40

It’s a pair of December stories from Shimmer Magazine that focus on love, on relationships, and on distance. That reveal characters dealing with new realities that their skills and their lives have brought them. Unexpected sentience and unexplored magic. That allow they to experience love and yearning, to brush against acceptance and community, only to have part of that taken away. These are not the happiest of stories, and yet they are both beautiful and alive with feeling, with heart. They show characters trying to make connections despite their fears, despite how their uniqueness might make them targets. And even when things fall apart, the stories show the fragile grace of love and compassion. To the reviews!

Art by Sandro Castelli

Quick Sips - Apex #103

December’s Apex Magazine looks at the end of the world, or at least two visions of it. Two very different visions of it. And yet both look at how people face destruction and the prospect of having broken a system so wholly that there might not be any going back. In one story, though, humanity has destroyed the Earth through what might be negligence, or might be random chance, and in the other it comes from hubris, from pushing too far, too fast, even after having prevented environmental ruin. The stories look at characters faced with knowledge of the end and how they adapt, what they reach for. Comfort, perhaps, but mostly other people. Community. A way to work together in order to perhaps salvage something from the end. And maybe even do something about it. Before I give too much away, though, to the reviews!

Art by Clarissa Ferguson