Quick Sips - Tor dot com June 2018

June brings three original stories to Tor dot com (two longer short stories and one short-ish novelette) that find some interesting ways of taking the unexpected and even a bit goofy and making it resonant, powerful, and subtle. Which I didn’t think I’d say about a detective chimp story, but here we are. The stories look at characters who feel on the outside looking in or on the inside trying to get out. For the first two pieces, the main characters aren’t human, and yet find themselves partnering with humans, navigating a human world, and trying to do their best to build community and connections. In the last story, a bit of the opposite happens, where a woman is trying to leave the traditional kind of humanity and leave the corporeal world behind. And whatever the case, these make for complex and rewarding pieces that I should just review already!

Art by Scott Bakal

Quick Sips - Fireside Magazine June 2018

Did you know that Fireside Magazine now has a print edition? Called Fireside Quarterly? That is not only awesome in its content, but is also an impressive bit of layout, design, and printing? Seriously, it’s beautiful and you should check it out. But sorry, back to June’s fiction, which contains four stories (three of them flash-length). If I were to pick a theme that I felt echoed through all of these, it would be seeing the world in new ways. In each of the stories, characters are confronted with things that seem at first familiar. But which, nonetheless, have changed. Altered. Complicated themselves. From friendships to memories, from magic to superheroes, the pieces all explore what people do when they have to face the dissonance between what they thought was going to happen and what has happened. And it makes for some compelling reads. To the reviews!

Art by Katie Chandler

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 06/18/2018 & Samovar 06/25/2018

The final two weeks of June bring a new issue of Strange Horizons and a new Samovar, which means two original stories and two new poems. There’s also a reprint translation that I am not looking at here, but definitely do go and check that out! To me, the fiction of these issues takes on the idea of fables. In both, the action of the piece provides the kind of cyclical storytelling that is very popular for moral stories. And yet both stories also bring in modern touches, showing how corruption can influence people seeking justice. The poetry, too, has a lovely cyclical feel to it, bringing things around again and again, linking beginning to beginning as all part of one dance, one action, full of beauty and darkness. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #254

The two novelettes from the most recent Beneath Ceaseless Skies find characters looking for ways out of oppressive situations. People who have dealt with the loss of their parents and other family members, and who seek through building families of their own to try and find a place of safety in an unsafe world. Unfortunately, both main characters also discover that even just trying to be questions the foundation on which injustice is built, at least in their cases because of who they are. And so trouble comes looking for them, and both must decide if they will try to bend to the will of those with power or if they will embrace a power of their own, even if it leaves a trail of bodies in their wake. Let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Mihály Nagy

LIVER BEWARE! You're in for a Drunk Review of Goosebumps #8: THE GIRL WHO CRIED MONSTER

So we can all agree that Goosebumps is a pretty weird series, right? I mean, last time we saw a story that revolved around sibling jealousy and also ancient wizard-curses. But I feel that, by and large, the series has been pretty tame so far. Yes, there have been plant-men and vampire ghosts and evil mad scientist magicians, but... I think through all of this, the horror of the stories was still largely based so that the reader was uncertain if the magical or weird elements was truly happening. In essence, that the stories all operated on the hope that the readers would, like the characters, try and find ways to explain away the weird, and that they could not was where the horror sprang from. Why do I bother mentioning this now? Well, dear readers, SHIT IS ABOUT TO GO OFF THE RAILS!

Quick Sips - Apex #109

The pair of stories that appear in the June Apex Magazine are very much about possession and bodies. About being coerced into doing something with your body and dealing with the aftermath The physical and emotional ramifications of what happens, when those consequences couldn’t have been known ahead of time. Because in both cases judgment has been impaired—through alcohol of through a sort of alien touch that can effect human emotions. Neither story offers the most in the way of light takes on the matter, but the heaviness of the stories fits with the gravity of the real world abuses they are dealing with. And by wrestling with them and the darkness they carry, a better idea of justice and consent can be approached. To the reviews!

Art by Sin and May

Quick Sips - Nightmare #69

June brings a pair of stories to Nightmare Magazine that certainly aren’t squeamish about blood, or guts, or scale. Both stories confront the reader with visions of blood and violence, though not always involving humans. Still, they are lessons in empathy and the shock of seeing something—someone—pulled apart. Both look at the way that such a confrontation can make someone numb to it, and the ways that there’s still some horror lurking under that acceptance. More, the stories look at scope in terrifying ways, revealing darknesses so vast that it seems to consume light and hope and joy. What remains is somewhat up to reader to contextualize. Good or bad, right or wrong, the stories are often bleak and draining, and yet there’s something of a warning to them as well, that people can confront their demons in stories and learn their lessons without the gore and violence spilling over into the real world. To the reviews!

Art by Andrey Kiselev / Fotolia