The Starsinger, the Starsinger, the Starsinger, he sings. His histories have long been recorded—in every pit stop he has visited. In every station he has stayed. It may be just a minute of the traffickers slapping the Bini out of his mouth, or them telling him to recite the Western verse, or them colonizing his heart. But he remembers. Oh, the Starsinger remembers.| Lightspeed Magazine
Looking for a new series to sink your teeth into? Melissa A. Watkins recommends All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu, the first in a new SF thriller series with a realistic tech near-future and a hopeful, but honest commentary on our current world.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
There’s an established trope that magic can be dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing, and I thought, what if I really push that? What if someone without the proper training is a live wire, shocking everything and everyone around them? In that case, you don’t want these kids to know magic until they are emotionally ready to control it.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
My ghost bled through the shadows, an icy wind stirring the leaves. Eyes like candle flames shuddering and crescent moon mouth, it had found me as a girl and never let go—the only thing that was really mine. It led me to an overgrown graveyard, pelts of moss eating like acid through fallen tombstones. In the haze of tree-shadowed dark, huge stone towers loomed in the distance, wrapped by vine and tree limb.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
The woman’s name was lost in The Fall, as was so much else we once thought vital—seasons, rivers, uncharred air—but her image persists, has become indelible. The giant wall of white upon which her travesties are projected once yearly has become a mecca for all in this, our new world. The desert for miles around is littered with the bleached bones of those who would gaze upon her bare body, to confirm for themselves and their outposts that one such as her ever actually existed.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
Be sure to check out the editorial for a rundown of this month's great content.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
By the time he went to reclaim himself, it was too late. As a young man, he’d realized there was a power to being alone. Relationships were tethers that held you back, sapped you of strength, of will. People were poison. And not all poisons were bad; sometimes the toxic taste, the caustic kiss, was a good thing. But too much killed you all the same. No matter how alive it made him feel in the moment, he knew that in the end, it would cost him.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
Space is such a fertile ground for interesting world-building, and I thought this idea of characters living in asteroids to be a fascinating and also somewhat plausible world-building tool. I didn’t think so much of where to place them, so much as I knew where they would be based on the kind of people they are. I always think character first, and everything is in service to that.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
The company man’s smile showed off his perfect teeth. Evie hated that smile; it meant he was going to kill her again. Him staring down the camera above the Manic Pixie’s door didn’t help. Even with the dead pixels mildewing the monitor, Evie got the full gut-liquidating effect.| Lightspeed Magazine
I wrote the bulk of the first draft while I was on a cruise ship and experiencing the deep ennui that comes from being on a cruise ship. So that’s intrinsically buried deep in the DNA of this narrative in many mysterious and arcane ways. The second piece of inspiration is that a couple of years ago, on social media, I had seen an image of a mermaid in a bathtub with a bunch of tally marks written on the wall, and that painting really struck me. It’s always fun to take things seriously, an...| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
In its dreams, the thing they call “Kos” sleeps deep and drowned in the clutch of the ice-cold trenches, where the pressure is a loving clasp around its arms and tail, where it is near-disintegrate, more spirit than substance, more magic than meat. Then it wakes up in the bathtub. The deoxygenated water filters tepidly through Kos’s gills. It gasps, coughing through a windpipe and lungs that weren’t meant to be so exercised, even with the “humidifier” that pumps clouds of soft wet...| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
In City of One, the object is to avoid being seen. You begin at a random point in the city. If you are seen, you die. You cannot leave the city. If you try, you die. Your wellbeing starts at 1 out of 100. At 0, you die. To maintain your well-being, steal food, water, and shelter. If caught, you die. Remaining unseen does not increase your well-being. Sleep does not increase your well-being or decrease your exhaustion. Remember: You are surrounded.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
If you immediately understand this phrase, and you get it on an emotional level, then these stories will probably speak to you in ways that they might not otherwise.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
Dear Dr. Erzsébet Krajcsik-Nagy, I am contacting you as a member of the general public, and not as a fellow scholar, though I must say my chosen field of art history does have certain similarities to yours. I read the interview with you in the online edition of the Plains Dispatch with great interest, and went on to seek out your research article mentioned therein, titled “On an Unusual Kind of Spatially Distributed Haunting.” I believe I have additional information which could shed ligh...| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
I wrote “The Girlfriend Experience” while attending Clarion West last year. I masochistically put my hand up for Monday critiques, so it was one of the stories in our very first day of workshops. In retrospect, it might’ve been a subconscious litmus test to find out which of my classmates were prudes. (As it turns out, none of them; Clarion West Class of 2024 is wall-to-wall perverts, and I could not be happier.)| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
Gardener ladled dark-purple porridge into her primary digestion sac, staring absently out the viewport at black space and the distant smudge of the planet they had come to study. The simple meal and the gesture it represented soothed her after a long, thorny morning in a section of the growth bay that was in full flower and had needed hand pollinating. Though the other crew members around the mess made do with the usual break time assortment, Cook had steamed and spiced osard grains just for ...| Lightspeed Magazine
If you’re looking for a quick, absorbing read with a lot more depth than you’d expect from a novelette, check out Novic by Eugen Bacon.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
When I sat down to write “Apeiron” I had a decent sense of what I wanted it to be. A lot of the thinking about the story happened off the page, over years. I knew I wanted it to feel like a fable, but with more modern elements. I knew I wanted to expand on creation myths and delve into the psychology of gods. I knew I wanted it to be dreamy. What form all of that would take was the part I was least sure about. I figured I would work that out as I went.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
Outside the cabin, there was snow. There had always been snow, far as the eye could see, and further still. It might be true that the snow extended forever in every direction, sitting heavy on mountaintops and green pines, on frozen lakes and frigid tundra. Asha hadn’t tried to go very far from the cabin. […]| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
The place I came from, the port across the sea of stars, the isle town edged with sturgeon scales, was built on basalt. The place I came to, the city at the centre of the field of view, the once-ringed origin of dreams, was too large and too important to answer to a single kind of rock, but the first I encountered there was an unpolished railing of coarse-grained granite—the kind that leaves little slivers behind in your palm, but when you go to investigate you find they are only imprints w...| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
We’re supposed to take care of one another, empower and uplift one another, hold one another accountable, show interest in one another’s histories, present experiences and dreams for the future, keep the home we share safe and clean for all of us who live here now and will live here in the future.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
Feeling contemplative or in the mood for something poignant? Chris Kluwe recommends Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon by Mizuki Tsujimura and translated by Yuki Teijima.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
Be sure to read the editorial for a rundown of this month's great fiction.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
I’m going to explain everything, I promise, but we don’t have much time. For now, you just have to trust me. In three seconds, I need you to raise your right hand. You know, like you’ve got a question in school. (Shouldn’t be too hard; I know you’ve got tons of questions.) Okay—wonderful. By now you must have raised your hand, or we’d both be gone already.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
Zan’s supervisor tossed the glass square onto their rusting desk. A glass-rendered construct of a silver ticket hovered in the air, text shimmering. Zan held their breath as they re-read it until they were sure their credentials were correct.| Lightspeed Magazine
If you’re looking for something fantastical in scope, yet gritty in execution, you’re not going to go wrong picking this one up.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
Zan being biracial, nonbinary, and working to get by paycheck to paycheck is, frankly, a relatable existence that’s also an infuriating one. I wrote this back in 2024, prior to the election in the U.S. and other events related to CEOs that transpired, so this story feels eerily relevant in a way I never intended.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
One time at a convention I ran across the Man of Flowers, the Superman of Daffodils, a long-haired guy, indestructible (of course), who slept in his car and drank a lot of cough syrup and didn’t really fight crime, unless the crimes were happening pretty close by. He was old by then, maybe fifty years old, but with stubble and green eyes and that ageless Tom Petty So-Cal face, and we’d gotten used to the idea that this particular ubermensch was more super-hero vibe than actuality.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
If you remember one thing from Arley Sorg's review of Not Your Papi's Utopia: Latinx Visions of Radical Hope, he wants it to be---You need to read this book.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
I knew wanted to write a series character, so I took inspiration from the many, many characters in fantasy which appear over multiple pieces in general, and I guess a little bit from C.L. Moore’s great swordswoman, Jirel of Joiry.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
Savannah the Librarian, long of leg and short of temper, got out of the city to do some killing. As ever, she rode her sly, dependable white mule, Seldom. As ever, the invisible swikehead demon, Boy, crouched on her left shoulder.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
Defense Attorney John Yurasov: Earlier you referred to this trial as a circus. Can you explain what you meant? Defendant Michaela Xiao: I don’t mean it was corrupt. Though that’s very possible. I just mean that the conclusion was always foregone.| Lightspeed Magazine
The buffet was infinite. It existed in a pocket dimension, via some sort of technological jiggering of the sort that you have heard about before and, unless you are totally anal, don’t want to hear about now.| Lightspeed Magazine
If you're looking for your next mind-bending SF read, Melissa A. Watkins highly recommends Mindscape by Andrea Hairston.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
I’m always thinking about real-life stereotypes and tropes, and how I can subvert them in the space of fiction. I wanted to write a story where the dad didn’t disappear but perhaps was neglectful of his family in other ways. He gets the milk, but is that the point?| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
Dad went out to get the milk and came back with two scars on his upper chin and a brand from the Druid King on his right thigh. He stumbled through the door like it was nothing; face scarred; eyes full of light. Mum and Tega and I were eating dinner. We didn’t notice when he stepped through the door. “Milk’s cold,” Mum said, not taking her eyes away from the TV. These days, she hardly seemed to care.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
Dispatch #1. [INAUDIBLE] . . . but hopefully I’ve got the recorder working now. This is Dr. Nathaniel Letheford, Director, Alliance for Military Neutralization and Eradication of Sensitive Incidents and Atrocities. I have been inserted into conflict zone W-924/B for sample collection.| Lightspeed Magazine
Be sure to check out the editorial for a rundown of this month's content and for all of John Joseph Adams's media and book recommendations!| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
The biggest influence was my own encounters with unhoused children on the streets of Karachi. Either on the way to school myself or coming to and from places in the city. There is no childhood for them, and no organised resource or infrastructure to resort to.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
What you need to know about the boy in this story is he is always hungry and the sun is always too hot for him, and he would save the world if he could. This is what he tells himself as he sits opposite the tailor’s shop, looking at the clothes sway in the breeze of the air conditioner within. Fawad would save the world, he would change fate itself.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
The first version of the story I wrote for a friendly contest in a writing group. I used a pair of prompts---a set of words to use---from which I picked joint, monolith, stole, Jeep, and perhaps one more; and the idea of something that has lost its symmetry. A flat tire on a Jeep in the desert came to me almost right away.| Lightspeed Magazine
Are you looking for a book packed with intrigue and sisterly shenanigans? If so, Chris Kluwe definitely recommends The Blood Phoenix by Amber Chen.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
I think fantasy and science fiction have always been opposed to oppression. There’s always an evil man standing in a tower somewhere, a great all-seeing eye peering out at his domain, and there’s always band of men (or hobbits) rising up to meet him.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
Because her sudden pregnancy doomed her---as she saw it---to diapers and daycares she couldn’t afford and the same drab job she already disliked, Abby asked for Marcia’s advice. At thirty months, Marcia was already the size of a glacier. She moved slowly and inexorably, lowering herself cranelike onto couches.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
We all know, by now, how common time loops are. In less than a decade, they’ve moved from the realm of SF movies into the slightly less-realistic realm of self-help books---most famously, Moving On: How to Keep Going When Time Literally Stops.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
Melissa A. Watkins thought the prose in The Memory of the Ogisi by Moses Ose Utomi was some of the best she's read in recent years. Find out what else she loved about this new book.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
Tyler Moore’s spells strive to exist in and of themselves. They make no excuse or justification for their existence: no promise to speak to the dead, predict next year’s grain or gold prices, or read the mind of lawyers during a hostile takeover. They are simply beautiful, challenging, and awe-inducing.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
We all have a role in this world, but largely our role is not to be the hero. Tomas is a guy who grew up on some little hick planet, dreamed of getting off, and did in fact succeed in escaping.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
Once upon a time, on a spaceship traveling through the divide between galaxies, a married couple was bickering about whose job it was to clean the mouse shit that’d accumulated in the reactor tubes.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
Looking for your next gritty read? Find out why Arley Sorg thinks When Devils Sing by Xan Kaur ought to be it.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
In the Yoruba translation of the Holy Bible, the devil is sometimes called Satani which is just an adjustment of the English word Satan. However, where the English version uses the word “devil” then the Yoruba translation is Éshu.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
Once upon a time, on a spaceship traveling through the divide between galaxies, a married couple was bickering about whose job it was to clean the mouse shit that’d accumulated in the reactor tubes.| Lightspeed Magazine
Muna shuts the storeroom door as quietly as she can. Holding a just-waxed bundle of letters to her chest, she sticks out her head to check the bookshop floor. If she walks between the shelves on the far right, she can slip out unnoticed in ten heartbeats. The main door of the bookshop is propped open, the sun shining after what feels like a year of sodden clouds and sludged streets---she can’t wait to feel its warmth on her skin.| Lightspeed Magazine
