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
The first thing you have to know is that I did not kill the gods. Now, I’m sure you must have heard differently from your parents when they tell you bedtime stories, your priests who tell you their selfish desires rather than the will of the gods, or from your teachers who pretend to know what they’re talking about.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
Mom lives in a little place off the old meat-packing district, the streets full of cobblestones peeking through asphalt as hipsters turn the bones of slaughterhouses into bespoke gin bars. It’s expensive.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
Be sure to check out the editorial for a rundown of this month's terrific content.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
We’re so used to thinking of exploring other planets as a dream or even a privilege. But if all these wild dreams come true, going into space will become someone’s job. What is our dream for those jobs?| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
In Salemo, virtually the entire populace is kept in drudgery and toil. There are no public parks, nor libraries, nor song, nor wine, nor holidays. People slave away in seventy-two -hour workweeks, sustained by unnourishing meals of corn meal and grease, returning home to their miserable hovels at the end of each day to collapse on their stinking cots.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
If you're looking for a novel blending the '90s rock scene with faerie magic with male friendship, then Chris Kluwe has a book to recommend for you: The Only Song Worth Singing by Randee Dawn.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
I feel like one of the mistakes we see a lot of historically is “oh, there’s plenty of that, you don’t need to worry about that.” On a space station there isn’t plenty of anything. You have to worry about all of it. But on a planet . . . we make the mistake of thinking that we’re basically different from a space station.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
Mom still has good days, some days. Those days, when I visit her at Alpine Rest, she knows who I am and asks how her grandson Jack is. On her not-so-good days, she tries to summon the Fire Cosmic and screams that I’m in league with Professor Incalculable.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
It had been a long day of convention. All I wanted was a quiet drink in the hotel bar and quality time in my room with a romance novel. The utter cad from Planetary Industries was an unanticipated bubble in the fuel line.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
If you're looking for a book with a haunted town and an unlikely friendship, then perhaps The Corruption of Hollis Brown by K. Ancrum is for you. Find out why Arley Sorg recommends it!| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
The setting is such a big part of the story, and I really wanted to lead readers into it, to convey the idea that this is a refuge, its own world. Envelop the reader in that sense of calm and magic, to make them feel a part of this community.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
Sparrow retired from the battlefield at the height of her powers and couldn’t be persuaded to change her mind. She was done with fighting, armies, blood, death, and taking orders. Now, she ran a salon at the edge of Florelia, Tira City’s entertainment district.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
See now the misfortune of the thinking tenax. It is alone. The other tenaces have been chased away. Their gore stains the thinking tenax’s mandibles, and its roar drives them further back. Their flickering eyes peer out from behind feldspathic spires.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
Love reading about court intrigue? Find out why Black Salt Queen by Samantha Bansil might be for you!| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
I wanted to write about what the Faerie King means to her, why she’s so drawn to him. And by extension, I was writing about the fandom itself, why all these people are so wrapped up in him. This is really a story about the very human need to feel part of a story that’s bigger than oneself.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
When the Faerie King takes his tour of the human realm, he becomes---of course---a viral hit. The first posts and videos stream out from Shanghai, just after the New Year. He’s seen waiting patiently in line at a popular dumpling stall.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
At 5:43 a.m. this morning, residents of Grackle Pointe Apartments awoke to a malfunction in their complex’s multi-spatial engine due to an unprecedented derecho that swept through the Montrose area of Houston. This resulted in tenants being mentally and physically fused together.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
It's our fifteenth anniversary issue! Come check out the editorial for a discussion of this month's great content.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
The city of Nan Rhok stands on the ridge of a great mountain, where a gullet of steaming water flows from volcanic hot springs. The ridge is narrow and the mountain chill, so the city hews close to the spring, building high its granite towers. The name of Nan Rhok is known for many leagues.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
This story is very much rooted in the aspirational goals behind actual tech. (In fact, the company behind the Hogan Bridges was explicitly named Neuralink in early drafts, until I decided that I didn’t want to get sued by Neuralink.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
We lost so many souls today. Reports stream in across five continents; icons bloom on the map like blood spatters. Broken filters, zero latency, bandwidth that somehow blew through the roof when no one was looking. The hardware plays catch-up as best it can.| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
Chris Kluwe recommends a novel with an improbably mash-up: B-movie monsters and hard SF. That's right---Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove does it all. Find out if it's your next read!| Lightspeed MagazineRSS - Lightspeed Magazine
A couple of winters ago, trudging up an icy hill, I realized I could revisit elements I loved from one of my first trunked novels. I could come at it fresh and make the fundamentals into short stories. That meant I could junk all the characters, setting, and plot---and still feel like the years I spent writing it were good for something beyond skill growth.| 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
I think a lot of people live their lives very small. We internalize barriers that don’t exist. I think this is heightened by tech, which would have us sit in chairs all day, reacting to nonsense. The human mind can expend only so much energy, and we sap a lot of it scrolling pointlessly.| Lightspeed Magazine
The grow pods clung to a red, humped ridge about a twenty-minute hike west from the habitats. Inside one of their plastic domes, a farmer named Oliver Judd nestled potato starts in the ground with nimble hands. It was tricky work in a forty-pound outside suit.| Lightspeed Magazine
Buddhism teaches that life is a cycle of suffering and rebirth, and the only way to escape it is to achieve enlightenment. I’ve always found that theme interesting, especially in how it plays into creating Buddhist characters in wuxia/xianxia stories.| Lightspeed Magazine
Leighanna DeRouen is freelance writer and proofreader who lives with her husband and their dog GG somewhere in Ohio. When she’s not rewatching the 1990 hit film Rockula, she can be found lurking in the abyss that is Twitter at @fleurdleigh.| Lightspeed Magazine
It had all gone very well, Brooks told himself. Very well indeed. He hurried along the side corridor, his black dress shoes clicking hollowly on the old tiles. This was one of the oldest and most rundown of the Smithsonian’s buildings; too bad they didn’t have the money to knock it down. Funding. Everything was a matter of funding. He pushed open the door of the barnlike workroom and called out, “John? How did you like the ceremony?”| 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
