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I’m a scientific pantheist. Science is awesome—literally. It inspires awe in me, much the way that I suspect many people are inspired by more traditional religious teachings. So for me, it only makes sense to craft the stories our ancestors might have, had they known more about the universe we live in.
I hoped people would see that despite the way humanity repeats the same damn mistakes over and over . . . we do make progress. A little, even when it seems hopeless. And that the best way to handle the utter chaos of the bigger world around us is to remember to love and connect to each other. Those deep connections are intensely meaningful.
I think writers should write what they know—but if they don’t know it, they need to learn it. And that includes all the sciences.
“I have some friends in a multi-decade on-again/off-again relationship. Like the characters in the story, they get together, break up, see other people, reconnect, and do it all over again. They love each other, but they’ve never been able to make it work. […]”
Vylar Kaftan won a Nebula for her alternate history novella “The Weight of the Sunrise.” Her new novella “Her Silhouette, Drawn in Water” is forthcoming from Tor Books in 2019. She’s published about 40 short stories in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, and other places. Her Nebula-nominated story, “I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno” […]
The nearest cloud cluster was sixty miles away, almost an hour’s journey if Bombay went at top speed. A fruit trader had seen it on her way to Sabon-Gari, floating lazily across the azure sky. “You don’t see that often,” the trader had said to the crowd, grappling her basket of mangoes. “A whole cluster, untethered, unbothered, what a sight! So you see why you have to buy my mangoes, they’ve been blessed by clouds!”
I actually don’t remember the original prompt, but somehow it got me thinking about the idea of a “reverse selkie”—someone who would be transforming in such a way so that they lose the sea by becoming their “true shape.” Likewise, in this story, love transforms Shoko into her “true shape”—whereas in a traditional selkie story, “love” (usually kidnapping) means being forced out of your real skin.
This month, Arley Sorg reviews the novelZero Bombby M.T. Hill, and two works from authors whose short ficiton we’ve published here at Lightspeed: Vylar Kaftan (Arley reviews her debut novella, Her Silhouette, Drawn in Water) by ; and Sam J. Miller (who has a new novel called Destroy All Monsters).
John Joseph Adams might be Lightspeed’s editor and publisher, but for many of our readers—and heck, even the staff—he’s a bit of an enigma. How can he run two magazines, his own novel imprint, oversee the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy series, and create more amazing short fiction anthologies? Does he ever sleep? Mystified, we asked our staff interviewer to find out a bit more about JJA.
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This issue's cover art by
Grandfailure / Dreamstime.
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