Lightspeed: Edited by John Joseph Adams

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Editorial

Editorial, October 2022

Welcome to Lightspeed’s 149th issue!

It’s not easy getting a good meal, especially in space. And in our first SF short—Gene Doucette’s “Primordial Soup and Salad”—the dinner situation on one spaceship gets, well, a little out of hand. If you like your science fiction with a side (dish) of humor, this one will definitely be to your taste.

The SF continues more seriously with a new short from Adam-Troy Castro (“The Conflagration at the Museum of You”), a piece about aliens and yet also about the very human nature of mass shootings. P H Lee spins the story of a fallen civilization in their new flash piece, “The Tragic Fate of the City of O-Rashad.” We also have a reprint from Dexter Palmer (“The Daydreamer by Proxy”).

Our first fantasy short takes us on a heart-breaking and transformative tour beneath the waves in “Apolépisi: A De-Scaling.” Debbie Urbanski returns to our pages with a new novelette (“The Dirty Golden Yellow House”) about a desperate, magical escape from a miserable marriage. Our flash piece is “The Three Books and What They Tell” from Alexandra Manglis, and our reprint is “Three Tales from the Blue Library,” by Sofia Samatar.

Of course our book team has been reading up a storm to find you some great book recommendations, and our author spotlight interviewer has sat down with all our short fiction writers to get more insight on their work. Our ebook readers will also get to enjoy a new excerpt from Kalyna the Soothsayer, a new novel from Elijah Kinch Spector.

It’s another terrific issue, so thanks for joining us!

John Joseph Adams

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John Joseph Adams is the series editor of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy and the New York Times bestselling editor of more than forty anthologies, such as Wastelands, A People’s Future of the United States, and Out There Screaming (with Jordan Peele). He is also editor (and publisher) of the Hugo Award-winning magazine Lightspeed and is publisher of its sister-magazine Nightmare. Called “the reigning king of the anthology world” by Barnes & Noble, John is a winner of the Hugo, Stoker, Locus, British Fantasy, and ENNIE awards and a ten-time World Fantasy Award finalist. In addition to his short fiction work, he’s the co-creator of The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast, and for five years he was the editor of the John Joseph Adams Books novel imprint for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Lately, he’s been working as an editor and game designer on TTRPG projects for Kobold Press, Paizo, and Monte Cook Games. Learn more at johnjosephadams.com.

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