Science Fiction Archives - Lightspeed Magazine

Science Fiction

Ryan said he’d been seeing “blue” in his bedroom at night. “Blue what?” I asked. Light. “Where?” Everywhere. Six-year-olds can be little fabulists, but he was inconsolable, so I took myself to bed with him the next evening, tucking him in as the sky darkened. His night-light flared, the shape of a plastic molded bird, lit from within like a phoenix. Amber, not blue. Not even close. The room eased into night. I heard my son’s gentle snoring next to me. I remember wanting to rest my eyes.

In Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 198 (November 2026)

Selected Case Notes from the Judicial Oversight Council of the Gatarn Empire

by Ian Li

Case No. 23N-55671, Year 49

Defendant Ernine activated a trans-dimensional device to swap his body with a version of himself from a recently diverged parallel universe. Defendant, or an alternate version of Defendant, was then caught on holovideo surveillance stalking and stabbing a victim ten times on planet Jarandis. Two hours after the victim succumbed to her injuries, Defendant activated the device again, allegedly to restore the original version of himself.

In Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 198 (November 2026)

Ice Like Honey

by Rob Cameron

Night falls around you. The city redshifts into coral-snake shades as monuments and modernist architecture of government buildings fracture the horizon. Low-orbit satellites command it so, and Washington, DC Nocturnal awakens. Across the capital, lights and data connections ripple with staccato rhythms, a hangover from last night’s unseasonal double blackouts.

In Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 197 (October 2026)

Master/Slave Couple Seeking Physicist to Feed to a Black Hole

by Arden Powell

You are:

A disillusioned mathematical physicist with a wet open mind.

Desperate for knowledge.

A neo-masochist.

A willing sacrifice.

In Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 197 (October 2026)

Guidance

by Martin Cahill

Later, when the cameras were off and he was alone with his wife, hands still shaking from the cocktail of adrenaline, fear, shame, guilt, and vodka he’d been partaking of all day, he started to tell her the truth. Even then, he only spoke it in the dark, so overwhelming were his emotions that he could not bear to be seen.

“The truth,” she said, prompting him, trying to draw him from the enveloping gloom of their bedroom.

In Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 197 (October 2026)

The Raspberry Manifesto of Professor Warana

by Adam-Troy Castro

Something has happened. It is amazing. It is unheard-of and inconceivable. It is many, many, many things, gathering a plethora of adjectives that indicate its ability to cause astonishment and confusion among those who behold it. It is a mountain-sized edifice of awe. Whether it is horrific, tragic, or a leap forward has yet to be decided.

Nevertheless, it has happened.

In Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 197 (October 2026)

Maskwork Saltman Giftbox

by Rich Larson

I’m only doing maskwork until I find better, but there aren’t many physical jobs to go around in Schrödinger City. Most get done by gleaming machines, by hop-along bots and drone swarms. Luckily, maskwork needs a human touch—and supposedly, village folk are better at it than the folk who grew up here. Could be. I always liked masks.

In Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 196 (September 2026)

Alterverse

by Sanjana Raj

Author spotlight

Asha is eight pages into the book before the words disappear. There are still hundreds of pages before the end of the book, so they must have had a record of the length of the volume, but lost the text. It’s a common experience in this library, to encounter fragments of things, to have to make educated assumptions about what once was.

In Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 196 (September 2026)

The Chrysalis of Moth One

by V.M. Ayala

They didn’t want either of us to live this long. Sucks for them—we’re good at living in spite. We’re good at surviving, at fighting, at never stopping. Today is the last day we exist in spite of Command, but it’s also just another day that ends in y. Most pilots are paired with a seasoned mentor. Not us. No, powerful men at Command threw us in the pit of a Moth to fight their pointless space war.

In Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 196 (September 2026)

Dreamweavers

by Alexander Weinstein

Author spotlight

In The Before Days, Tim was a fellow procurer of dreams. He made a good living frequenting rooftop parties amid aging tech bros in fur-clad vests where mangosteen juices were mixed and silent discos reverberated within guests’ inner ears. As the dustbowl spread across the continent, even Reza himself was rumored to have purchased one of Tim’s dreamscapes—a particularly beautiful worldbuild of plummeting waterfalls and Tahitian escorts that kept Reza ensconced behind his retinas for days—after which Tim was invited to more exclusive barricaded enclaves of the super-rich, all who wanted private downloads to their next digital escape.

In Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 196 (September 2026)