Fiction

Fantasy

They leave Fort Hameera in the dusty light of dawn, riding their donkeys through the lower western gate. Miles sees native Bagha sentries along the scoured sandstone walls, their turbans black lumps against the rising sun, and fights the urge to duck his head. General Williams did not forbid him this expedition, only strongly urge against it. Certainly that might be because he thought Miles was voicing a whim rather than stating intent. Regardless, the general is not here now. As a Scribe, Miles exists outside the normal chain of military command, but he is sure of this much: No lowly sepoy has the authority to bar his path.

In Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 198 (November 2026)

Science Fiction

Repentance in Blue

by Phoenix Alexander

Author spotlight

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)

Fantasy

The Oracle at Ikeja

by Tobi Ogundiran

Author spotlight

I. The Oracle at the Ministry of Truth

Ayinla could not say when he first heard of the Oracle. Perhaps at the barbershop, where he had settled himself into a rotting and dangerously unstable barber’s chair, robe too tight around his throat, silently cursing the barber who stopped every now and then to argue with “hangers.” (There were always hangers at barbershops; jobless, often shirtless men who were as much a fixture of the shop as the harsh fluorescent lights that exposed Ayinla’s pores).

In Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 198 (November 2026)

Science Fiction

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)

Fantasy

All the Shapes We Have Ever Been

by Kehkashan Khalid

You have always guarded the tower, even before the king left the first orphan-daughter under the apple tree. Curled around its pearlescent moon dome, your black scales invisible against the night sky, your red eyes watch the courtyard where a little girl paces left then right and then stands in the middle, utterly lost.

In Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 197 (October 2026)

Science Fiction

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)

Fantasy

Uncanny Jack

by Susan Palwick

Everyone thinks the uncanny folk steal children, but they steal adults too, steal their minds and memories, put their own folk where ours used to be. The new folk don’t know their loved ones, don’t know what a toilet is, don’t know how to deposit a check. Of course they don’t. Why would they? They didn’t need any of that, didn’t know any of those people, where they came from.

In Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 197 (October 2026)

Science Fiction

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)

Fantasy

Until the Cure

by Marissa Lingen

Author spotlight

The golem who cares for my mother is patient, as I am not patient. The golem who cares for my mother is kind. It is precise. I took everything I wanted to be as a daughter, and am not, and I put it into the golem. I’m still afraid I am failing her.

In Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 197 (October 2026)

Science Fiction

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)