Advertisement
Fiction: “The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin, “The Old Equations” by Jake Kerr, “Sweet Sixteen” by Kat Howard, “Face Value” by Karen Joy Fowler.
Nonfiction: “The Cold Legacies” by Mike Brotherton, “The First Step to Enlightenment is Abject Failure” by Jeff Hecht, “The Superpowered Potential of Epigenetics” by Ekaterina Sedia, “Feature Interview: Mary Doria Russell” by Kat Howard.
Cover art by Maurizio Manzieri
Welcome to issue fourteen of Lightspeed! Here’s what we’ve got on tap this month … Fiction: “The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin, “The Old Equations” by Jake Kerr, “Sweet Sixteen” by Kat Howard, “Face Value” by Karen Joy Fowler. Nonfiction: “The Cold Legacies” by Mike Brotherton, “The First Step to Enlightenment is Abject Failure” by Jeff Hecht, “The Superpowered Potential of Epigenetics” by Ekaterina Sedia, “Feature Interview: Mary Doria Russell” by Kat Howard.
The world turned digital some years ago, but I like to be in touch with pencils and paper during the preparatory phase. A few strolls in the lush woods surrounding my studio help definitely!
There could be no alternative—but it required a few moments of conditioning for even an EDS pilot to prepare himself to walk across the room and coldly, deliberately, take the life of a man he had yet to meet.
The Cold Equations” was originally published in Astounding Magazine in 1954, and was Godwin’s fourth published story.
Just as a single important equation in physics can hold a myriad of solutions and describe a dazzling array of behavior, so too a sufficiently rich story.
I miss you already. But you know that. What you don’t know is just how proud I am of you. You were born for this, and no one could possibly be able to handle such a demanding job as well as you.
We all face loss, and we all face how cold and harsh reality can be at times. To see or feel that this is shared by all of us is powerful, even through as simple a vehicle as a science fiction story.
Philosophers like to think science works in an orderly way, in which scientists propose hypotheses, conduct experiments to validate their ideas, then emerge triumphantly from the laboratory to publish their results. Sometimes that happens.
When it came time for her restructuring on her sixteenth birthday, she was going to walk into the room, and ask to be made a Tiffany.
One of my colleagues wrote about was the idea of “requickening,” which, to vastly oversimplify, was the thought that by taking on a saint’s name, a convert also took on a part of that saint’s identity.
In the past few years, something very exciting happened in the field of human genetics: After decoding the human genome, scientists began to realize that the old paradigm of genes as the sole player of inheritance had to be modified.
When they had their backs to him he could see the symmetrical arrangement of dark spots which marked their wings in a pattern resembling a human face. A very sad face, very distinct.
I usually start a story believing I’m writing about one thing. But as the story unwinds, I usually find, a couple pages in, that I’m actually writing about something else entirely.
What does it mean to be human in a large and frightening and beautiful universe? That’s an immense question, and there are many kinds of answers.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement