Lightspeed: Edited by John Joseph Adams

Slide 1: in a fun, witchy font: Magic & Mystery, Amazon Original Stories; Slide 2-5: Fantasy Authors Turn to Crime, Curated by John Joseph Adams: Lists authors Travis Baldree, Sarah Beth Durst, Heather Fawcett, Scott Lynch, Tananarive Due, J.M. Miro, and Robert Jackson Bennet. Slide 6: Small renderings of all seven book covers; Slide 7: a magical cat face with paw prints to the left and right, with the words "The Game is Afoot / July 28".

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Editorial

Editorial, August 2021

by John Joseph Adams

Published in Aug. 2021 (Issue 135) | 249 words

Welcome to Lightspeed’s 135th issue!

This month’s science fiction originals include a cyberpunk-flavored tale of mind control from Andrea Chapela (translated by Emma Törzs): “Now You Feel It.” If you are a fan of Oliver Twist (or if you grew up in the 1980s, Oliver and Company), then our SF short story “Anything Short of Death Is Survivable” (by David Anaxagoras) will leave you saying “Please sir. I want some more . . . dangerous space salvage missions and mistreated orphans.” Nelly Geraldine García Rosas takes you on a trip to Titan in her flash piece “Before the Haze Devours You.” Our reprint this month is from Maurice Broaddus (“City of Refuge”).

Our first full-length fantasy short (and at 10,000 words, this one’s a novelette) is “Now You See Me” by Justin C. Key—the story of an art exhibit with powerful consequences. In “The Tale of Jaja and Canti,” Tobi Ogundiran brings us the story of a boy created by magic and the mother he’s always yearned to find. Our flash story this month is the very touching “My Sister Is a Scorpion” from Isabel Cañas. And our fantasy reprint is Sheree Renée Thomas’s “Ancestries.”

All that, and of course we also have our usual assortment of author spotlights, along with book reviews from our terrific review team. Our ebook readers will also enjoy an excerpt from The All-Consuming World by Cassandra Khaw from Erewhon Books.

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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 fifty 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 sibling-magazine Nightmare. Called “the reigning king of the anthology world” by Barnes & Noble, John is a two-time winner of the Hugo Award, a winner of the Stoker,  Locus, 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 various TTRPG projects for Kobold Press, Paizo, and Monte Cook Games. Learn more at johnjosephadams.com.