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: December 2022

Welcome to Lightspeed’s 151st issue!

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers: the US Postal Service doesn’t have an official motto, but those words have been an unofficial one since they were engraved in the New York City’s General Post Office Building over a century ago. This month’s first SF short, “Last Stand of the E. 12th St. Pirates,” by L.D. Lewis, shines a hard light on what postal deliveries will be like in the near future.

A functional postal service is a critical component of city life, but so is transit. Rich Larson returns to our pages with a story about the future of car usage: “Deathmatch.” Maybe riding the bus isn’t so bad?

Our SF flash story is “The Spread of Space and Endless Devastation” from Stewart C. Baker. We also have an SF reprint by Alex Irvine (“Pledge Day”). Our flash fantasy story is “To my daughter, in the dark of the moon” by P H Lee.

Rati Mehrotra returns with a new fantasy short story full of ghosts, coffee shops, and skullduggery: “One Day in the Afterlife of Detective Roshni Chaddha.” Aimee Ogden brings us a chilly tale of wolves and prophecy in her new short, “Mad Honey.” Our fantasy reprint is by Nadine Tomlinson (“The Metamorphosis of Marie Martin”).

Of course we have spotlight interviews with all our authors, and our book review team has been searching out the best reads to recommend. Plus, our ebook readers will enjoy an excerpt of White Horse by Erika T. Wurth.

John Joseph Adams

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John Joseph Adams is the editor and publisher of the Hugo Award-winning Lightspeed and publisher of its sibling magazine, Nightmare. He’s also the editor of more than fifty anthologies, including the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy series, Wastelands, A People’s Future of the United States, and the New York Times bestselling Out There Screaming (with Jordan Peele). John is a winner of the Hugo, Stoker, Locus, and British Fantasy awards, and is 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 ran a novel imprint for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Lately, he’s also been working as an editor and game designer on TTRPG projects for Kobold Press, Paizo, and Monte Cook Games. Learn more at johnjosephadams.com.