Welcome to issue 163 of Lightspeed Magazine! 2023 has been a tough year for short fiction magazines, especially with the demise of the Kindle Periodicals program, where many readers sourced their subscriptions. We’re so grateful to every reader who has changed their subscription over to Weightless or our storefront! Wonderful readers like you all are the reason we keep doing this work.

We’re starting this month off with “Carbon Zero” by D. Thomas Minton, a new story of a terrifying near-future where greenhouse gas emissions are as rigorously regulated—or more rigorously regulated—as Schedule I drugs. Adam-Troy Castro returns to our pages with his latest story, “Seed.” It’s a SF piece that asks: how far would you go to save your own life, and what would you be willing to sacrifice? We also have two terrific flash pieces: “Dandelions” from Martin Cahill and “Do the Right Thing and Ride the Bomb the Roundabout Way to Hell” by Andrea Kriz.

Our fantasy shorts include “We’ll Never Die in the Woods,” a fairy tale-inspired story of sisterhood, witches, and princesses by Carlie St. George. A.T. Greenblatt delves into the sometimes opposing forces of mindfulness and adventurousness in her story “Mindfulness and the Machine.” We also have a flash story (“Whispers from the Sea”) from Oyedotun Damilola Muees, and another (“To the Waters and the Wild”) from Izzy Wasserstein.

Of course our spotlight interview team sat down with our authors and our squad of book reviewers report on the latest new releases. Our ebook readers will also enjoy an excerpt from Escape Velocity, a new novel by Victor Manibo.