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: March 2024

by John Joseph Adams

Published in Mar. 2024 (Issue 166) | 211 words

Welcome to issue 166 of Lightspeed Magazine!

We start off the month with an original science fiction short by Shingai Njeri Kagunda: “Let the Star Explode.” It’s a story that re-envisions what space travel might be like—and how it can connect us to others in utterly unexpected ways. Adam-Troy Castro returns to our pages with a meditation on the nature of cruelty against non-humans in his story “The Three Thousand, Four Hundred Twenty-Third Law of Robotics.” We also have two terrific flash pieces: “An Incomplete Body Has No Answers” from Angela Liu and “Islands of Stability” by Marissa Lingen.

Alex Irvine brings us an original fairy tale in his new fantasy short, “Kopki and the Fish.” Sharang Biswas explores the social life of gods in his story “Season of Weddings.” We also have a flash story (“Fragments of a Symbiotic Life”) from Will McMahon, and another (“Only Some of True Love’s Miracles”) from P H Lee.

For nonfiction, we have spotlight interviews with our short fiction authors and another round of book reviews from our staff. Our ebook readers will also enjoy a book excerpt from The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed.

It’s another exciting issue of all-original speculative fiction—we hope you’ll enjoy!

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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.