Lightspeed: Edited by John Joseph Adams

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Editorial

Editorial: May 2026

Welcome to issue 192 of Lightspeed Magazine!

If you love SF about time travel and alternate realities, this month is going to delight you. Our first SF short is “The Star Where We Meet” by Sam W. Pisciotta, a tale of family, space travel, and the shifting nature of reality. Then we’ve got “The Test of Time,” a new SF novelette from Kristine Kathryn Rusch containing all the SFnal crunchiness of time travel paradoxes inside a delicious academia setting. It’s like the Reese’s peanut butter cup of SF novelettes! We also have a couple of unsettling flash stories: “The Knacker Man” from Scott Dalrymple and “The Stars Look Away From This Vessel” by dave ring.

Our fantasy works include “Sarah’s Laugh” by Melissa A Watkins, a powerful and timely story of resistance. Ada Hoffman serves up the grimly insightful “Ten Unsent Letters to the Dark Lord.” We also have flash pieces from Yoon Ha Lee (“The Aerialist”), and Christopher Barzak (“The Last Season of Your Life”).

Our nonfiction includes author spotlight chats with our writers and book reviews from our review team.

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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 forty anthologies, such as Wastelands, A People’s Future of the United States, and Out There Screaming (with Jordan Peele). He is also editor of the Hugo Award-winning magazine Lightspeed and is publisher of both it and its sister-magazine, Nightmare. Called “the reigning king of the anthology world” by Barnes & Noble, John is a winner of the Hugo, Stoker, Locus, British Fantasy, 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. Lately, he’s been working as an editor and game designer on TTRPG projects for Kobold Press, Paizo, and Monte Cook Games. Learn more at johnjosephadams.com.

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