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: November 2021

by John Joseph Adams

Published in Nov. 2021 (Issue 138) | 241 words

Welcome to Lightspeed’s 138th issue!

Many of us who grew up in the ’80s spent way too many hours and far too many quarters in our local arcades. But you don’t have to be a Gen Xer or even a video gamer to love “I Was a Teenage Space Jockey,” a heart-wrenching new story from award-winning author Stephen Graham Jones. Our other original fantasy short story is “Ten Scenes from A Typical Day in the Life of the All-Powerful Despot” by Adam-Troy Castro, if you ever wondered what the world would look like if the ultimate bad guy won. Izzy Wasserstein brings us our flash fantasy piece, “To Reach the Gate, She Must Leave Everything Behind.” We’re also reprinting Lisa M. Bradley’s “Men in Cars.”

Our first original SF short takes us on a wild ride across the universes in Elly Bangs’ “Space Pirate Queen of the Ten Billion Utopias.” Timi Odueso takes us to a world without rain in his new story “Cloudgazer.” Our flash story is “Stowaways” by Andrew Dana Hudson, and we have an SF reprint by Charlie Jane Anders (“The Turnaround”).

In nonfiction, we’ve got author spotlight interviews with our writers, and of course, our team of crack reviewers brings us a selection of book reviews. Our ebook readers will enjoy an excerpt from Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson’s latest collaboration, Dune: The Lady of Caladan.

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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.