Welcome to Lightspeed’s 149th issue!

It’s not easy getting a good meal, especially in space. And in our first SF short—Gene Doucette’s “Primordial Soup and Salad”—the dinner situation on one spaceship gets, well, a little out of hand. If you like your science fiction with a side (dish) of humor, this one will definitely be to your taste.

The SF continues more seriously with a new short from Adam-Troy Castro (“The Conflagration at the Museum of You”), a piece about aliens and yet also about the very human nature of mass shootings. P H Lee spins the story of a fallen civilization in their new flash piece, “The Tragic Fate of the City of O-Rashad.” We also have a reprint from Dexter Palmer (“The Daydreamer by Proxy”).

Our first fantasy short takes us on a heart-breaking and transformative tour beneath the waves in “Apolépisi: A De-Scaling.” Debbie Urbanski returns to our pages with a new novelette (“The Dirty Golden Yellow House”) about a desperate, magical escape from a miserable marriage. Our flash piece is “The Three Books and What They Tell” from Alexandra Manglis, and our reprint is “Three Tales from the Blue Library,” by Sofia Samatar.

Of course our book team has been reading up a storm to find you some great book recommendations, and our author spotlight interviewer has sat down with all our short fiction writers to get more insight on their work. Our ebook readers will also get to enjoy a new excerpt from Kalyna the Soothsayer, a new novel from Elijah Kinch Spector.

It’s another terrific issue, so thanks for joining us!