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, October 2022

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!

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.