Lightspeed: Edited by John Joseph Adams

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Editorial

Editorial: October 2024

Welcome to issue 173 of Lightspeed Magazine!

We’re starting off the beautiful month of October with a brand-new climate fiction short from Ai Jiang: “Ashes Like Tea Leaves, Lava Like Honey.” Russell Nichols explores the technological future of agriculture in his mystery-SF short “Autonomy of a Murder.” If you love robots, do not miss “The Life You’ve Given Me, Rusty,” a new flash piece from P.A. Cornell. Our second piece of SF flash, “Hot Hearts” by Lyndsie Manusos, explores the emotional side of terraforming.

Kenneth Schneyer returns to our pages with a dark fantasy short, “Winding Sheets,” which explores a mortician’s transformative experience. Philip Gelatt & JT Petty team up to write about a future corporation marketing all things mythological in their darkly hilarious tale “Sully the God.” Our flash includes “Zekelo’s Barterhouse & Emporium” by Patrick Hurley (as magical as its title promises) and the story of a very unusual prosthetics project in Ashlee Lhamon’s “Caesura.”

Our book review team brings you the latest recommendations and the author spotlight teams have sat down with our writers, so don’t miss our nonfiction.

It’s another issue cram-packed with delicious speculative fiction!

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 (and publisher) of the Hugo Award-winning magazine Lightspeed and is publisher of its sister-magazines Nightmare and Fantasy. Called “the reigning king of the anthology world” by Barnes & Noble, John is a two-time winner of the Hugo Award, a winner of the Stoker,  Locus, 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 for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Lately, he’s been working as an editor on various TTRPG projects for Kobold Press and Monte Cook Games and as a contributing game designer on books such as Kobold Press’s Tome of Heroes. Learn more at johnjosephadams.com.

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