Welcome to issue 181 of Lightspeed Magazine!

One of science fiction’s greatest functions is asking “what if,” and we’ve packed this issue with terrific what-if stories. We’re starting the month with “The Twenty-One Second God,” a new story from Peter Watts asking pointed questions about virtual reality and artificial intelligence. Marissa Lingen delves into the unintentional effects of new technology in her hilarious story “All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt.” And our flash writers continue interrogating reality and technology—Reyes Ramirez explores the horizons of the housing crisis in “Multi-Spatial Apartment Complex Malfunction Results in Body Horror,” and in “See Now the Misfortune of the Thinking Tenax,” Lowry Poletti delves into questions of other minds.

Our fantasy stories focus a bit more tightly on relationships and magic. Vanessa Fogg’s new story “When the Faerie King Toured the Human Realm” mixes social media crazes with the faerie world—shining a light on the complex relationships we project upon our favorite content creators. Carrie Vaughn melds international politics with magic and tea in a wonderfully cozy new short, “A Week at the Raven Feather Salon.” We also have a flash story (“Eyes Grown Thick on the World”) from Will McMahon, and another (“My Mother, the Supervillain”) from Benjamin Blattberg.

Our nonfiction includes our usual assortment of author spotlights, along with book reviews from our fantastic review team.

It’s a terrific way to kick off our fifteenth year of publication, so thanks for joining us along the way!

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For those of you who don’t already subscribe to my Robot Wizard Zombie Crit! newsletter, here are a few capsule reviews of books I’ve read recently:

• The Incandescent by Emily Tesh: Really great worldbuiding, really great character development, really great plot with twists and turns. I loved it from the beginning, but even then the last 1/4 of the book really took it to the next level. Highly recommended!
• The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett: A mystery/fantasy hybrid that excels with both the mystery and fantasy elements. Incredible book—well deserving of its recently-announced Hugo nomination. I loved the characters and the worldbuilding, and, while there aren’t a ton of action sequences, the ones that are there are freakin’ awesome.
• A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett: After loving The Tainted Cup, I had high expectations going into this one, but Robert Jackson Bennett did not disappoint. I was just as enthralled with this one as I was with the first. Fantastic worldbuilding, really rich characterization, and mystery novel grade mystery writing. Now I can’t wait for the 3rd book, but I have to wait a whole year like everyone else!
• The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley: A compulsively readable time travel novel. It uses a very similar plot point as the John Varley story “Air Raid” (adapted to film as Millennium), but otherwise it felt like a very fresh take on time travel tropes. I was hooked right from the start, and my interest never wavered. It’s definitely one of the best debuts I’ve read in a long time. And hey, Barack Obama loved it too, if you need another reason to read it.

If you’d like to subscribe to it so you see all of my capsule reviews of books (and movies and TV shows) and all of the other stuff I talk about in there, just visit johnjosephadams.com/newsletter to sign-up for free.