Lightspeed: Edited by John Joseph Adams

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Nonfiction

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Jo Walton

Stories let us simplify an issue so that we can see the essence of it. Science fiction lets us get closer to actual struggle by letting us find new contexts for telling stories so we can see them from new angles.

Editorial

Editorial, July 2014

Welcome to issue 50! Check out the editorial for a rundown of what appears in this issue and for some news and notes.

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Carmen Maria Machado

The structure was complicated because Kickstarters have so many moving parts, and there are so many decisions to be made: Do I put the updates in chronological order, or backwards like they appear on the site? … Because a Kickstarter page is so visual, I had to try and figure out the most natural and dramatically appropriate order in which to present these sections.

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Adam-Troy Castro

This is not only anti-corporate ranting. It happens to be a function of the human animal that when people are given power over you, whether as employers or governments or even as condo associations or family members or lovers, they continue to test the limits of that power until you say, “No, that’s all you get, no more, the line is drawn here.”

Nonfiction

Illusion, Expectation, and World Domination through Bake Sales

In this article, I’m going to tell you about illusion, expectation, and the lies that your brain sometimes tells you. And I’ll explain how those lies relate to science fiction, the women who are destroying it, and the future of our society. But before I get to all that, I’ll start with a story that is also a puzzle.

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Tananarive Due

To me, clones are nothing more than glorified offspring—they have identical genes, but they’re shaped by their experiences just as we were shaped by ours. My clone, in a different environment, would be very different person. The question I always asked myself was: Who are these people who are so eager to clone themselves?

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Heather Clitheroe

I’m fascinated by the idea of Distributed Arbitrage and the forecasting, and I know I’m not done with Spencer or Megan. I’m not sure what it’s going to look like, but I think I’ve got the beginnings of a novel in me. And at the end of the day, I want to hear that William Gibson read my book and liked it.

Nonfiction

Women Remember: A Roundtable Interview

In the ten years that I’ve been actively participating in the science fiction community, I’ve seen the field change…. At the same time, there are places where it feels like the field had taken a step back from the work I remembered reading as a teenager. It feels very much like a case of “the more things change .” So, I decided to ask some women who had been there. Please welcome Ursula K. Le Guin, Pat Cadigan, Ellen Datlow, and Nancy Kress.

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Rhonda Eikamp

I’m fascinated by the concept of AI and—if we ever do create sentient machines—where the line will be drawn between human and machine. I don’t think it will be human goodness that will set us apart from computer brains, but rather the dark side of human nature: our neuroses, our crimes of passion.

Artist Showcase

Artists Showcase

The opportunity for me to invite other artists to be a part of the project was nothing short of breathtaking. Li Grabensetter with her beautiful handling of inks and watercolors, Elizabeth Leggett with her brilliant digital renderings, Christine Mitzuk’s rich painterly style, and Hillary Pearlman’s fantastical tinkering bring the fiction in this issue depth and texture

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