Lightspeed: Edited by John Joseph Adams

ADVERT: The Time Traveler's Passport, curated by John Joseph Adams, published by Amazon Original Stories. Six short stories. Infinite possibilities. Stories by John Scalzi, R.F. Kuang, Olivie Blake, Kaliane Bradley, P. Djèlí Clark, and Peng Shepherd. Illustration of A multicolored mobius strip with folds and angles to it, with the silhouette of a person walking on one side of it.

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Nonfiction

Artist Showcase

Artist Showcase: Alexandra Knickel

Like most artists and illustrators, I’ve had an affinity for painting and drawing since early childhood days, I doodled a lot with my crayons, not to mention my teachers were always annoyed at me for drawing little critters instead of actually listening to what they were saying. But hey, it was so much more interesting than math and other stuff.

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Cherie Priest

I’m a big fan of leaving a little narrative wiggle room, and in this case, you can choose to believe whichever viewpoint you prefer. They’re all credible, after a fashion, and they all undermine one another just a tiny bit, which I enjoyed.

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: A.C. Wise

[What books were in the Library?] All of them. Every book ever written and dreamed. And they’re all the perfect version the author had in their head, the wild and gorgeous thing they fell in love with and so desperately hoped the book would grow up to be, transported directly to the page.

Editorial

Editorial, January 2013

Happy 2013, and welcome to issue thirty-two of Lightspeed! We’ve got another great issue for you this month; read the editorial to see what we have on tap.

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Matthew Kressel

I had watched a documentary of the dismantling of the old Yankee stadium and the construction of the new. And I thought, how could they tear down this place full of so much history, the literal House that Ruth Built? It was such a sin. To me, the new stadium was (and is) an antiseptic and plastic version of the original. The documentary captured my feelings not just about Yankee stadium but the way we take so many things for granted, and how some are happy with cheap plastic substitutes. I felt I had to write about this.

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Daniel Abraham

I came to economics late in life, and I’m tremendously fond of it (especially in some of its more modern, biology-based forms). The ideas in even pretty basic economics are fascinating and often counter-intuitive and delightful. Also, since I sometimes forget how to write short stories and have to relearn the skills, it’s nice to have a familiar structure like a three-test fairy tale to work from.

Nonfiction

Interview: Tad Williams

For me, any book I’m writing is also a chance to get in and research and read and learn things that I maybe only knew a little bit about before. So one of the fascinating things about researching heaven and hell is, of course, the fact that there are so few descriptions of heaven, because most people can’t really explain what it would be like beyond a couple of sentences, whereas hell is quite often personal.

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Marta Randall

Power tends to corrupt, said Lord Acton. There are always people who will get ahead by stomping their way up the ladder of life, and the devil take the hindmost. I suppose we could think about colonizing a planet and refusing to let any of the Bad Guys in, but even so, who’s going to do the choosing? Absolute power, Acton went on, tends to corrupt absolutely.

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Sarah Langan

Coyotes are cool. They’re smarter than wolves, better at observational learning than dogs, and tend to survive even in places that are populated by humans. They’re also mean—their packs are small because they fight amongst each other. Finally, they can mate with wolves and dogs . . . maybe humans?

Nonfiction

Interview: Junot Diaz

When you look at a lot of science fiction novels they’re asking questions about power. There are questions about what it means to have power and what are the long-term consequences of power. When you think about the Dune novels—the original Dune novels start out as this Machiavellian fix-up—the battle between these houses—but they turn out to be a very troubling meditation on what it means to take over an entire civilization and set it on a certain path.

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