Fantasy
Concerto For Wartime
The magician raises his wand.
Initially, this commission seemed simple. One large country invading a much smaller one, a clear case of aggressor and victim—but nothing is ever so straightforward.
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Podcasts
Produced by Skyboat Media, and under the direction of Grammy and Audie award-winning narrator and producer Stefan Rudnicki, our podcast features audiobook-style recordings of four of the eight stories we publish each month in Lightspeed, released more or less on a weekly basis. To subscribe (free!) to the podcast, you'll either need our podcast RSS feed and put that into your favorite podcast client, or you can just subscribe via iTunes. All of our podcasts from Lightspeed: Year One are also available as an audiobook from Audible.com and Downpour.com.
Science Fiction
If a Discarded God Can Change, So Can I
Green Plumed Orbital Line A; viridis metamorphos A
Common sighting; Flies along the forty-fifth latitude every 12 minutes
Traveler’s addendum: Last functional line along a northern latitude; southern latitudes TBD
My crawler runs out of energy as I reach the platform summit. I’m two minutes early.
Fantasy
The Punishing Animal
He hates the birds. There are two, a breeding pair. Their eyes are red as devils’. On land they’re stupid, little feet pushed so far back on their bodies that they can’t escape by running. Yet they glide over the water, glossy mottled boats. Their chicks ride their backs. The adults protect them, tuck black wings up to shield them from wave and eagle. They are good parents.
Science Fiction
FETSPACE
LOGIN CREATE ACCOUNT username: squirglover46 password: **************** for security reasons your password must contain minimum 1 number, 1 diacritic, 1 universal babelkey and at least 8 distinct phonemes. password cannot contain your username, date of birth in any registered calendar system, or location. for augmented reality account access gesture here. Thanks for joining FetSpace! Remember: […]
Fantasy
Hungry Like The
There’s a wolf where my brother used to be, a beast absolutely hellbent on ruining my life. He plunges his broad snoot into the Wednesday night spaghetti, and neither Mom nor Dad cares when half the bite slides off his nose and onto the table, to later be jostled to the floor by his grabbing, grubby paws. But if I came to the table without washing up first . . .
Science Fiction
The Assumption of Maria
Maria Haddid looked like she was screaming.
I’ve heard singers say that’s all singing is deep down, but if you’ve seen enough screams you won’t often get them mixed up.
The faithful gathered around her in the picture—the soccer mom, the children, the person with the ill-advised beard—on the bright green pews of the Church of the Redeemer’s main worship hall. They smiled.
Fantasy
Waru Waru
Abuelita has been feeding me her memories. Yesterday, it was the time she trudged up the mountain carrying a basketful of offerings for Pachamama (flowers, incense, a llama sculpted out of animal fat and adorned with gold leaf) in hopes the Earth Mother would alleviate the drought ruining the harvest. Today, it’s the time she visited Tío Roberto’s farm in Sapecho, how the smell of the cows made her eyes water and how at her uncle’s urging she coaxed one over to her with a big yellow carrot and let it eat out of her hand while she stroked its ears.
Science Fiction
You, Me, Us
You know you are fucked when you see fragments of the broken radio on the floor. Your damaged ship lay nose caked into the sand, and coupled with your sprained ankle that hums an excruciating pain, and slight concussion on your head—your chances of survival in this unknown territory has now drastically dropped. In your first year as a space cadet, you were taught to remain calm, breathe slowly, and call for help in the event of a crash.
Fantasy
Ash-Shūrā; or, A Book, a Bowl, a Bag of Coins
There once lived a boy who paid for a fortune. Nassim wore carob hair and eyes severe like cardamom. He spent his days scouring the souk for unique trinkets he liked to collect or counting the uneven stones of Jerusalem’s cobbled streets as he passed Al-Aqsa Mosque or picking up groceries for his grandmother. He knew it was best to avoid attention and wise to steer clear of the soldiers clad in olive drab watching from the shadows of their field caps in Al-Quds, walled and on fire.
Science Fiction
The Sharing of Some Familiar Song
The creatures who shared your art with us had to explain many things to make it minimally comprehensible. This by itself made sense. You are who and what you are, and we are who and what we are, and the physical differences between us are profound. We belong to different orders, and this means that our minds are also different, our philosophies are different, our ways of measuring and of comprehending the universe are different.
