Lightspeed: Edited by John Joseph Adams

LIGHTSPEED & NIGHTMARE Kickstarter graphic. Left side: Bright light blue background with rays (as of light) bursting out from the center. Central image is an open book with a rocket blasting up out of it. Below the book is the LIGHTSPEED magazine wordmark; the word lightspeed is rendered in a orange-to-yellow gradient, with a white outline around it and dropshadow underneath it. Right side: Bright light yellow background with rays (as of light) bursting out from the center. Central image is an open book with a haunted house emerging from it. Below the book is the NIGHTMARE magazine wordmark; the word nightmare is rendered in a dark red to lighter red gradient, with a white outline around it and dropshadow underneath it. Top: the words "LIVE on Kickstarter"

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Podcasts

Science Fiction

Breakaway, Backdown

I had…have this friend, Elena, who could make a krill and tomato sandwich with her feet, but she had that operation that changes your big toe into a thumb. I used to kid her that maybe breakaways were climbing down the evolutionary ladder, not jumping off it.

Science Fiction

Simulacrum

[A] photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask. —Susan Sontag

Science Fiction

Long Enough and Just So Long

He talked about rain, about slow gray clouds and tearing nor’easters. Rain drumming on a tin roof versus its sound on slate. Fine spring mist and the hot rain that fell during drought, coin-sized and evaporating too quickly.

Science Fiction

The Elephants of Poznan

Into this square came the elephants, a group of males, making their way in what seemed a relentless silence, except that a trembling of the windows told us that they were speaking to each other in infrasound.

Science Fiction

Black Fire

So while I watch, all this fire-thing just storms into and through the trees and down and it hits the ground, and I think something’s crazy then, because there should be a God-awful great bang, yeah?

Science Fiction

The Silence of the Asonu

The silence of the Asonu is proverbial. We know now that the Asonu are not dumb, but that once past early childhood they speak only very rarely, to anyone, under any circumstances.

Science Fiction

Jenny’s Sick

She’s sitting bolt upright, propped by pillows, and there’s so much sweat everywhere that it’s like condensation in a steam room. I’ve seen her look bad before but never quite this bad.

Science Fiction

The Observer

I kept ripping and gouging and pulling and yanking until my fingertips were bone. By then, I hit the circuits inside the door and fried myself. And woke up here, strapped down against a cold metal bed with no bedclothes.

Science Fiction

Ej-Es

“There are skeletons throughout the city, some in homes and some collapsed in what seem to be public spaces. Whatever the disease was, it struck fast.”

Science Fiction

Hwang’s Billion Brilliant Daughters

He wishes he could find Grishkov and scream at him, but Grishkov is dead, of course. He died sometime that night, the first night Hwang slept and jumped through days, years, decades.