Series Archive: Android in the Archives

The Dartmouth Speculative Fiction Project paired eight faculty-members at Dartmouth College with eight veteran speculative fiction authors. Through design activities, panels, symposia and a mountain lodge retreat, they collaboratively imagined worlds that interrogate the future humanity is heading towards. These stories can be found in the anthology, Android in the Archives: Research, Creative Collaboration and our Speculative Futures, to be published by MIT Press in 2027.

Science Fiction

The Assumption of Maria

by Max Gladstone

Author spotlight

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.

In Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 194 (July 2026)

Fantasy

Fragments of the Whole

by Brooke Bolander

Author spotlight

Lise’s personas have no warning when the XexlCo Construct appears at the gate of her memory garden, smiling cheerfully at each of her personas in turn like a neighborhood milkman making his daily rounds. They watch the newcomer saunter by with open curiosity, moving aside to let him pass as though he’s a regular guest in Lise’s subconscious. There’s nothing threatening about him. He might’ve popped in a million times, the way he behaves.

In Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 195 (August 2026)

Science Fiction

Alterverse

by Sanjana Raj

Author spotlight

Asha is eight pages into the book before the words disappear. There are still hundreds of pages before the end of the book, so they must have had a record of the length of the volume, but lost the text. It’s a common experience in this library, to encounter fragments of things, to have to make educated assumptions about what once was.

In Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 196 (September 2026)

Science Fiction

Ice Like Honey

by Rob Cameron

Night falls around you. The city redshifts into coral-snake shades as monuments and modernist architecture of government buildings fracture the horizon. Low-orbit satellites command it so, and Washington, DC Nocturnal awakens. Across the capital, lights and data connections ripple with staccato rhythms, a hangover from last night’s unseasonal double blackouts.

In Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 197 (October 2026)