Lightspeed: Edited by John Joseph Adams

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Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award Finalists

Science Fiction

The Archronology of Love

by Caroline M. Yoachim

Author spotlight

This is a love story, the last of a series of moments when we meet. Saki Jones leaned into the viewport window until her nose nearly touched the glass, staring at the colony planet below. New Mars. From this distance, she could pretend that things were going according to plan—that M.J. was waiting for her in one of the domed cities. A shuttle would take her down to the surface and she and her lifelove would pursue their dream of studying a grand alien civilization. It had been such a beautiful plan.

In Apr. 2019 (Issue 107)

Science Fiction

And You Shall Know Her By The Trail Of Dead

by Brooke Bolander

Author spotlight

The mobster has a gun pressed to Rack’s forehead. The mobster has a god-shitting GUN pressed to her partner’s fucking forehead, and the only thing Rhye can do is watch and scream as the man smiles at her and pulls the trigger and blows Rack’s perfect brains out from between his ears.

In Feb. 2015 (Issue 57)

Science Fiction

The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species

by Ken Liu

Author spotlight

There is no definitive census of all the intelligent species in the universe. Not only are there perennial arguments about what qualifies as intelligence, but each moment and everywhere, civilizations rise and fall, much as the stars are born and die. Time devours all.

In Aug. 2012 (Issue 27)

Science Fiction

The Old Equations

by Jake Kerr

Author spotlight

I miss you already. But you know that. What you don’t know is just how proud I am of you. You were born for this, and no one could possibly be able to handle such a demanding job as well as you.

In July 2011 (Issue 14)

Science Fiction

Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain

by Yoon Ha Lee

Author spotlight

The usual fallacy is that, in every universe, many futures splay outward from any given moment. But in some universes, determinism runs backwards: given a universe’s state s at some time t, there are multiple previous states that may have resulted in s. In some universes, all possible pasts funnel toward a single fixed ending, Ω. If you are of millenarian bent, you might call Ω Armageddon. If you are of grammatical bent, you might call it punctuation on a cosmological scale. If you are a philosopher in such a universe, you might call Ω inevitable.

In Sep. 2010 (Issue 4)