Are you looking for an optimistic SF novel? Then Chris Kluwe recommend Jumpnauts by Hao Jingfang!
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/book-review-jumpnauts-by-hao-jingfang/
I was literally invited to six weddings in 2022, and the one I attended in Rhode Island was so lovely, I had to channel it into writing on the train back (I have stories based on some of the othe...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-sharang-biswas-3/
Nate doesn’t often receive wedding invitations. This year, he gets seven. To be fair, the first one is work, so he doesn’t even get to pick his outfit. But an olive-scented breeze squirrel...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/season-of-weddings/
I’ve been blessed with lots of elders in my life, and as a result I tend to overestimate how long people in general tend to live. But there are weird actuarial patterns---if you can make it to ...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-marissa-lingen-3/
Jeanne Calment said she was 122, but there were questions. The records from 1875 were shaky, some of them deliberately burned. Tanaka Kane, 119, was on firmer ground, and then there were loads of...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/islands-of-stability/
Are you looking for your next juicy read? Aigner Loren Wilson recommends The Eyes Are the Best Part by Monika Kim.
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/book-review-the-eyes-are-the-best-part-by-monika-kim/
True love’s kiss works miracles. Everyone knows the story: The sculptor who carved a perfect woman, his own creation, and when he fell in love with her (and how could he have failed to fall in ...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/only-some-of-true-loves-miracles/
If a robot stands alone in a field, staring into the forlorn distance as it obeys the last order it was given by a human, that order being, “Don’t move until we come back for you,” which ...
Are you looking for your next seriously great book to read? Find out why Arley Sorg says it should be Lost Ark Dreaming by Suyi Davies Okungbowa.
I play the guitar badly, some other instruments even more badly, and I like to get out into the woods and hike. There’s nothing like just putting miles under your feet to clear your head and ge...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-alex-irvine-3/
The story as it is told in the dry valleys north of Averon, where the only roads run down to the Cricket River and the only power is the freehold of Skadar, begins with a merchant envoy from the ...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/kopki-and-the-fish/
You don’t know why you ask because you already know he can’t answer. A body is only a body when it has all its parts. And he---that beloved man you once hiked through Angkor Wat’s abandone...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/an-incomplete-body-has-no-answers/
Be sure to check out the editorial for a rundown of this month's terrific content.
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/editorial-march-2024/
here is a saying we have “Haraka haraka haina Baraka”---“Hurry hurry has no blessing.” Slowness is a value in Swahili cultures that I wanted to bring to the forefront, a value that offers...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-shingai-njeri-kagunda/
I was born normal enough, except that I was four days late, which isn’t so much, and slightly jaundiced, which isn’t unusual, and had a raccoon for an arm, which is admittedly strange. It was...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/fragments-of-a-symbiotic-life/
The last picture that Karu has of her father alive is on the day of her graduation. She has this big smile that by the placing of her dimples makes it obvious that she is his daughter. He stands ...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/let-the-star-explode/
A fast-paced thriller that will appeal to science fiction fans? Yes, please! Chris Kluwe explains why he's recommending The Year of the Locust by Terry Hayes.
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/book-review-the-year-of-the-locust-by-terry-hayes/
One significant sticking point was where I had to stop to figure out enough of what warp drives did when turned on to present a valid threat to Va’s life at the end---with something like that, ...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-phoebe-barton-3/
You’ve been driving for hours and I wish you would stop. You clutch the steering wheel so hard, your knuckles pop white, your palms slick with sweat and desperation. Sunken, glassy, your eyes f...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/an-elegy-for-the-former-things/
It was a long fall in-system from the warp point, so Va Sojourner had plenty of time to observe. She found a peace in her observations that was expensive or painful to scratch out anywhere else, ...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/but-from-thine-eyes-my-knowledge-i-derive/
Craving a fresh new anthology? You can trust Arley Sorg when he recommends Captive: New Short Fiction From Africa (edited by Rachel Zadok & Helen Moffett).
It was also fun to subvert the portal fantasy trope with that diasporic lens and think about how a kid who’s grown up in Wonderland would find Wonderland normal, and find their “human world,�...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-wen-yi-lee/
On the third evening of every week, dozens come to Stalactite Keep to hear the storyteller teach about the place beyond Wonderland. Tonight, with only dewdrops of honeycomb light seeping through ...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/what-becomes-of-curious-minds/
Josea Dream was the pearl captain at the heart of the bivalve ship Blue Spring, which had swum the black for a thousand years. It was a mystery to Josea---it was a mystery to anyone who’d ever ...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-pearl-captain/
Building your TBR list? Here are some of the books Aigner Loren Wilson is most looking forward to reading this year!
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/a-sneak-preview-of-2024-books/
The original inspo stems from a drunken debate about what makes Scarlett Johanson so appealing to casting directors for science fiction movies of a certain type, and how she must feel about it. W...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-everdeen-mason-2/
Recent scholarship has shed considerable light on many previously puzzling or mysterious aspects of the life of the Baba Yaga---or, as some would still have it, the Baba Yagas. But one element ha...
Scarlett’s eyes had to be perfect. Jon was the artist who’d made her, so it bothered him to think that so much of Scarlett would be crafted by other people. Scarlett’s limbs were carved fr...
For a rundown of this month's content, be sure to check out the editorial.
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/editorial-february-2024/
How did “A Sojourn in the Fifth City” originate? What inspirations did you draw on? In the broadest sense, this story is a version of the science-fantasy novel that I started writing when I w...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-p-h-lee-6/
The coffin she carried had felt like an imposition at first---a holy imposition! a welcome imposition! but an imposition nonetheless. But by now she had carried it on her shoulders out from the t...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/a-sojourn-in-the-fifth-city/
Mahō Shōjo Kira Kira Sunlight is an American web series created by an unknown animator or animators. The show combines magical girl anime tropes with cosmic horror, following high schooler Sall...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/companion-animals-in-maho-shojo-kira-kira-sunlight/
If you're looking for an exciting SF dystopic read, Chris Kluwe thinks you should check out Snowglobe by Soyoung Park (translated by Joungmin Lee Comfort).
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/book-review-snowglobe-by-soyoung-park/
This story grew out of a writing process I was experimenting with last year where I would write each morning to a prompt nonstop for ten minutes. The idea was just to gather a little more raw sto...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-david-anaxagoras-3/
My son tells me that there’s a man in the house, someone he hears well after the lights are out, in the narrower halls or maybe at the far side of the den---a gait and creak he’s certain isn�...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/to-be-a-happy-man/
It’s my twelfth birthday and we’re all waiting for Wormwood and everyone is here and I mean everyone. Me and Mom and Dad and Big Pa which is my grandpa who was the strong man at one of the la...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/we-shall-not-be-bitter-at-the-end-of-the-world/
Arley Sorg reviews The Black Girl Survives in This One: “A YA anthology of horror stories centering Black girls who battle monsters, both human and supernatural, and who survive to the end.” ...
Posit a man. He could be any man. She could be a woman. They could be any human being anywhere on the spectrum. The story would play out the same. This is, however, entirely the creation of a wri...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/farewell-to-faust/
“Good evening, sir,” Dave says pleasantly, hiding his crossword puzzle under his computer keyboard, as the front door chimes. “Do you have a reservation?” “Afraid not.” The guest fid...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/night-desk-duty-at-the-infinite-paradox-hotel/
Aigner Loren Wilson review's Tlotlo Tsamaase’s genre-blending Africanfuturist novel, Womb City.
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/book-review-womb-city-by-tlotlo-tsamaase/
I like films. Sometimes, when I watch a film I try and figure out what the extras are saying in the background. It’s usually with films I’ve seen before. I’ve worked as an extra before so I...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-ben-peek-2/
Finneus Lark finds the man nestled inside of the abdominal cavity of a doe, his skin so pale that his veins are like spiderwebs. Slick with visceral fluid, leaves and petals cling to the man’s ...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/in-the-trees-hollow-a-doe/
Alvin’s scripts arrived in yellow envelopes. They were hand delivered, placed inside his letter box as if part of the regular mail, but with no address or stamps on it. The scripts were typed o...
Be sure to check out the editorial for a discussion of this month's content.
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/editorial-january-2024/
This story was inspired by the ecology of animals like the olm, a unique cave-dwelling salamander, and the honeypot ant. One of my favorite things to do in speculative stories is interweave non-h...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-sloane-leong-2/
Kharatet moistens his sightless eyes with his tongue as he draws his finger across the limestone tablet glyphs. His audience today is a clutch of toddling nymphs, motionless save for their short ...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/a-saint-between-the-teeth/
It seems to me like most good advice on writing boils down to 1) read widely, and 2) write. But I wish more people understood that all published writing is an optical illusion, a magic trick that...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-rachael-k-jones-3/
Once a decade, a titanium-nosed shuttle plows through the rings of the planet Tartarus with a new batch of prisoners destined for the Orpheus Factory. The debris that makes up the rings is so thi...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/five-views-of-the-planet-tartarus/
Eager to sink your teeth into something eldritch this winter? Chris Kluwe recommends Laura Anne Gilman's new novel Uncanny Vows. Find out why!
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/book-review-uncanny-vows-by-laura-anne-gilman/
I told myself that I wouldn’t be one of those writers who would move to NYC and then write a short story about moving to NYC. I’ve read too many of those over the years and they start to be r...
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-a-t-greenblatt-2/