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    Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 110 (July 2019): Lightspeed Magazine, #110
    Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 110 (July 2019): Lightspeed Magazine, #110
    Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 110 (July 2019): Lightspeed Magazine, #110
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    Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 110 (July 2019): Lightspeed Magazine, #110

    By John Joseph Adams, Violet Allen, Karen Lord and

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    About this ebook

    LIGHTSPEED is an online science fiction and fantasy magazine. In its pages, you will find science fiction: from near-future, sociological soft SF, to far-future, star-spanning hard SF--and fantasy: from epic fantasy, sword-and-sorcery, and contemporary urban tales, to magical realism, science-fantasy, and folktales.

    This month's cover features artwork from Sam Schechter, illustrating a brand-new science fiction story by Violet Allen ("The Null Space Conundrum"). This story is a wild adventure that's just as colorful as its artwork! Also, if you're the type of person who ever wondered what happened to the golf balls Alan Shepard smacked around on the moon, our new story from Andrew Penn Romine ("Miles and Miles and Miles") might hold an answer. We also have SF reprints by Karen Lord ("The Mysteries") and Indrapramit Das ("The Moon Is Not A Battlefield"). Our first original fantasy story this month, "Ahura Yazda, The Great Extraordinary" by Senaa Ahmad, gives us to some fantastical creatures . . . trying to make a quiet life in Canada's farm country. We also have some salty new fiction from Adam-Troy Castro ("Sand Castles"), as well as fantasy reprints by J. Anderson Coats ("Mother Carey's Table") and Micah Dean Hicks ("Song Beneath the City"). All that, and of course we also have our usual assortment of author spotlights, along with our book and media review columns. For our ebook readers, we also have and an excerpt from Sarah Gailey's new novel, Magic for Liars.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJohn Joseph Adams
    Release dateJul 1, 2019
    ISBN9781393568513
    Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 110 (July 2019): Lightspeed Magazine, #110
    Author

    John Joseph Adams

    John Joseph Adams is the series editor of Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy. He is also the bestselling editor of many other anthologies, such as The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, Armored, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, and The Living Dead. Recent books include The Apocalypse Triptych (consisting of The End is Nigh, The End is Now, and The End Has Come), and series editor for The Best American Fantasy and Science Fiction. John is a two-time winner of the Hugo Award and is a six-time World Fantasy Award finalist. John is also the editor and publisher of the digital magazines Lightspeed and Nightmare, and is a producer for WIRED’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast.

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      Book preview

      Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 110 (July 2019) - John Joseph Adams

      sword_rocketLightspeed Magazine

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Issue 110, July 2019

      FROM THE EDITOR

      Editorial: July 2019

      SCIENCE FICTION

      The Null Space Conundrum

      Violet Allen

      The Mysteries

      Karen Lord

      Miles and Miles and Miles

      Andrew Penn Romine

      The Moon Is Not a Battlefield

      Indrapramit Das

      FANTASY

      Song Beneath the City

      Micah Dean Hicks

      Sand Castles

      Adam-Troy Castro

      Mother Carey’s Table

      J. Anderson Coats

      Ahura Yazda, the Great Extraordinary

      Senaa Ahmad

      EXCERPTS

      Magic For Liars

      Sarah Gailey

      NONFICTION

      Book Reviews: July 2019

      Chris Kluwe

      Media Review: July 2019

      Carrie Vaughn

      Interview: Evan Winter

      Christian A. Coleman

      AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS

      Violet Allen

      Adam-Troy Castro

      Andrew Penn Romine

      Senaa Ahmad

      MISCELLANY

      Coming Attractions

      Stay Connected

      Subscriptions and Ebooks

      Support Us on Patreon or Drip, or How to Become a Dragonrider or Space Wizard

      About the Lightspeed Team

      Also Edited by John Joseph Adams

      © 2019 Lightspeed Magazine

      Cover by Sam Schechter

      www.lightspeedmagazine.com

      From_the_Editor

      Editorial: July 2019

      John Joseph Adams | 384 words

      Welcome to Lightspeed’s 110th issue!

      This month’s cover features artwork from Sam Schechter, illustrating a brand-new science fiction story by Violet Allen (The Null Space Conundrum). This story is a wild adventure that’s just as colorful as its artwork! Also, if you’re the type of person who ever wondered what happened to the golf balls Alan Shepard smacked around on the moon, our new story from Andrew Penn Romine (Miles and Miles and Miles) might hold an answer. We also have SF reprints by Karen Lord (The Mysteries) and Indrapramit Das (The Moon Is Not A Battlefield).

      Our first original fantasy story this month, Ahura Yazda, The Great Extraordinary by Senaa Ahmad, gives us to some fantastical creatures . . . trying to make a quiet life in Canada’s farm country. We also have some salty new fiction from Adam-Troy Castro (Sand Castles), as well as fantasy reprints by J. Anderson Coats (Mother Carey’s Table) and Micah Dean Hicks (Song Beneath the City).

      All that, and of course we also have our usual assortment of author spotlights, along with our book and media review columns.

      For our ebook readers, we also have and an excerpt from Sarah Gailey’s new novel, Magic for Liars.

      Announcement Regarding Lightspeed’s Novella Reprint Program

      When we first started Lightspeed, we focused on short fiction of 5,000 words or less, but we knew there was a lot of great material being written that was outside our parameters. That’s one of the reasons why we started reprinting novellas in our ebook editions back in January 2012. But over the years, we’ve found ourselves sharing longer and longer original works in the short fiction section of the magazine—while our original guidelines encouraged stories under 5,000 and grudgingly allowed stories up to 7,500, we now look at stories up to 10,000 words long, and truth be told we fairly regularly make exceptions to that and publish stories that are even longer. With our short fiction department publishing all this amazing longer fiction (both originals and reprints), our novella reprint section has begun to feel a little redundant—so we’ve decided to eliminate it in favor of focusing even more tightly on the short fiction we all love so dearly.

      ABOUT THE AUTHOR

      John Joseph Adams is the editor of John Joseph Adams Books, a science fiction and fantasy imprint from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He is also the series editor of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, as well as the bestselling editor of more than thirty anthologies, including Wastelands and The Living Dead. Recent books include Cosmic Powers, What the #@&% Is That?, Operation Arcana, Press Start to Play, Loosed Upon the World, and The Apocalypse Triptych. Called the reigning king of the anthology world by Barnes & Noble, John is a two-time winner of the Hugo Award (for which he has been a finalist twelve times) and an eight-time World Fantasy Award finalist. John is also the editor and publisher of the digital magazines Lightspeed and Nightmare, and is a producer for WIRED’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. He also served as a judge for the 2015 National Book Award. Find him online at johnjosephadams.com and @johnjosephadams.

      Science_FictionJohn Joseph Adams Books

      The Null Space Conundrum

      Violet Allen | 7881 words

      The Null Space Conundrum illustration

      What the fuck is wrong with you? screams Aria. Her voice goes up raspily at the end of the exclamation, giving her the affect of a mewling cat, and she is embarrassed by the profound uncoolness of such a tone. She slams her fists on the Versa’s console to compensate, to physically demonstrate the depth and seriousness of her anger, causing the subtelar ship to rock violently in the warpwake.

      Don’t judge her; Aria Astra is usually a very cool person. She likes good food and knows a bunch about film and uses lots of swears and has great fashions. Right now she is wearing a romper made of star-material and a matching neckerchief and a beret that doesn’t match but in a cool way. Also, she was in a band once. It was a pretty decent band, actually, like kind of a hipster funk-pop thing. They had, like, three really good songs, and they would’ve had more good songs, but they broke up because Aria accidentally died and then got resurrected by aliens and turned into a cosmic cyborg who has to save the universe all the time or whatever. Technically, Aria was kicked out of the band before dying and being resurrected by aliens and turned into a cosmic cyborg, but Aria preferred the former timetable, as she was fairly certain that she would’ve been kicked back in had circumstances allowed. They had just been pissy because she couldn’t quote-unquote play more than four guitar chords and would’ve changed their tune if given the time.

      So yeah, Aria is super cool, and it is unlike her to scream and shout, because that is very uncool. Sadly, we are often unlike ourselves, and we all must struggle against the uncool shadow within, the dork inside, the petty, pedantic vulgarian who lurks in all our hearts, singing old, cthonic songs of Actually and I Told You So.

      Don’t do that! You’ll break the ship, clown! says Kantikle.

      Kantikle is also being a dork, but Aria has no reason to believe he was ever even a little bit cool. He is a living song sung by every person in the universe at once in the future, sent back in time to convince Aeon Who Judges All Things to spare the universe from the Cataclysm of Judgment, but as cool as that sounds on paper, in practice he’s just a guy, and a pretty whatever guy at that. Aria is kind of into his look (sexy glowing rainbow man), but besides that, he’s really the worst.

      We have a system. I pick a song, you pick a song. You can’t switch songs before my song is over, jackhole.

      That song was bad. You have bad taste.

      You have bad taste!

      Kantikle is music itself. I understand it in a way your meat body could never imagine.

      Aria sighs and turns a knob on the console, restarting her song, a chill Italo disco number from a planet of frog people whose culture was based entirely on 1980s Earth. I’ll kick you out of here, dude. I can get home and get ice cream or something. I don’t even care about this dumb mission.

      Of course you don’t recognize the sanctity of our mission, says Kantikle. You’re an evil meat clown from a barbarous past. I am not surprised in the least.

      Evil? Don’t be a baby. At worst, I’m neutral. A charming rogue.

      You wield the Sister Ray, an evil weapon designed to rearrange the fabric of the universe, to turn stars into ash, to bend matter to your will.

      Whatever. I’m not evil. Like, I have an evil clone of me, and she uses a weapon that makes people find peace and understanding or something when she stabs them. She’s still evil. Evil weapons, good weapons, it’s all what you do with them.

      You work for the Star Supremacy, who are remembered as imperialist barbarians, one of the most evil organizations of this era.

      We all work for evil organizations. Capitalism, right?

      What?

      That would play super well on my home planet. It’s a good joke.

      Is it, clown? You keep saying the things you say are funny, and I don’t believe it’s true. I have not laughed once. Ironic, isn’t it? The clown who does not make anyone laugh.

      Aria is about to say something very smart and cool and cutting, but an alarm starts to blare, and various lights on the console begin to flash ominously.

      Bogey! says Aria.

      A streak of red light shoots past the Versa, and Aria engages the engines.

      Is it the Aeon? asks Kantikle.

      Don’t think so, says Aria. It’s about the right size, but most of the readings are pretty normal. Probably just a pod or a starbeetle or something.

      No, it is the Aeon! shouts Kantikle. I can feel it! Destiny burns in my chest! After it! I’m engaging the hook!

      Kantikle pushes some buttons on the console, and a field of crackling energy wraps itself around the ship. Aria sighs and chases after the light. The little ship bends and crumples into strange tessellations from the rapid increase in speed, and Aria feels the meat part of her stomach going funny.

      Warning, says the Versa’s computer. Quantum destabilization imminent.

      It’s about to jump. Get us in range now, clown! shouts Kantikle.

      Stop talking! I can’t think if you’re talking!

      Steering at warp is very difficult, on account of human brains not really being able to think at faster-than-light speeds. Aria’s computer brain can do it, but relying on it while also processing meat language can get really headachey. This plus the queasiness is highly unpleasant, as Aria decides, as she has decided for each of the last thirty days, that this is the worst day of her life.

      This is it! Kantikle yells, as the object is just about to hit the warp horizon. Now!

      He presses a button, and the object disappears, only to reappear in the ship’s holding bay a moment later.

      Is it the Aeon? Did we do it? Is it time for Kantikle’s destiny to unfurl? He stands and looks into the middle distance. Is this what it is to be a hero? Yes, I can feel it. We finally did it, Aria. We faced many trials, but we did it. You are loathsome to me in many ways, but I admit, you have a noble soul inside. Your name will live forever, Aria Asterisk. Finally, Kantikle will do what he was born to do, usher in an era of peace and justice that will last unto eternity. It is time!

      Aria taps the viewscreen a few times and frowns. I think it’s a mail-pod? Do they have those in the future? It’s how we send mail. Like letters and packages. Mail. You know, mail, right. Can you feel that? Is your heart burning with mail?

      I hate you, clown. I hate you as much as Uvognig the Traitor hated Addfle the Wizened Fire. He pauses. See, that is a funny joke. On my world, everyone would laugh uproariously at that reference. You do not understand my bold flavors.

      Aria sighs, long and hard. This is hell. You are hell. Everything is hell.

      • • • •

      When Aria first started doing future/space stuff, she was informed very directly that it was dangerous for corporeal beings to stay in warp longer than a few hours at a time.

      Your brain will turn into jelly, said her trainer, who was a giant floating eyeball. And you’ll probably piss yourself.

      Wanting neither to urinate involuntarily nor have her brain rendered into mush by quantum decoherence, Aria has, until present, studiously avoided remaining in warp for more time than is absolutely necessary. This has suited her well, as warp makes her feel nauseated, and she has always been bad at being sick, usually reverting into a giant baby at the slightest hint of physiologic distress. Plus, she dislikes traveling by spaceship anyway, preferring instead to travel inside cool cosmic aliens or timecubes or whatever. So much more interesting and usually easier on the tummy. Before this mission, her record for time spent in warp was just over five hours. It had been an ordeal, and her brain deffo felt gooey afterward (and not in a fun drugs way), but it had probably been for the good of the universe or something, so it was cool.

      Her new record is, currently, six weeks and counting.

      The Versa is designed for this, staying in warp for long periods of time, so her brain has not gone to jelly, and she has not urinated outside the appropriate facilities, but still, this sucks. This tiny ship sucks. Spending all day sitting around, scanning passing ships to see if they might be a cosmic god-thing sucks. And most, most, most of all, Kantikle fucking sucks a lot. She cannot remember why they had initially started arguing or what the initial argument had been about (something about music maybe?) but they argued all day, every day now, over anything and everything. He is probably the worst person Aria has ever met, and Aria has met some real assholes, both in terms of omnicidal mega-supervillains and, like, shitty dudes she was forced to hang out with because they were dating her friends. Kantikle is the worst of all. Like, .00001 out of ten, F minus minus, the uncoolest of them all. And she has to spend all day with him, waiting for Aeon Who Judges All Things to cross the warp so that Kantikle can go inside Aeon’s mind and teach him that this universe has cool stuff and good people. It’s her job to protect him at all costs. They eat together, sleep together, and spend all day listening to music and arguing. It’s like having a song in your head for weeks and weeks, but also, it can talk to you and self-aggrandize and make fun of your great fashion choices.

      It sucks. Way worse than having a jelly brain or piss trousers.

      • • • •

      Can you please stop making that noise? asks Aria, as she lay in her very small, very uncomfortable cot at the rear of the cabin. Neither she nor Kantikle technically require sleep, but both have a fondness for it as an elective. Anything is better than staring into the void all the time.

      You know I can’t, he says, laying in his own cot. I’m literally made of sound.

      You keep saying that, but I feel like you could if you really tried.

      What of your own sonic excretions? Kantikle can hear everything. Can you silence the noise of your inside meats moving fluids and gases around? Can you silence the squelching of your cells dividing?

      Maybe. I’ve never tried. Let me try. Okay, I tried. Now you try.

      You didn’t try.

      I did! I guess I just couldn’t do it. But you’re still obligated to try.

      Okay, fine. There. I tried. Oops, didn’t work. Happy?

      You tried to silence the song of your people? You said that babies are born singing your song, that the laughter of children is incorporated into its melodies, that all the sounds of love and joy in the universe are featured in the music of you. You tried to stop all that? That’s pretty fucked up, dude.

      You are a curse, clown.

      Oh my God, stop calling me that.

      Perhaps you should not dress in such a comical fashion?

      My fashions are avant-garde, and you’re a child.

      Kantikle sits up suddenly. Do you hear something?

      I’m not doing this with you again.

      No, I thought I heard footsteps. But they appear to have faded.

      It was probably my inside meats. Goodnight.

      Aria closes her eyes, but they snap back open immediately as a loud explosion echoes through the ship. Before Aria or Kantikle can react, the Versa begins to shake and groan, and there are a lot of flashing lights and beeping computers and scary space noises. Small holes begin to open along the seams of the ship, and Aria sees strange, many-angled shapes emerging from them.

      Fuck! she shouts, jumping up and out.

      "The holding

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