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Book Review: Lo que nos siguió a casa; Something Followed Us Home: Tales of Latiné Horror by Cynthia Pelayo, ed.

Arley Sorg — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 10:05:37 +0000

Cynthia Pelayo has edited an anthology featuring some of the hottest Latiné horror writers, including Agustina Bazterrica, Mónica Ojeda, and more. Reviewer Arley Sorg gives you the rundown.

Uncanny Jack

Susan Palwick — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 10:02:31 +0000

Everyone thinks the uncanny folk steal children, but they steal adults too, steal their minds and memories, put their own folk where ours used to be. The new folk don’t know their loved ones, don’t know what a toilet is, don’t know how to deposit a check. Of course they don’t. Why would they? They didn’t need any of that, didn’t know any of those people, where they came from.

Author Spotlight: Arden Powell

Erik Grove — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 10:02:16 +0000

I was reading quantum theory nonfiction and watching Brian Cox’s black hole videos (for my own entertainment, not work-related) and all that information needed an outlet. Adding the Lovecraft mythos felt like a natural progression born of thinking too much about deep-space phenomena. I’m not a physicist and I don’t write hard SF, so when I learn about neat scientific discoveries, I have to communicate my enthusiasm via weird spec-fic flash fiction.

Master/Slave Couple Seeking Physicist to Feed to a Black Hole

Arden Powell — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 10:01:01 +0000

You are: A disillusioned mathematical physicist with a wet open mind. Desperate for knowledge. A neo-masochist. A willing sacrifice.

Book Review: Strange Lights by Mira González

Chris Kluwe — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 10:05:19 +0000

A strange and emotional story of wanting to belong and finding your place in society. Chris Kluwe recommends Mira González's Strange Lights.

Author Spotlight: Marissa Lingen

Phoebe Barton — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 10:03:33 +0000

I had the honor to live near three of my closest elders as they were dying, my grandmother and my great-aunt, and great-uncle who were basically my grandparents on their side of the family. I wrote “Until the Cure” while they were still with us, while I could still spend a lot of time with them. We were fortunate that all three of them were themselves until the very end, but I know not everyone is nearly that fortunate.

Until the Cure

Marissa Lingen — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 10:02:14 +0000

The golem who cares for my mother is patient, as I am not patient. The golem who cares for my mother is kind. It is precise. I took everything I wanted to be as a daughter, and am not, and I put it into the golem. I’m still afraid I am failing her.

Guidance

Martin Cahill — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 10:01:16 +0000

Later, when the cameras were off and he was alone with his wife, hands still shaking from the cocktail of adrenaline, fear, shame, guilt, and vodka he’d been partaking of all day, he started to tell her the truth. Even then, he only spoke it in the dark, so overwhelming were his emotions that he could not bear to be seen. “The truth,” she said, prompting him, trying to draw him from the enveloping gloom of their bedroom.

Editorial: October 2026

John Joseph Adams — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 10:05:19 +0000

Be sure to check out the editorial for a rundown of this month’s content and for all of John Joseph Adams’s media and book recommendations!

Congratulations on your Magic Sword™

John Wiswell — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 10:02:19 +0000

Congratulations on your Magic Sword"! For all inquiries as to its powers and perils, please consult the Virtue Exercises Manual". However, we know new users sometimes get in over their heads. That’s why messages like this may appear on your blade. If you see such a message, heed it promptly, and everything will be fine. Welcome to heroism. We’ve been waiting for you!

The Raspberry Manifesto of Professor Warana

Adam-Troy Castro — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 10:01:26 +0000

Something has happened. It is amazing. It is unheard-of and inconceivable. It is many, many, many things, gathering a plethora of adjectives that indicate its ability to cause astonishment and confusion among those who behold it. It is a mountain-sized edifice of awe. Whether it is horrific, tragic, or a leap forward has yet to be decided. Nevertheless, it has happened.

Announcement: We’re currently running a Kickstarter that ends Oct. 15.

John Joseph Adams — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 07:01:48 +0000

On September 15, 2026, we launched our first Kickstarter campaign in more than a decade, to fund Year 17 of Lightspeed and Year 15 of Nightmare. It ends October 15, so join us now for a year of new short fiction from some of the biggest stars in science fiction, fantasy, and horror, including: Charlie […]

Book Review: Code and Codex by Yoon Ha Lee

Chris Kluwe — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:05:09 +0000

Reviewer Chris Kluwe recommends Code and Codex for a book to really sink your teeth into.

Author Spotlight: Thomas Ha

Erik Grove — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:03:25 +0000

This one started with the character of Aga—someone who doesn’t quite operate like others in her world. She thinks differently and is slightly out-of-step because of it. I find something interesting about a character like that, her commitment to her work.

Jempo

Thomas Ha — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:02:15 +0000

Jempo took a deep bow on the iron platform. His body flopped forward, limbs like thick braided wire. No obvious weapons in his large and rubbery hands. Little digital eyes and a bright smile that lit the rounded ball he had for a head. More clown than competitor at first glance.

Maskwork Saltman Giftbox

Rich Larson — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:01:42 +0000

I’m only doing maskwork until I find better, but there aren’t many physical jobs to go around in Schrödinger City. Most get done by gleaming machines, by hop-along bots and drone swarms. Luckily, maskwork needs a human touch—and supposedly, village folk are better at it than the folk who grew up here. Could be. I always liked masks.

Book Review: Black Arts: Stories by Megan Giddings

Melissa A Watkins — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 10:05:56 +0000

If you liked Marie N’Diaye’s novella The Witch or Samantha Mill’s short story collection Rabbit Test, you’ll probably like Black Arts as well.

Author Spotlight: Sanjana Raj

A Humphrey Lanham — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 10:02:59 +0000

A few years ago, I read an article about the Pacific nation of Tuvalu. This piece of fact emerges in the world of this story—the leadership of Tuvalu announced that it would become the first “digital nation,” in an effort to preserve sovereignty and knowledge of the physical land if the country became uninhabitable due to rising sea levels.

The Dragon, the Scarab, the Wolf, the Dragon

Rhiannon Rasmussen — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 10:02:49 +0000

Ánar’s bootheels echoed on the iron floor. What a groundbreaking honor this ceremony was for a landless tenant like him—joining old house Veivilkas, of the wolf. Such an honor that it made him leaden to think of, made him long for sleep. At the conclusion of the ceremony, he would no longer be merely Ánar from the undercity, scarab-kin, but Ánar Veivilkas. Nobility. The first scarab-kin to wear that name, no less.

Alterverse

Sanjana Raj — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 10:01:34 +0000

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.

Book Review: Africanfuturism Short Stories by Chinelo Onwualu, ed.

Arley Sorg — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 10:05:36 +0000

Looking for a big collection of speculative fiction by African writers, curated by the always wonderful Flame Tree Press? Arley Sorg recommends Africanfuturism Short Stories.

Author Spotlight: Anya Ow

Phoebe Barton — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 10:03:03 +0000

“The Long Goodbye” was a phrase I heard once online in reference to having to take care of elderly, ailing pets. I’ve been caring for a cat with multiple issues for years—he is now eighteen, and every day having to help him relieve himself, groom himself, and move him around has been a bit of a challenge. I think it’s not just an act of love but also of reciprocity—my cat has been there almost all of my adult life and made it better for it.

Long Goodbyes

Anya Ow — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 10:02:52 +0000

Sui grunted as she straightened her back, digging her shoulder up into Taxue’s belly. The Zheng’s hind legs dragged awkwardly on the sand, trembling as the paws knuckled, the sudden weight on Sui pushing the knee she’d braced into the dirt. Sui braced her palms up under the Zheng’s hind legs, feeling for the distended sac of her bladder, swollen larger than Sui’s head overnight. Muscles bulged over arms used to drawing heavy longbows as she compressed it. For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

The Chrysalis of Moth One

V.M. Ayala — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 10:01:53 +0000

They didn’t want either of us to live this long. Sucks for them—we’re good at living in spite. We’re good at surviving, at fighting, at never stopping. Today is the last day we exist in spite of Command, but it’s also just another day that ends in y. Most pilots are paired with a seasoned mentor. Not us. No, powerful men at Command threw us in the pit of a Moth to fight their pointless space war.

Author Spotlight: Alexander Weinstein

Robin Jeffrey — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 10:02:48 +0000

It was during an AI & Creativity Conference at Stanford that I first heard about Sam Altman’s truly horrifying next endeavor called World Coin. If you haven’t heard of this particular dystopia, it involves an eye-scanning orb that’s being sent to many third world countries to scan the retinas of those who volunteer. In turn they get world-coin credits, basically a new kind of cryptocurrency that will be based on eye-scans, and a horrific way to monetize and create a global surveillance network for the tech overlords.

Dreamweavers

Alexander Weinstein — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 10:01:39 +0000

In The Before Days, Tim was a fellow procurer of dreams. He made a good living frequenting rooftop parties amid aging tech bros in fur-clad vests where mangosteen juices were mixed and silent discos reverberated within guests’ inner ears. As the dustbowl spread across the continent, even Reza himself was rumored to have purchased one of Tim’s dreamscapes—a particularly beautiful worldbuild of plummeting waterfalls and Tahitian escorts that kept Reza ensconced behind his retinas for days—after which Tim was invited to more exclusive barricaded enclaves of the super-rich, all who wanted private downloads to their next digital escape.

A Guide on How to Repay Your Vow to the Deity of Many Faces

Oyedotun Damilola Muees — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 10:01:18 +0000

If every effort to bring down your child’s fever is unsuccessful and the doctors cannot diagnose anything wrong with her, then you should seek other means to alleviate her health. Before you help her into the house, if you notice that her shadow refuses to follow her body, then you should know that her sickness is numinous, and it is beyond what science can cure or fathom.

Editorial: September 2026

John Joseph Adams — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 10:05:22 +0000

Be sure to check out the editorial for a rundown of this month’s content and for all of John Joseph Adams’s media and book recommendations!

Announcement: We’re Launching a New Kickstarter Sept. 15. Sign up to be notified when it launches!

John Joseph Adams — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 07:01:53 +0000

On September 15, 2026, we’ll be launching our first Kickstarter campaign in more than a decade, to fund Year 17 of Lightspeed and Year 15 of Nightmare. Join us for a year of new short fiction from some of the biggest stars in science fiction, fantasy, and horror, including: Charlie Jane Anders Travis Baldree Olivie […]

Book Review: All We Have Is Time by Amy Tordoff

Chris Kluwe — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 10:05:28 +0000

This month, reviewer Chris Kluwe recommends a time-travel tale for fans of This Is How You Lose the Time War.

The Goddess of Not Enough

Susan Palwick — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 10:02:42 +0000

You’re eighteen. Your fairy godmother just fired you, because after three balls, the prince has grown bored with you. Tonight you stepped on his foot during a gavotte. “If you’d been cleverer,” the fairy godmother says—her words silver chimes girded with steel—“you’d have pretended your clumsiness was really punishment: a reminder to focus on you, not that floozy in scarlet silk across the room.”

Ladd’s Robot Repair

David Anaxagoras — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 10:01:02 +0000

I wasn’t even two blocks into the Tumbledown when the walker’s nav crystal started fuzzing out. She veered left like a scavver drunk on coolant, and I knew I was in trouble. I tried sweet-talking her back on route, but she wasn’t listening. I was used to that. Nobody listens to a twelve-year-old—especially not a scrap pile with legs.

Book Review: Forged in FIYAH by DaVaun Sanders, ed.

Arley Sorg — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 10:05:21 +0000

Read more Black authors! Arley Sorg recommends a great anthology featuring eighteen original stories chosen by the editor of FIYAH magazine.

Author Spotlight: Adelehin Ijasan

Delia Cullity — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 10:03:04 +0000

The inspiration came from my own fascination with the true nature of reality and consciousness. I mean, what is this world we live in? How are seemingly psychic dreams possible? Does consciousness emerge from matter, or is it the other way round? Exploring those questions led me down the rabbit hole where ideas of panpsychism and gnosticism began to intersect in my imagination, and gradually a story started to take shape.

Author Spotlight: Joel W. D. Buxton

Phoebe Barton — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 10:02:36 +0000

In terms of the idea for this story, the premise just kind of came to me all at once one morning over a coffee. I think it stems from an interest in what potential medical miracles nano-technology may unlock for humanity. And, of course, the inevitable question of who will have the cash flow to partake in said miracles.

Of All Who Dream

Adelehin Ijasan — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 10:02:12 +0000

“God” is not the word I’d use. But it is the only one that suffices. There are all kinds of gods: the old and the new; the useful, the useless; the capricious and the dependable; the wrathful and the meek. They all had one thing in common—whether they were created at the dawn of time when hunter-gatherers huddled in caves and cowered at the crack of thunder, or they were engineered by men in frocks, or worse, born of minds harvested by modern technology—all gods were born starving.

What Do You Mean the Nanobots Formed a Union??

Joel W. D. Buxton — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 10:01:18 +0000

“What do you mean the nanobots formed a union??” I asked the lawyer, biting my thumbnail. It’s an old habit, kept up well after I got the “Pro Nano Blitz Package,” as the ad called it. A muscular man in tight clothing explained: a quick, painless injection, then a couple days sick as a dog, then another month for the nanobots to multiply, specialize, and spread out through the body. Then: easy street.

Book Review: The Inevitable Undoing of Zahara Douglass by Leslye Penelope

Melissa A Watkins — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 10:05:59 +0000

Melissa A. Watkins suggests revisiting the Y2K era with this unique, multimodal tale of a lost twin.

Author Spotlight: Brooke Bolander

A Humphrey Lanham — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 10:03:27 +0000

What you see is more or less what’s on the page! If it was a longer work I’d obviously know more about her than what got written but all fiction (short fiction especially, IMO) is a little like making a friend on a flight: Generally you only know what they feel like telling you about their life before they stepped on the plane, and that varies from person to person.

Fragments of the Whole

Brooke Bolander — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 10:02:17 +0000

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.

The Age of Cancer

Vajra Chandrasekera — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 10:01:16 +0000

This is our struggle. We scuttle on the sand before the softly breathing salt-burdened sea with the lichen on the rocks a bright poison green and great white butterflies screaming under a red sky while we dream of justice and watch the ghost of a long-extinct rat ancestor, an ancestrat if you please, you know the ones we mean, the toothy ones who built dams to block the rivers, the handsy ones who built towers to block the skies, and choked on their own leavings.

Editorial: August 2026

John Joseph Adams — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 10:05:59 +0000

Be sure to check out the editorial for a rundown of this month’s content!

Infinite Wishes

Kristine Kathryn Rusch — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 10:02:29 +0000

Rachel sat at the edge of the sparkling pond in the secluded glen that had taken her five years to find. The air smelled of roses and lavender and pine. Tiny white sparks, like fireflies, floated upward, almost as if they were watching her.

Author Spotlight: A.M. Maris

Robin Jeffrey — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 10:02:09 +0000

I was thinking about power dynamics, and about a Tamsyn Muir story that appeared in Lightspeed in 2017. It’s called “The Magician’s Apprentice,” and it follows a young girl, Cherry, as she learns how to work magic. I was intrigued and distressed by the extreme power imbalance between Cherry and her teacher, a much older man with a secret about where his magic really comes from.

Legs

A.M. Maris — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 10:01:10 +0000

He called her Legs. “Legs for days,” he’d say, his voice thick with wonder. When he spoke to her, she was filled with a warm, heady feeling that made her purr and rub against him. She had to be careful when she did, because she was still growing into her spikes and she’d already drawn blood more than once. His skin was so flimsy, so tearable. She marveled he didn’t end up a shredded mess just from going about his days.

Announcement: We’re Launching a New Kickstarter Soon. Sign up to be notified when it launches!

John Joseph Adams — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 07:02:00 +0000

Book Review: We Interrupt This Program by Randee Dawn

Chris Kluwe — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 10:05:39 +0000

Reviewer Chris Kluwe highly recommends this second entry in Randee Dawn’s Tune-iverse, We interrupt This Program.

Author Spotlight: V.M. Ayala

Robin Jeffrey — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 10:02:35 +0000

“Discarded God” was partially inspired by a quiet moment when I turned thirty-five last year. I had been reflecting on how much I’d changed from the person I used to be, and how difficult things were in my twenties. I wasn’t out to myself back then, yet alone out to anyone else. I hadn’t realized I could simply use she/they pronouns and embrace being nonbinary. Now? Well, I’m queer as hell and happy with who I am.

Concerto For Wartime

Sean Williams — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 10:02:06 +0000

The magician raises his wand. Initially, this commission seemed simple. One large country invading a much smaller one, a clear case of aggressor and victim—but nothing is ever so straightforward.

If a Discarded God Can Change, So Can I

V.M. Ayala — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 10:01:23 +0000

Green Plumed Orbital Line A; viridis metamorphos A

Common sighting; Flies along the forty-fifth latitude every 12 minutes

Traveler’s addendum: Last functional line along a northern latitude; southern latitudes TBD

My crawler runs out of energy as I reach the platform summit. I’m two minutes early.