Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 133 (June 2021) - Lightspeed Magazine, #133

LIGHTSPEED is a digital 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.

Welcome to LIGHTSPEED's 133rd issue, and welcome to our eleventh year of publishing great speculative fiction. We're kicking off the month with an original short fantasy story by Adam-Troy Castro with "A Tableau of Things That Are." It's a commentary on love and marriage and the prison system. Adam R. Shannon brings us a story about heroism in firefighting in his deeply affecting "When You Die on the Radio." We also have fantasy reprints from Sofia Samatar ("Wolf Tones") and Theodora Goss ("How to Become a Witch-Queen"). Our science fiction originals grapple with classic SFnal fare: alternate realities and aliens. Timothy Mudie brings us a love story complicated by reality hopping ("Different People") and in "Do Nothing," a story set on Alcatraz Island, Endria Isa Richardson weaves an extraterrestrial invasion with a criticism of the penal system (it's a great match for Castro's fantasy story). Our SF reprints are from Sam J. Miller ("The Nation of the Sick") and Nalo Hopkinson ("Inselberg"). All that, and of course we also have our usual assortment of author spotlights, along with book reviews from our terrific review team. Our ebook readers will also enjoy an excerpt from Katherine Addison's new novel, THE WITNESS FOR THE DEAD.