April 2017

202 Pages·2017·1.45 MB·English

by  John Joseph Adams

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Issue 83, April 2017
FROM THE EDITOR
Editorial, April 2017
SCIENCE FICTION
Infinite Love Engine
Joseph Allen Hill
If Lions Could Speak: Imagining the Alien
Paul Park
Seven Permutations of My Daughter
Lina Rather
Someone to Watch Over Me
Nancy Kress
FANTASY
Familiaris
Genevieve Valentine
Remote Presence
Susan Palwick
Bookkeeper, Narrator, Gunslinger
Charles Yu
Maybe Look Up
Jess Barber
NOVELLA
The Memory of Stone
Michelle West
EXCERPTS
Skullsworn
Brian Staveley
NONFICTION
Book Reviews: April 2017
Andrew Liptak
Movie Review: April 2017
Carrie Vaughn
Interview: Aliette de Bodard
Christian A. Coleman
AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS
Joseph Allen Hill
Paul Park
Susan Palwick
Lina Rather
Charles Yu
Nancy Kress
Jess Barber
Michelle West
MISCELLANY
Coming Attractions
Stay Connected
Subscriptions and Ebooks
About the Lightspeed Team
Also Edited by John Joseph Adams
© 2017 Lightspeed Magazine
Cover by Odera Igbokwe
www.lightspeedmagazine.com

Editorial, April 2017
John Joseph Adams | 1772 words
Welcome to issue eighty-three of Lightspeed!
We have original science fiction by Joseph Allen Hill (“Infinite Love Engine”) and
Lina Rather (“Seven Permutations of My Daughter”), along with SF reprints by Paul Park
(“If Lions Could Speak: Imagining the Alien”) and Nancy Kress (“Someone to Watch
Over Me”).
Plus, we have original fantasy by Susan Palwick (“Remote Presence”) and Jess
Barber (“Maybe Look Up”), and fantasy reprints by Genevieve Valentine (“Familiaris”)
and Charles Yu (“Bookkeeper, Narrator, Gunslinger”).
All that, and of course we also have our usual assortment of author spotlights, along
with our book and media review columns, and a feature interview with Aliette de
Bodard.
For our ebook readers, we also have a reprint of Michelle West’s “The Memory of
Stone” and an excerpt of Skullsworn by Brian Staveley (forthcoming from Tor Books).
Our cover this month is by Odera Igbokwe, illustrating “Infinite Love Engine” by
Joseph Allen Hill.
Coming Soon: Cosmic Powers
Speaking of Joseph Allen Hill—his story, “Infinite Love Engine,” also appears this
month in my new anthology, Cosmic Powers, which will be available from Saga Press on
April 18. It’s a collection of epic-scale science fiction, inspired by movies
like Guardians of the Galaxy and Star Wars, featuring brand-new stories from Dan
Abnett, Jack Campbell, Linda Nagata, Seanan McGuire, Alan Dean Foster, Charlie Jane
Anders, Kameron Hurley, and many others. To learn more, or to pre-order, visit
johnjosephadams.com/cosmic.
Awards News
In case you missed the news, the first of the major awards have announced their lists
of finalists for last year’s work, and we’re pleased to announce that “Sooner or Later
Everything Falls Into the Sea” by Sarah Pinsker and “Welcome to the Medical Clinic at
the Interplanetary Relay Station│Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0” by Caroline M.
Yoachim are finalists for the Nebula Award this year. Congrats to Sarah and Caroline and
to everyone else on the Nebula ballot! That brings Lightspeed’s lifetime Nebula
nomination total to eighteen since we launched in June 2010. We’ve currently lost sixteen
in a row, so here’s hoping Sarah and/or Caroline breaks the streak! You can find the full
slate of nominees at sfwa.org. The Nebulas will be presented at the 2017 Nebula Awards
Conference, held this year in Pittsburgh, PA, May 18-21.
“The Bad Hour” by Christopher Golden, from my horror anthology co-edited with
Douglas Cohen, What the #@&% is That?, made the final ballot of the Bram Stoker
Awards, so big congrats to Christopher for that honor. You can find the full slate of what
made the final ballot at horror.org. The Stoker Awards will be presented at StokerCon
2017, which is being held in Long Beach, CA, April 27-30.
In art award news: Galen Dara’s illustration of Kat Howard’s story “Seven Salt
Tears” (Lightspeed, Jan. 2017) has been nominated for the Spectrum 24 Awards.
Congrats to Galen and all of the other nominees! You can see the full list of nominated
works at fleskpublications.com.
Locus Recommended Reading List / Locus Awards Voting
Locus Magazine released their annual recommended reading list, and we’re pleased
to report Lightspeed has fifteen stories on the list, Nightmare has five stories, and my
anthology What the #@&% is That? has two stories:
“I Was a Teenage Werewolf” Dale Bailey (Nightmare)
“Fifty Shades of Grays” Steven Barnes (Lightspeed)
“Salto Mortal” Nick T. Chan (Lightspeed)
“Ghost Pressure” Gemma Files (What the #@&% Is That?)
“Little Widow” Maria Dahvana Headley (Nightmare / What the #@&% Is
That?)
“Red Dirt Witch” N.K. Jemisin (Fantasy)
“The One Who Isn’t” Ted Kosmatka (Lightspeed)
“The Finest, Fullest Flowering” Marc Laidlaw (Nightmare)
“Sparks Fly” Rich Larson (Lightspeed)
“A Good Home” Karin Lowachee (Lightspeed)
“Those Brighter Stars” Mercurio D. Rivera (Lightspeed)
“Angel, Monster, Man” Sam J. Miller (Nightmare)
“Unauthorized Access” An Owomoyela (Lightspeed)
“The Red Thread” Sofia Samatar (Lightspeed)
“Vulcanization” Nisi Shawl (Nightmare)
“Wednesday’s Story” Wole Talabi (Lightspeed)
“Dragon Brides” Nghi Vo (Lightspeed)
“Secondhand Bodies” JY Yang (Lightspeed)
“Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station | Hours
Since the Last Patient Death: 0” Caroline M. Yoachim (Lightspeed)
Congratulations to our authors, and to everyone who made the list!
The release of the Recommended Reading List also means that voting for the Locus
Awards is now open. Anyone is eligible to vote. Visit locusmag.com to cast a ballot or
learn more. Voting closes April 15, 2017.
Locus Feature
Speaking of Locus, in their March 2017 issue, there’s a long feature interview with
yours truly, in which I discuss my origins as an editor, editing my first anthologies,
launching Lightspeed and John Joseph Adams Books, and all manner of things.
(Surprisingly, I somehow got through the whole thing without once mentioning death
metal.) If you’d like to check it out, you’ll need to buy the issue, but they’ve got some
extended excerpts up on their website. To investigate either option, visit locusmag.com.
Best-of-the-Year Reprints
Several stories from Lightspeed, Nightmare, and the Destroy special issues have also
been selected for reprint in several best-of-the-year volumes. They’re listed below, with
the original venue and then the best-of-the-year editor(s)’s name following in parenthesis:
1. “RedKing” by Craig DeLancey (Lightspeed | Horton, Dozois)
2. “I’ve Come to Marry the Princess” by Helena Bell (Lightspeed | Horton)
3. “A Good Home” by Karin Lowachee (Lightspeed | Clarke)
4. “Those Brighter Stars” by Mercurio R. Rivera (Lightspeed | Dozois)
5. “Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea” by Sarah
Pinsker (Lightspeed | Clarke)
6. “The Jaws That Bite, The Claws That Catch” by Seanan
McGuire (Lightspeed| Guran)
7. “Fifty Shades Of Grays” by Steven Barnes (Lightspeed | Horton, Dozois)
8. “Red Dirt Witch” by N.K. Jemisin (Fantasy | Strahan, Guran)
9. “Whose Drowned Face Sleeps” by An Owomoyela & Rachael Swirsky
(Nightmare | Guran)
10. “Wish You Were Here” by Nadia Bulkin (Nightmare | Guran, Datlow)
11. “The Finest, Fullest Flowering” by Marc Laidlaw (Nightmare | Guran)
12. “The One Who Isn’t” by Ted Kosmatka (Lightspeed | Dozois)
13. “The Bad Hour” by Christopher Golden (What the #@&% is That? |
Datlow)
This month’s list now incorporates selections from Ellen Datlow’s The Best Horror of
the Year anthology, and one story (“The One Who Isn’t”) which we previously neglected
to include. We’ll update this list if we uncover any additional such honors!
John Joseph Adams Books News
I’m pleased to announce a new novel acquisition for John Joseph Adams Books: Upon
a Burning Throne and The Blind King’s Wrath, the first two books in a new epic fantasy
series by Ashok K. Banker, about a group of siblings battling for control of a vast empire
while a powerful demonlord pits them against each other.
Regular Lightspeed and Nightmare readers might recognize Ashok’s name from the
stories of his we’ve published recently—and you’ll see his name several more times in
the near future, as we have several works of his in inventory—but though Ashok is new to
our pages, he’s a bestselling author in India, and, indeed, pioneered the entire fantasy
genre in Indian publishing. So I’m super excited to be helping to introduce his work to a
new audience.
Otherwise, here’s a quick rundown what to expect from John Joseph Adams Books in
the coming months:
In July, we’ll be publishing two books: (1) Carrie Vaughn’s novel, Bannerless—a
post-apocalyptic mystery in which an investigator must discover the truth behind a
mysterious death in a world where small communities struggle to maintain a ravaged
civilization decades after environmental and economic collapse; and (2) Sand by Hugh
Howey, a reissue of his acclaimed indie-published novel.
In September, we’ll be publishing Retrograde by Peter Cawdron, a hard SF novel
about an international colony of astronauts on Mars, who have been prepared for every
eventuality of living on another planet except one: What happens when disaster
strikes Earth?
In October, we’ll be publishing Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories by
Hugh Howey, a short story collection including three stories set in the world of Hugh’s
mega-hit Wool and two never-before-published tales, plus fifteen additional stories
collected together for the first time.
In November, we’ll be publishing Molly Tanzer’s Creatures of Will and Temper—a
Victorian-era urban fantasy inspired by The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which an épée-
fencing enthusiast and her younger sister are drawn into a secret and dangerous London
underworld of pleasure-seeking demons and bloodthirsty diabolists, with only her skill
with a blade standing between them and certain death.
A bit further out, in Spring 2018, we’ll have The City of Lost Fortunes by Bryan
Camp, about a magician with a talent for finding lost things who is forced into playing a
high-stakes game with the gods of New Orleans for the heart and soul of the city.
That’s all the JJA Books news to report for now. More soon!
• • • •
Well, that’s all there is to report this month. Thanks for reading!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Joseph Adams, in addition to serving as publisher and editor-in-chief of Lightspeed, is the editor of John Joseph