Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 100 (September 2018), page 1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Issue 100, September2018
FROM THE EDITOR
Editorial: September 2018
SCIENCE FICTION
Her Monster, Whom She Loved
Vylar Kaftan
Harry and Marlowe and the Secret of Ahomana
Carrie Vaughn
The Last to Matter
Adam-Troy Castro
How to Become a Robot in 12 Easy Steps
A. Merc Rustad
The Explainer
Ken Liu
Hard Mary
Sofia Samatar
NPC
Charles Yu
Stone Wall Truth
Caroline M. Yoachim
Travelling into Nothing
An Owomoyela
Frontier ABCs: The Life and Times of Charity Smith, Schoolteacher
Seanan McGuire
They Go Bump
David Barr Kirtley
FANTASY
Abandonware
Genevieve Valentine
Jump
Cadwell Turnbull
The Coin of Heart’s Desire
Yoon Ha Lee
You Pretend Like You Never Met Me, and I’ll Pretend Like I Never Met You
Maria Dahvana Headley
Conspicuous Plumage
Sam J. Miller
A Brief Guide to the Seeking of Ghosts
Kat Howard
Elena’s Egg
Theodora Goss
The Super Ultra Duchess of Fedora Forest
Charlie Jane Anders
The Girl with the Sun in Her Head
Jeremiah Tolbert
EXCERPTS
Gene Doucette | The Spaceship Next Door
Gene Doucette
NONFICTION
A Few of Our Favorite Things
Wendy N. Wagner
Book Reviews: September 2018
Arley Sorg
Media Reviews: September 2018
Jenn Reese
Interview: John Joseph Adams
Christian A. Coleman
AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS
Vylar Kaftan
Genevieve Valentine
Carrie Vaughn
Cadwell Turnbull
Adam-Troy Castro
Maria Dahvana Headley
Ken Liu
Sofia Samatar
Sam J. Miller
Kat Howard
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
© 2018 Lightspeed Magazine
Cover by Galen Dara
www.lightspeedmagazine.com
Editorial: September 2018
John Joseph Adams | 464 words
Welcome to Lightspeed’s 100th issue!
To celebrate this milestone, we decided to publish a super-sized issue, with ten original stories—more than twice the amount of original fiction than usual—plus ten reprints and some special nonfiction to boot. And to make things even more commemorative, the vast majority of our fiction in this issue, both original and reprint, is from our most frequently published fiction contributors—the Lightspeediest writers to ever Lightspeed. It’s a distillation of what we’re made of, and we’re beyond excited to share it with all of you.
Our cover art this month comes from Hugo award-winning artist (and fifty-three-time Lightspeed illustrator) Galen Dara, illustrating new science fiction from Vylar Kaftan: “Her Monster, Whom She Loved.” We also have new SF from Carrie Vaughn (“Harry and Marlowe and the Secret of Ahomana”), Adam-Troy Castro (“The Last to Matter”), Ken Liu (“The Explainer”), and Sofia Samatar (“Hard Mary”), plus reprints from A. Merc Rustad (“How to Become a Robot in 12 Easy Steps”), Charles Yu (“NPC”), Caroline M. Yoachim (“Stone Wall Truth”), An Owomoyela (“Travelling Into Nothing”), Seanan McGuire (“Frontier ABCs: The Life and Times of Charity Smith, Schoolteacher”), and David Barr Kirtley (“They Go Bump”).
On the fantasy side of the ledger, we’re featuring new work from Maria Dahvana Headley (“You Pretend Like You Never Met Me, and I’ll Pretend Like I Never Met You”), Cadwell Turnbull (“Jump”), Genevieve Valentine (“Abandonware”), Sam J. Miller (“Conspicuous Plumage”), and Kat Howard (“A Brief Guide to the Seeking of Ghosts”), plus we have reprints from Yoon Ha Lee (“The Coin of Heart’s Desire”), Theodora Goss (“Elena’s Egg”), Charlie Jane Anders (“The Super Ultra Duchess of Fedora Forest”), and Jeremiah Tolbert (“The Girl with Sun in Her Head”).
Our nonfiction includes an interview, as per usual, but for this special celebratory issue, our staff twisted my arm into letting them interview someone you’ve seen a lot in these pages over the years but never heard directly from in the form of an interview: me. (I tried to demur, but they insisted!) Otherwise: for a change of pace, our media review is a look at recent video games with a speculative bent, and then of course we’ve got author spotlights with our original fiction writers and a book review column from Arley Sorg. We’re also pleased to feature a special celebration of our contributors’ and staff members’ favorite Lightspeed stories of all-time, and then our novel excerpt this month is from Gene Doucette’s The Spaceship Next Door.
Well, that’s all there is to report this month. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy this celebratory super-sized issue, and here’s to the next hundred!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Joseph Adams, in addition to serving as publisher and editor-in-chief of Lightspeed, is the editor of John Joseph Adams Books, the SF/Fantasy imprint from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He is also the series editor of Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, as well as the USA Today bestselling editor of many other anthologies, including The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, Robot Uprisings, Dead Man’s Hand, Armored, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, and The Living Dead. Recent projects include: Cosmic Powers, What the #@&% Is That?, Operation Arcana, Loosed Upon the World, Wastelands 2, Press Start to Play, and The Apocalypse Triptych: The End is Nigh, The End is Now, and The End Has Come. 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 is a eight-time World Fantasy Award finalist. John is also the editor and publisher of Nightmare Magazine and is a producer for Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Find him on Twitter @johnjosephadams.
Her Monster, Whom She Loved
Vylar Kaftan | 1820 words
Ammuya birthed five hundred gods, followed by a monster. That was her first mistake. The gods tormented the monster because they feared it. They bound it inside a black hole, and the monster’s hatred seethed. Eventually the monster raged so fiercely he escaped the event horizon. Then he hunted down his siblings, one by one.
On a silent desert planet, Ammuya cried for her children. Her brave warrior-son: slain on a red giant’s surface. Her brilliant astronomer-daughter: struck down in her starry palace. Her gentle son of the solar winds: dead in her arms. She cried until the sun burned away her tears. Only she and the monster remained.
Then the monster turned on her.
Her child transformed to a tentacled dragon: darker than vacuum, hotter than supernova. She shifted into a massive millipede, whose segments sprayed toxic waste. The two wrestled, evenly matched, like binary stars locking each other in orbit. The dragon charred her legs, but Ammuya channeled her pain. Rage became strength. She could never forget her other children, murdered by this one. She ignited with grief. Her light blinded the monster; her spray disintegrated its limbs. The dragon’s howl shook the galaxy. With its last strength, it curled inward to heal itself, a motionless ouroboros.
Ammuya saw her chance. She could strike and slay the monster forever—avenging her other children. Yet she circled through space, watching him heal. He looked like he was sleeping. Like he had before he murdered the gods. She could not strike her sleeping child, yet uncounted creatures would die if she failed. She steeled herself; no one else could destroy him.
But now: too late. The dragon collapsed like a dying star. Lightning crackled from its shattered scales, and blue feathers sprouted through the gaps. It resurrected into an electric phoenix with wings of light. It siphoned matter from the nearest system, obliterating a trillion species. Thirty potentially spacefaring civilizations were wiped out like simple algae.
Cursing her weakness, Ammuya transformed to a sleek otter-hawk and fled. The monster chased her through a dusty nebula, its claws swiping her feet. It chased her past a red giant swallowing its own system. It chased her through the war-torn galaxy, its populated planets vibrating with passing terror. Her child gained power as he digested his siblings. She could not face his nightmare strength.
She took refuge in a quantum black hole—where he might look for her or not, and neither state mattered. She became a salamander cat. Licking her wounds, she regrew her limbs until they trailed behind her like stardust. She grew seventeen eyes, one for each of the galaxies’ gifts, and wondered what to do. She could not let her child destroy the universe. Yet she pitied him, monster that he’d become.
Ammuya curled inside herself, meditating for the thirty seconds she needed to analyze the situation. In her resting state, she called upon unive
All this knowledge—yet she saw no option but killing her child. Ammuya cried. Her tears flowed through space, then faded to dust. Vacuum overwhelmed even a goddess’s tears.
• • • •
Ammuya gathered her strength. From ten dying stars, she took their cores, renewing her immortality. From thirteen pulsars, she took regularities and eccentricities, to make her tactics reliable yet unpredictable. And from the nearest quasar, she took hot flame. She crafted a burning lasso to help capture her child.
The people’s prayers were what she most needed—their belief and their support. Their power was not a force of physics like gravity or energy. Physical forces allowed her actions; belief allowed her existence. Her strength depended on the millions of sentient species in the universe.
Next Ammuya built her shields; she pulled the event horizons from a black hole and pressed it into a sphere: a jet-black shield should her child discover her. Her poor child, who had distorted inside his prison. She blamed herself—that millennium she’d spent singing him lullabies in a lifeless galaxy. Where he slept, after he’d devoured sixteen worlds and an intelligent population of trillions.
He’d been born this way, somehow. His birth had been different; she stayed linked to him in a way she had not with her others. When he burst from her, all her anger drained into him. That made him what he was. A monster, a weapon of pure hatred—a galaxy-breaker. That was why she failed to strike: He had stolen her power.
At his birth, she’d seen no option; he had to be controlled. Yet she had never wished his torture. She could not stop her children once they had captured the monster. Their torments only strengthened his evil. Ammuya grieved for her children, her five hundred beautiful creatures and all their accomplishments. She grieved for her monster, who had never known anything else, who never had the chance to be better. She loved her monster, but his crimes were unbearable. He would destroy the universe—including himself—unless she stopped him.
She landed on a barren red planet to gather her strength. She deployed her black shield around its exosphere and meditated while her powers grew. Trillions prayed to her under billions of names. She drew their thoughts into her core and brightened like a newborn star.
The monster came unexpectedly, long before she could brace herself. Still a phoenix, he tore through the shield like it was stardust. He clawed her neck. She shrieked as her blood stained across light-years. Ammuya lassoed him with starfire, but he shrugged the coils off. He laughed at her attempt.
She darted away, taking refuge between atoms in a distant asteroid belt. She cried out with a voice so strong it rearranged the surrounding rocks. My child, my beloved, please cease. We are the only two left.
He hissed through the void, then took shape as a sulfuric cloud. He dissolved a thousand asteroids. His supporters prayed; they made war on their worlds, destroying all creation. Their hateful prayers expanded him, exciting his molecules towards further chaos. He spoke like a supernova. I will never forgive.
Her guilt overwhelmed her; she had no innocence here. She had not saved him from his siblings. But she must try reason. Let us work together. Let us rebuild.
He broke the atomic bonds where she hid. The asteroids exploded. He chased and she fled again, her heart heavy with what they’d done. Four thousand solar systems died that day, vaporized in their wake. Ten trillion voices cried out their deaths and vanished. The loss wrecked Ammuya’s heart. But when she finally escaped into the heart of a neutron star, she grieved more for her child, whom she’d birthed and nurtured. Her monster, whom she loved.
The star protected her while she wept. Her tears seeded life on a million new planets. Over time these tears would evolve, each to their own dead end—as bacteria exposed to radiation, or as advanced life forms that poisoned their planet. There was no telling which seeds would sprout or how long they would last, but they were born of her misery and destined to tragedy.
• • • •
When she had grieved long enough to regain control, she had no solution. Her shields could not withstand the monster; her useless lasso was destroyed. She had only one desperate idea.
She made a new shield. Instead of black-hole negation, she crafted with bright starlight. She persuaded the light to align itself; she taught each uncertain quark where it was and how fast it was moving. Her shield became a shining raiment befitting the queen of the universe. Ammuya transformed to a mother eagle-kin with golden wings like an angel. She clad herself in the translucent garb, which shaped to her body, and hid it with starry armor.
But the garb was a distraction. She built her deepest shield with a thought. Then she called out. My child. Come to me.
The expanding edges of the universe paused with her plea. The monster heard, as she knew he would. He charged from three galaxies away, through their ravaged stars and planetary debris. A serpent now, his simplest form—a mouth to devour all things.
Ammuya shone from within her neutron star. She called to the monster, radiating her words through the electromagnetic spectrum. My child, I failed you.
He reared to strike. His scales emitted gamma rays; his presence decayed all things. When he unhinged his jaw, his mouth spewed the wreckage of planets. Ammuya held up one talon to draw his attention. She said, I give myself to you.
Her armor fell like meteorites. Light dispersed into the vacuum. She, the monster’s mother, stood nearly naked before him.
The monster bit her unprotected face. Poison raced through her body. Ammuya shrieked and crumpled; her scream altered evolution on a thousand nearby planets. The monster shredded her wings, scattering her into photons. With a howl, he reached her true shield: the one she had built to destroy them both.
He broke her.
She said, I love you.
She flared like a supernova. Her shield ignited; a shield he could never shatter. She transformed his power and amplified back at him. She immersed him in love. He could not stop it; he could not reject nor defy it.
With an injured howl, he spasmed into blackness. He writhed, rending the galaxy into antimatter; he chain-reacted until he could explode no more. He transformed into an ever-shifting fractal being, composed of every intelligence in the galaxy. He could not see himself without seeing his mother; he could not harm anyone without being loved.
He wept for his crimes, for his siblings, for his dying mother.
I am sorry, he said plainly. I could not understand.
I know, she said, because we are the same. I am a monster, too. We are both divine monsters.
What happens now? he asked. I cannot help but love what I see. How do I keep it from hurting me?
Ammuya had little time before her rupture. She shrank into herself, deleting her particles until nothing remained. It will always hurt, she replied.
He shimmered his confusion. I am wiser now. How do I atone?
Love them, she said, echoing with starlight.
His frequencies harmonized with hers. She superimposed herself with her child in a quantum state. For a moment they occupied two places at once, yet remained the same being. As they had always been—as all existence is one.
She collapsed and died. With a bang, she gave her child a new universe.
©2018 by Vylar Kaftan. | Art © 2018 by Galen Dara.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Vylar Kaftan won a Nebula for her alternate history novella “The Weight of the Sunrise.” Her new novella “Her Silhouette, Drawn in Water” is forthcoming from Tor Books in 2019. She’s published about 40 short stories in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, and other places. Her Nebula-nominated story, “I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno” launched Lightspeed.
To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight
Harry and Marlowe and the Secret of Ahomana
Carrie Vaughn | 10,000 words
Wine-dark sea? No, the water was black as tar when the Kestrel crashed into it.
The storm came up so suddenly, they might have hit a wall. It proved too massive for the airship to try to fly around, or over—it could only ascend so high, and the storm reached higher. They stayed aloft as long they could with a torn bladder and damaged engine, searching for some spit of sand to alight on. The lightning seemed to flash green around them. They jettisoned all the ballast well before they finally hit the water. But they managed to reach that spit of sand.
