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.
Welcome to LIGHTSPEED's 114th issue! Christopher D. Park created this month's cover art to illustrate a new original fantasy story by Yoon Ha Lee. Want to find out just why this little monster is hanging out in a coffee shop? Read Lee's "The Second-Last Client" and see! Our other original fantasy short plunges into the cold coastal waters of the Orkney Islands as Melissa Marr sends us "Knee Deep in the Sea." We're also sharing fantasy reprints by Theodora Goss ("A Country Called Winter") and Ken Liu ("The Hidden Girl"). We return to Robot Country—or at least Dominica Phetteplace's Robot Country series—in "Her Appetite, His Heart," a story of one man's quest to make things right with his ex-girlfriend. Adam-Troy Castro also writes about love in his new short "Eros Pratfalled, or, Adrift in the Cosmos With Lasagna and Mary Steenburgen." We also have SF reprints by Matthew Bright ("The Concubine's Heart") and Genevieve Valentine ("Overburden"). All that, and of course we also have our usual assortment of author spotlights, along with our book and media review columns. Our feature interview is with Rivers Solomon. For our ebook readers, we also have an excerpt from Sonya Taaffe's new fiction collection, FORGET THE SLEEPLESS SHORES.
