Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 173 (October 2024) - Lightspeed Magazine, #173

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 issue 173 of LIGHTSPEED! We're starting off the beautiful month of October with a brand-new climate fiction short from Ai Jiang: "Ashes Like Tea Leaves, Lava Like Honey." Russell Nichols explores the technological future of agriculture in his mystery-SF short "Autonomy of a Murder." If you love robots, do not miss "The Life You've Given Me, Rusty, " a new flash piece from P.
A. Cornell. Our second piece of SF flash, "Hot Hearts" by Lyndsie Manusos, explores the emotional side of terraforming. Kenneth Schneyer returns to our pages with a dark fantasy short, "Winding Sheets, " which explores a mortician's transformative experience. Philip Gelatt & JT Petty team up to write about a future corporation marketing all things mythological in their darkly hilarious tale "Sully the God." Our flash includes "Zekelo's Barterhouse & Emporium" by Patrick Hurley (as magical as its title promises) and the story of a very unusual prosthetics project in Ashlee Lhamon's "Caesura."