Lightspeed Magazine Issue 53 Read online

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Issue 53, October 2014

  FROM THE EDITOR

  Editorial, October 2014

  SCIENCE FICTION

  Dust

  Daniel José Older

  Scarey Rose in Deep History

  Rebecca Ore

  Jupiter Wrestlerama

  Marie Vibbert

  The Puzzle

  Zoran Živković

  FANTASY

  Water Off a Black Dog’s Back

  Kelly Link

  The Herd

  Steve Hockensmith

  The Biography of a Bouncing Boy Terror!

  Ysabeau S. Wilce

  The Quality of Descent

  Megan Kurashige

  NOVELLA

  Jesus and the Eightfold Path

  Lavie Tidhar

  NOVEL EXCERPTS

  Wild Cards: Lowball

  Carrie Vaughn

  The Doubt Factory

  Paolo Bacigalupi

  Ancillary Sword

  Ann Leckie

  NONFICTION

  Interview: James S.A. Corey

  The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy

  Interview: Lawrence Krauss

  The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy

  Artist Gallery

  Rovina Cai

  Artist Spotlight: Rovina Cai

  Henry Lien

  AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS

  Daniel José Older

  Rebecca Ore

  Marie Vibbert

  Zoran Živković

  Kelly Link

  Steve Hockensmith

  Ysabeau S. Wilce

  Megan Kurashige

  Lavie Tidhar

  MISCELLANY

  Coming Attractions

  Stay Connected

  Subscriptions & Ebooks

  About the Editor

  © 2014 Lightspeed Magazine

  Cover Art by Rovina Cai

  Ebook Design by John Joseph Adams

  www.lightspeedmagazine.com

  FROM THE EDITOR

  Editorial, October 2014

  John Joseph Adams

  Welcome to issue fifty-three of Lightspeed!

  In case you missed the news last month: Lightspeed won a Hugo! You can check out the September editorial for details about that. But the short version is: We’ve been nominated four years in a row for Best Semiprozine, and this year we won! Huzzah! It’s all very exciting and we’re super proud to be part of the glorious history of the Hugos. And it just seems really appropriate for a magazine called Lightspeed to win a rocket-shaped award, doesn’t it?

  • • • •

  In other happy news, our sister magazine Nightmare is now available as a subscription via Amazon.com! The Kindle Periodicals division has been closed to new magazines for quite a while now (and has been since before Nightmare launched), but by employing some witchcraft we were able to get the doors unlocked just long enough for us to slip into the castle. Amazon subscriptions are billed monthly, at $1.99 per issue, and are available now. To learn more, please visit nightmare-magazine.com/subscribe.

  Speaking of subscriptions, we’ve also made a change to the way our lightspeedmagazine.com ebookstore subscriptions work. We’re discontinuing the bill-you-every-month subscription option in favor of a more traditional type of magazine subscription; now when you subscribe, you’ll sign up for a six- ($17.94), twelve- ($35.88), or twenty-four- ($71.76) month subscription and then will only be billed once per subscription term. This change is going to make it a lot easier for us to process subscriptions and should help improve our cash flow, which of course we’ll use to make Lightspeed even more awesome. If you’re a current subscriber, you don’t need to do anything; when your current subscription runs out, we’ll just send you an email to remind you to renew and then you’ll be presented with the new subscription options at that time.

  To learn more about these and our other subscription options, please visit lightspeedmagazine.com/subscribe.

  • • • •

  In anthology news, just a reminder that the latest installment of The Apocalypse Triptych — the apocalyptic anthology series I’m co-editing with Hugh Howey — is now available. The new volume, The End is Now, focuses on life during the apocalypse. The first volume, The End is Nigh (about life before the apocalypse) is also available. If you’d like a preview of the new anthology, you’re in luck: You can read Tananarive Due’s The End is Now story in Lightspeed’s September issue. Pop over to johnjosephadams.com/apocalypse-triptych for more information about the book and/or to read more free samples from the anthology.

  • • • •

  This month also marks the publication of our other two special issues.

  Over at Nightmare, we’re presenting Women Destroy Horror!, our special double-issue celebration of women writing and editing horror. Guest editor Ellen Datlow has selected original fiction from Gemma Files (“This Is Not for You”), Livia Llewellyn (“It Feels Better Biting Down”), Pat Cadigan (“Unfair Exchange”), Katherine Crighton (“The Inside and the Outside”), and Catherine MacLeod (“Sideshow”). We’re also sharing reprints by Joyce Carol Oates (“Martyrdom”), Tanith Lee (“Black and White Sky”), and A.R. Morlan (“… Warmer”).

  Our WDH nonfiction editor, Lisa Morton, has a line-up of terrific pieces — a feature interview with American Horror Story’s producer Jessica Sharzer; a roundtable interview with acclaimed writers Linda Addison, Kate Jonez, Helen Marshall, and Rena Mason; a feature interview with award-winning author Joyce Carol Oates; and insightful essays from Maria Alexander, Lucy A. Snyder, and Chesya Burke.

  Over at Fantasy Magazine, we’re presenting Women Destroy Fantasy!, our special double-issue celebration of women writing and editing fantasy. The guest editor for this volume is long-time Fantasy editor Cat Rambo, and she’s selected original fiction from Julia August (“Drowning in the Sky”), H.E. Roulo (“Making the Cut”), Kate Hall (“The Scrimshaw and the Scream”), and T. Kingfisher (“The Dryad’s Shoe”). Plus we’ll have reprints (selected by none other than Terri Windling!) from Delia Sherman (“Miss Carstairs and the Merman”), Carol Emshwiller (“The Abominable Child’s Tale”), Emma Bull (“Silver or Gold”), and Nalo Hopkinson (“The Glass Bottle Trick”).

  Likewise, our WDF nonfiction editor — our amazing Managing Editor, Wendy N. Wagner — has lined up some great work for us, including Kameron Hurley’s critical examination of epic fantasy; a roundtable interview with Carrie Vaughn and Kelley Armstrong in a frank discussion of women writing urban fantasy; a roundtable panel of RPG tie-in writers Margaret Weis, Marsheila Rockwell, Elaine Cunningham, and Erin M. Evans; and a massive discussion of women in fantasy illustration, featuring Julie Dillon, Galen Dara, Elizabeth Leggett, Julie Bell, Irene Gallo, Rebecca Guay, Lauren Panepinto, and Zoë Robinson. We’ve also got thought-provoking essays from Sofia Samatar and Kat Howard, and a reading guide from the contributors and friends of WDF.

  Both issues turned out really great, and we can’t wait to hear what everyone thinks about them. They’re available now in both ebook ($2.99) and trade paperback ($10.99). For more information about the issues, including where you can find them, visit our new Destroy-related website at DestroySF.com.

  • • • •

  With our announcements out of the way, here’s what we’ve got on tap this month:

  We have original science fiction by Daniel José Older (“Dust”) and Marie Vibbert (“Jupiter Wrestlerama”), along with SF reprints by Zoran Živković (“The Puzzle”) and Rebecca Ore (“Scarey Rose in Deep History”).

  Plus, we have original fantasy by Steve Hockensmith (“The Herd”) and Megan Kurashige (“The Quality of Descent”), and fantasy reprints by Kelly Link (“
Water Off a Black Dog’s Back”) and Ysabeau S. Wilce (“The Biography of a Bouncing Boy Terror!”).

  All that, and of course we also have our usual assortment of author and artist spotlights, along with feature interviews with bestselling author James S. A. Corey and physicist Lawrence Krauss.

  For our ebook readers, our ebook-exclusive novella reprint is “Jesus and the Eightfold Path” by Lavie Tidhar. For novel excerpts this month, we’ve got a sneak peek at Paolo Bacigalupi’s new novel, The Doubt Factory, along with an excerpt from Ancillary Sword — Ann Leckie’s sequel to her Nebula, Clarke, and Hugo award-winning debut novel Ancillary Justice. Plus, we have an excerpt from the new Wild Cards mosaic novel, Wild Cards: Lowball, from contributor Carrie Vaughn.

  Our issue this month is sponsored by our friends at Tor Books. This month, make sure to look for the aforementioned new Wild Cards book, Wild Cards: Lowball, edited by George R.R. Martin and Melinda Snodgrass. Learn more at Tor-Forge.com.

  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 series editor of Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He is also the bestselling editor of many other anthologies, such as The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, Armored, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, and The Living Dead. New projects coming out in 2014 and 2015 include: Help Fund My Robot Army!!! & Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects, Robot Uprisings, Dead Man’s Hand, Operation Arcana, Wastelands 2, 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 winner of the Hugo Award (for which he has been nominated eight times) and is a six-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.

  SCIENCE FICTION

  Dust

  Daniel José Older

  Very late at night, when the buzz of drill dozers has died out, I can hear her breathing. I know that sounds crazy. I don’t care.

  Tonight, I have to concentrate extra hard because there’s a man lying beside me; he’s snoring with the contented abandon of the well-fucked and all that panting has heavied up the air in my quarters. Still, I can hear her, hear her like she’s right behind my ear or curled up inside my heart. She’s not of course. If anything, I’m curled up in hers.

  But then again, her dust covers everything, all of us. It coats the inner walls of this station even though it’s airtight. It coats my inner walls. It’s reddish and probably lethal, but who knows? We’ve never seen anything like it before.

  The man beside me is Arkex. He is just another dustfucker amongst many; he mans the drill. Today I’m a man too — very much so it turns out — and I was surprised because I’d always taken Arkex for straight. I don’t bother hiding my stares when his muscles gleam in the foul glare of our excavation lights. He never looked back, though, not on my man days, not on my woman days, and I gave up noticing. But tonight he showed up, appeared at my door without a word, just a smile softer than any I’d seen him wear before. Before, his only smiles fought off the impossible monotony of the ‘stroid mines or spilled sloppily out at bad jokes over Vanguard at the Rustvine. This one comes from deeper in him: Comely, it requests permission to be held.

  I considered for a few moments, took my time. In these thick seconds, he maybe thought back on the times he’d snickered with the others. The jokes about me I’m sure I’d rather not know, the ones I can see from across the bar in sidewise glances, suppressed laughs. On the days I wake up a woman, Arkex’s sneer thickens. We’re all hidden beneath layers of protective gear out there in the caves, just thick genderless grunts, hard at work and always on the brink of death. Still, word gets out what body I’ve woken to, idiocy ensues.

  Tonight, his shoulders hunched, his eyes ask forgiveness. I scowled, took the fullness of him: a tight shirt, once white, now dust red, and those big yellow shield pants, all laden with pouches and rope. Skin red like mine. I stepped to the side and motioned him in with my chin.

  It’s not like he’s the first. Usually, I turn them away. They are curious, hungry for a story to yap out at Rustvine, and suddenly meek. The handful I’ve let in, their vulnerability radiated past the layers of dust and couldn’t be faked.

  It doesn’t matter to me: their soft smiles and whispered promises in the thick of the heat. They always fall asleep and then I lie there, tuning out their snores so I can hear her breath; trying to match mine with hers. Silently, impossible like love, I feel it inside me. And tonight, tonight, for no reason I can discern and for just a few perfect, rockstar seconds, I catch hold and we do breathe as one, the asteroid and I, taking in the immensity of space. In the moment between, when the air lingers inside, I ask it to shift course. I don’t ask, I plead. Because time is running out. Swerve, goes my prayer. One word: swerve. Because a full turn just seems like too much to ask. A U-turn? Come now: These are celestial bodies, not space ships. So, Swerve, I whisper silently. And when we exhale, together, we release that tiny prayer and mountains and mountains of dust.

  • • • •

  A few hours later, I’m bleary eyed and raw at the Rustvine. I’d passed out to the lullaby of the asteroid’s susurrations and woke up with wet pebbles in my head. Too much Vanguard. Still, something had happened. It’s nothing I could explain to anyone, not without getting thrown in the brig and losing my hard-earned Chief Engineer position. But I know it was real.

  Slid my hand beneath the sheets between my own legs and I’d switched again; soft folds where last night was a full throbbing dick, put to good use, too. It’s happening more and more these days. I linger. A few tasty ghosts of last night at my fingertips: Arkex beneath me, behind me, his hands on my shoulders, mine on his. I wondered if he’d grasp my womanbody with the same savage tenderness. Would he be too gentle? Not interested at all? I leaned over him, my fingers still rolling circles between my legs, but then the gnawing sense of somewhere to be surfaced, overtook everything. The Triumvirate. Their star glider was probably already docked in the hangar, their irritating little envoy slinking his way along our dust-covered corridors to the Rustvine.

  I disentangled from the sheets. All my shield pants and dress shirts lay crumpled in the bin. All that was left was this stupid skirt that I only have for stupid parties I show up to uninvited. Absurd. But I threw it on, laced up my caving boots beneath it and pulled on an old Sour Kings t-shirt. Glanced in the mirror, ignored the feeling that it wasn’t quite me looking back and then nudged Arkex with a steel-tipped toe.

  “Ay. Got places to be. Find your way out, eh.”

  Arkex had mumbled a curse, not even registering I was now a woman, maybe not caring, and turned over. The sheets slipped from his body; the redness even tinged his chest. I poured the dregs of yesterday’s coffee into a stained paper cup and shambled down the corridors.

  • • • •

  At the far end of the Rustvine, the more ornery dustfuckers trade grimaces and slurp down Vanguard shots. A whispered debate rages, you can see it play out in those tiny face flinches. Everyone knows impact is only a matter of hours now; everyone knows the galaxy may be about to witness the most colossal suicide mission of all time. Discontent catches slow fire, thickens every day.

  Arkex is among them now, having risen from his satisfied stupor, and so is Zan, one of the few female squad leaders. From their scowls and studious refusal to even glance my way, I know some foul fuckery is afoot.

  They say the best cure for Vanguard pebble brain is Vanguard, so I order my second shot and turn back to the awkward little man sitting across from me.

  “Jax,” Dravish says, glaring at me. “Are you even paying attention?”

  “His Holiness the Hierophant,” I say, “Minister of the Noble Triumvir
ate, who you represent most humbly, wants an update on our trajectory, delicately reminds the crew of asteroid Post 7Quad9 that the destruction of the asteroid and the post along with it is on the pulldown menu of possibilities if Earth remains at risk.”

  Dravish nods, trying to affect a meaningful glare but only getting a half-smirk peeking out from somewhere beneath his handlebar mustache. “All eyes are on you, Jax. The universe is watching.”

  “Even though,” I add unnecessarily, “no one lives on Earth any more. Are you enjoying your stay at our lovely facility?”

  He’s a small man with alarmingly long fingers and a tendency to call attention to them by rubbing his hands together like a plotting marsupial. “I don’t like being without my jag pistons. The Barons have spies everywhere.”

  I shrug. There’s enough firepower and political intrigue focused on this one hurling rock to destroy several galaxies, so I instituted a strict no firearms policy from the get-go. Anyway, it makes bar fights more fun. “It just means you have to be more creative when you kill people, Dravish. I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

  Dravish taps his steel cane on the tiled floor and snorts.

  I have more important things to consider than the Hierophant and his passive aggressive secretaries. The dustfuckers have stopped consorting and spread out across the room; more trouble. Beyond all that, I still carry the memory of that perfect clicking into place earlier, when our breathing became one.

  “There’s something else, Jax.” Annoyed that I’m not looking at him, Dravish fiddles his fingers faster against themselves. A murmur ripples through the Rustvine; someone unusual has just entered and the denizens accumulate to catch a glimpse.

  My shot arrives. “What?” I throw it back.