Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 151 (December 2022)

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 151 of LIGHTSPEED! Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers: the US Postal Service doesn't have an official motto, but those words have been an unofficial one since they were engraved in the New York City's General Post Office Building over a century ago. This month's first SF short, "Last Stand of the E. 12th St. Pirates," by L.D. Lewis, shines a hard light on what postal deliveries will be like in the near future. A functional postal service is a critical component of city life, but so is transit. Rich Larson returns to our pages with a story about the future of car usage: "Deathmatch." Maybe riding the bus isn't so bad? Our SF flash story is "The Spread of Space and Endless Devastation" from Stewart C. Baker. We also have an SF reprint by Alex Irvine ("Pledge Day"). Our flash fantasy story is "To my daughter, in the dark of the moon" by P H Lee. Rati Mehrotra returns with a new fantasy short story full of ghosts, coffee shops, and skullduggery: "One Day in the Afterlife of Detective Roshni Chaddha." Aimee Ogden brings us a chilly tale of wolves and prophecy in her new short, "Mad Honey." Our fantasy reprint is by Nadine Tomlinson ("The Metamorphosis of Marie Martin"). Of course we have spotlight interviews with all our authors, and our book review team has been searching out the best reads to recommend. Plus, our ebook readers will enjoy an excerpt of White Horse by Erika T. Wurth.