Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 176 (January 2025)

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 176 of LIGHTSPEED! Sometimes science fiction interrogates the far future of humanity, and sometimes it speaks to what might happen next week. Our original short stories this month straddle this divide. We kick off the month with "Tell Them a Story to Teach Them Kindness" by B. Pladek, which wrestles with the potential effects of generative AI on literature and education. It feels like it could have come out of tomorrow's news. Meanwhile, Filip Hajdar Drnovsek Zorko's new story, "Dyson Spheres of the Vaba Cluster," is about interstellar space exploration-still the stuff of the far future . . . for now. We also have two exciting new flash pieces: "The Exquisite Pull of Relentless Desire" from Will McMahon and "After the God Has Moved On" by Kate Elliott. For fantasy shorts, we have "Bone and Marrow, Woven Into Song" by Neon Yang, a story about the intersection of magic, technology, religion, and . . . fungi. Marika Bailey also brings us fiction about something you might associate with dinner: "Chickenfoot Soup." But this soup is a heady broth filled with magic and tough relationships-and a visit from Baba Yaga! We also have two riveting flash stories, including the thought-provoking "A Heap of Petrified Gods" by Adelehin Ijasan (a meditation on the immigrant experience) and Vijayalaxmi Samal's "I Eat the Sky For Us," an eloquent allegory about life with a harmful parent.