Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 180 (May 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 180 of LIGHTSPEED! This issue is full of stories turning things on their heads. For example, one of our flash shorts, "Where Are They Now?" by Meg Elison, tells the story of touring the Wonka factory from the perspective of Augustus Gloop, and it's a wildly different experience than the original! In one of our longer fantasy works, Martin Cahill tells a story ("The Price of Manners") about a cursed tome with a legacy of death and destruction. But what if all that chaos is a big misunderstanding? Our fantasy fiction continues with a powerful secondary world fantasy: "Ninnagan Says Remember" by Jonathan Olfert, a story of both resistance and redemption. And we have a great flash story ("Shadows on the Pavement") from R. P. Sand. Our science fiction shorts include "Rthing It Up: An Oral History," Gene Doucette's all-too-human take on an alien invasion. In her story "Through the Machine," P.A. Cornell dives into the potential impact of AI on film. Given the state of our world today, both of these SF short stories are a little too plausible for comfort-and that's a great reason to read them both. We also have two terrific flash pieces: "The Temporal Displacement of the Graves" from Russell Nichols and "The Meaning We Seek" by Nancy Kress.