Concerto For Wartime - Lightspeed Magazine

The magician raises his wand. Initially, this commission seemed simple. One large country invading a much smaller one, a clear case of aggressor and victim—but nothing is ever so straightforward.

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If a Discarded God Can Change, So Can I - Lightspeed Magazine

Green Plumed Orbital Line A; viridis metamorphos A Common sighting; Flies along the forty-fifth latitude every 12 minutes Traveler’s addendum: Last functional line along a northern latitude; southern ...

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The Punishing Animal - Lightspeed Magazine

Son He hates the birds. There are two, a breeding pair. Their eyes are red as devils’. On land they’re stupid, little feet pushed so far back on their bodies that they can’t escape by running. Yet the...

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FETSPACE - Lightspeed Magazine

LOGIN CREATE ACCOUNT username: squirglover46 password: **************** for security reasons your password must contain minimum 1 number, 1 diacritic, 1 universal babelkey and at least 8 distinct phon...

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The Assumption of Maria - Lightspeed Magazine

Maria Haddid looked like she was screaming. I’ve heard singers say that’s all singing is deep down, but if you’ve seen enough screams you won’t often get them mixed up. The faithful gathered around ...

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Hungry Like The - Lightspeed Magazine

There’s a wolf where my brother used to be, a beast absolutely hellbent on ruining my life. He plunges his broad snoot into the Wednesday night spaghetti, and neither Mom nor Dad cares when half the b...

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Honey, We Bought an AI Story — Bona Books

Bona Books share a hard-learned lesson: we accidentally bought AI-generated fiction. This deep dive into our experience with submission fraud covers the "red flags" we missed, the toll it took on our ...

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You, Me, Us - Lightspeed Magazine

You know you are fucked when you see fragments of the broken radio on the floor. Your damaged ship lay nose caked into the sand, and coupled with your sprained ankle that hums an excruciating pain, an...

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Waru Waru - Lightspeed Magazine

Abuelita has been feeding me her memories. Yesterday, it was the time she trudged up the mountain carrying a basketful of offerings for Pachamama (flowers, incense, a llama sculpted out of animal fat ...

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Ash-Shūrā; or, A Book, a Bowl, a Bag of Coins - Lightspeed Magazine

There once lived a boy who paid for a fortune. Nassim wore carob hair and eyes severe like cardamom. He spent his days scouring the souk for unique trinkets he liked to collect or counting the uneven ...

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The Sharing of Some Familiar Song - Lightspeed Magazine

The creatures who shared your art with us had to explain many things to make it minimally comprehensible. This by itself made sense. You are who and what you are, and we are who and what we are, and t...

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I Cut Off a Monster’s Arm. AITA? - Lightspeed Magazine

Look, it’s bad enough that my wife gets cat-called in the street and flashed on the train. There’s a lot of sickos out there who get their jollies by harassing women, and usually I try to shut them do...

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The Overview Initiative - Lightspeed Magazine

We’ll skip ahead. Say eight minutes in, so I’m not wasting your time. You’re in your chair, strapped tight, taking around eight Gs. Like this, they wouldn’t even feel that bad, all the force coming fr...

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An Oral History of the Schooner Key Invasion - Lightspeed Magazine

When you look out from the garage doors of the corrugated steel warehouse where the Fort Springwell Community College soccer team made their heroic stand against the forces of darkness, the view at fi...

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Memeostasis - Lightspeed Magazine

“They farm starlight.” “Bullshit.” “Okay, they’re going to farm starlight. For now they’re running fusion rigs. But that’s not their long-term plan.” “No one in the sunforsaken Oort has a long-term...

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The Best of Intentions - Lightspeed Magazine

She assures them, again and again, that she acted under the best—the very best—of intentions. Oh, yes, she can be a bit dramatic at times—she won’t deny that. And she was hurt—very hurt—by that mess w...

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Ghost in the Tank - Lightspeed Magazine

The first time you killed me, I cried like a baby. Stupid, stupid, to cry over something make-believe—stupid and ugly and pathetic, too, when already the only thing I wanted in the world was for you ...

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Here are the new covers and guest editors for the 2026 Best American Series.

For decades, Mariner Books has stewarded The The Best American Series®, a literary institution that began in 1915 with Best American Short Stories, to your bookshelves. But just in case you’re stum…

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The Last Season of Your Life - Lightspeed Magazine

On a wooded hillside outside Pittsburgh, where the rivers braid together and the bridges flash yellow in the sun, there stands an old private school no one ever remembers enrolling in. Ivy grips its c...

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The Test of Time - Lightspeed Magazine

Advanced Temporal Disruption Timed Midterm Instructions: Time Allotted: 130 minutes No Breaks Allowed No Outside Devices Allowed

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Ten Unsent Letters to the Dark Lord - Lightspeed Magazine

1. I’m sorry, my lord. 2. I miss the sound of your voice, deep enough to shake the mountain fortress’s stones. I miss feeling it rumble in the soles of my feet. I miss the glow of your eyes while you...

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The Stars Look Away From This Vessel - Lightspeed Magazine

Draw a rectangular shape. Put a cylinder around it. Add a few small rectangles to any lines, such that they straddle them. At least one on the rectangle, and another on the cylinder. These are airlock...

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The Star Where We Meet - Lightspeed Magazine

The most surprising thing about my journey (well, the first most surprising thing) is that the dream I experienced while traveling lasted a thousand years, a single dream stretching all the way to the...

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The Aerialist - Lightspeed Magazine

The typewriter proved, at first glance, to be a poor investment for a daring aerial escape. Kallista had been drawn to the typewriter from the moment she viewed it languishing in a Museum of Curioddit...

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Sarah’s Laugh - Lightspeed Magazine

Everyone knows the Walls around the cities fell. What some people don’t remember is that the first one fell because of a laugh. It sounded like a ringing bell. Not like it came out of a baby at all. T...

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The Knacker Man - Lightspeed Magazine

A year of living in the ground had not accustomed Moyer to the smell. He wondered how the French, who’d been at this business so much longer, could stand it. But if the officers who had trained his un...

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Time Management - Lightspeed Magazine

On the morning Gwen woke with the ability to manipulate time, it was already too late. She didn’t immediately realize she could stretch or compress time—that would come later. At first, all she knew w...

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