Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 168 (May 2024): Lightspeed Magazine, #168

By John Joseph Adams

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 168 of LIGHTSPEED! One of the things speculative fiction does best is exploring different kinds of minds via the use of unusual story structures. Well, we're kicking off this issue with a powerful story that nearly breaks the very nature of reading! "We Will Teach You How To Read | We Will Teach You How To Read" by Caroline M. Yoachim tells the story of an alien culture in a fresh, exciting format. Luckily for you, we've included instructions to help you understand every fantastic page. We also have a new original science fiction story by Nisi Shawl: "Over a Long Time Ago," a dark tale of unhappy relationships and space exploration. Stephen Geigen-Miller also delves into space exploration in his flash piece "The Last Thing They See Is Laika." Ash Howell's story of gene manipulation "Chaos Theory" joins our flash SF. Ben Peek returns to the Ministry of Saturn in his dark fantasy story "Exit Interview." P H Lee explores the nature of tricksters in their alternate history tale "Richard Nixon and the Princess of Crows." We also have a flash story ("Done Deal") from Rory Harper, and another ("And the Dreams That You Dare to Dream") from Marissa Lingen. In nonfiction, we have a terrific array of book reviews, and of course, our spotlight interviewers have sat down with our authors to get more insight into their stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adamant Press
• Release date: Apr 30, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224989379

John Joseph Adams

John Joseph Adams is the series editor of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy and the editor of the Hugo Award–winning Lightspeed, and of more than forty anthologies, including Lost Worlds & Mythological Kingdoms, The Far Reaches, and Out There Screaming (coedited with Jordan Peele).

Book preview

Title_PageLightspeed Magazine

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Issue 168 (May 2024)

FROM THE EDITOR

Editorial, May 2024

SCIENCE FICTION

We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read

Caroline M. Yoachim

The Last Thing They See Is Laika

Stephen Geigen-Miller

Over a Long Time Ago

Nisi Shawl

Chaos Theory

Ash Howell

FANTASY

Done Deal

Rory Harper

Exit Interview

Ben Peek

And the Dreams That You Dare to Dream

Marissa Lingen

Richard Nixon and the Princess of the Crows

P H Lee

NONFICTION

Book Review: Ours by Phillip B. Williams

Aigner Loren Wilson

Book Review: Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil by Ananda Lima

Arley Sorg

Book Review: The Price of Redemption by Shawn Carpenter

Chris Kluwe

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS

Caroline M. Yoachim

Ben Peek

Nisi Shawl

Ash Howell

MISCELLANY

Coming Attractions, June 2024

Stay Connected

Subscriptions and Ebooks

Support Us on Patreon, or How to Become a Dragonrider or Space Wizard

About the Lightspeed Team

Also Edited by John Joseph Adams

© 2024 Lightspeed Magazine

Cover by Tithi Luadthong (aka 'Grandfailure') / Adobe Stock Images / original image modified by LIGHTSPEED staff

www.lightspeedmagazine.com

Published by Adamant Press

From_the_Editor

Editorial, May 2024

John Joseph Adams | 240 words

Welcome to issue 168 of Lightspeed Magazine!

One of the things speculative fiction does best is exploring different kinds of minds via the use of unusual story structures. Well, we’re kicking off this issue with a powerful story that nearly breaks the very nature of reading! We Will Teach You How To Read | We Will Teach You How To Read by Caroline M. Yoachim tells the story of an alien culture in a fresh, exciting format. Luckily for you, we’ve included instructions to help you understand every fantastic page.

We also have a new original science fiction story by Nisi Shawl: Over a Long Time Ago, a dark tale of unhappy relationships and space exploration. Stephen Geigen-Miller also delves into space exploration in his flash piece The Last Thing They See Is Laika. Ash Howell’s story of gene manipulation Chaos Theory joins our flash SF.

Ben Peek returns to the Ministry of Saturn in his dark fantasy story Exit Interview. P H Lee explores the nature of tricksters in their alternate history tale Richard Nixon and the Princess of Crows. We also have a flash story (Done Deal) from Rory Harper, and another (And the Dreams That You Dare to Dream) from Marissa Lingen.

In nonfiction, we have a terrific array of book reviews, and of course, our spotlight interviewers have sat down with our authors to get more insight into their stories.

Thanks for reading!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Joseph Adams is the series editor of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy and is the bestselling editor of more than forty anthologies, including Wastelands and The Living Dead. Recent anthologies include Out There Screaming (with Jordan Peele), The Far Reaches (from Amazon Original Stories), Lost Worlds & Mythological Kingdoms, A People’s Future of the United States, and the three volumes of The Dystopia Triptych. A two-time Hugo Award-winner, John is also the editor and publisher of Lightspeed and is the publisher of its sister-magazines, Fantasy and Nightmare. For five years, he ran the John Joseph Adams Books novel imprint for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Lately, he’s been working as an editor on various roleplaying game books for Kobold Press and Monte Cook Games and as a contributing game designer on books such as Tome of Heroes. Find him online at johnjosephadams.com and @johnjosephadams.

Science_FictionOut There Screaming edited by Jordan Peele

We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read

Caroline M. Yoachim | 2400 words

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Publisher’s Note: The formatting of this story is essential to the reading of it—and some of the formatting was impossible to render in ebook formats that use reflowable text (such as ePub and Kindle/mobi). To work around that, the story uses regular text whenever possible and has the text rendered as images when it is not. Many of the pages have only a small amount of text on them; this is intentional.

When you get to an image, your ebook reader or app should allow you to zoom in on it. Here are some tips for various devices/apps:

Kindle (app): Double-tap the image to zoom to 100% or pinch to zoom to 100% or beyond. To return the image to normal size and resume reading, tap the X in the upper right corner; if it isn’t there, tap the image first, then tap the X.

Kindle (device): Tap and hold the image, then tap the magnifying glass to increase the zoom to 100%; pinch to zoom beyond 100%. To return the image to normal size and resume reading, tap the image.

iBooks (app): Double-tap the image to zoom to 100%; once it's enlarged, you can pinch to zoom beyond 100%. To return the image to normal size and resume reading, tap the button in the upper right corner.

Google Play Books (app): Pinch to zoom to 100% or beyond. To return the image to normal size and resume reading, double-tap it.

If you are using an app or device not listed here, try using one of the above zoom methods; if none of those work, consult your app or device’s documentation.

We recommend reading the story in light mode (rather than dark mode), as the images all have a white background.

If you prefer, you can also read this story on our website, where it may be easier to read. You’ll find it at lightspeedmagazine.com/HowToRead.

Turn the page to begin.

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ITERATION

This is our story, simplified: Life. Loss. Transformation. Love. Death. Iteration.

Two columns of text. Right Column [The following text is repeated 5 times, with each line aligned with a line in the left column]: This is our story, simplified: Life. Loss. Transformation. Love. Death. Iteration. | Left Column: The first time you get our message, you only find one thread. It mimics your language in its simplest form, a single strand of words laid end to end. You will have to work hard if you want to understand us properly. You must learn to hold more than one thread of language simultaneously in your mind. Don’t worry, we will help you develop the skills you need. We will keep one simple thread unchanged. At first you will glance back and forth between these words and those. Your attention is a strange, skittering thing, but we believe you can learn with repetition. For you, we are relearning how to teach. You can hear musical chords of multiple notes, even two strands of differing lyrics for short stretches of song. It helps to memorize the words. Your mind has a strange divide between learning and knowing. Read both columns, please. Every time. Can you commit our simplified story to memory? See just the shape of the words and know what is there? You have so little bandwidth, there might not be any other way. It is not ideal but we are desperate. We will repeat to help you understand.

This is our story, simplified

We read three times in the course of our lifespan: once with our parents to learn the story, once alone to add to the threads, and once with our children to teach them. History, science, philosophy, art. All we have ever known is here, in one thread or another, trapped in what—for you—would be a cacophony of overlapping words.

Two columns of text. Right Column [The following text is repeated 5 times, with each line aligned with a line in the left column]: This is our story, simplified: Life. Loss. Transformation. Love. Death. Iteration. | Left Column: If both sides are simple, can you do it? A series of moments. The passing of parents. From reader to writer. A new generation. To persist when we’re gone. Our story continues. We sense your struggle, it is still too much. Have you memorized our story, simplified? Can you hear it in your head? You are such strange creatures to have two eyes and yet to focus on only one thing at a time. You can’t read the words on the other side of the page so you have to simply know them. Recognize them from the shape of the lines. Sound would be easier, yes—you make far better use of your ears as independent sensory organs than you do your eyes. But we are determined to teach you to read. Simpler still, simpler still. Can you at least hold two identical lines in your head? This is our story, simplified: Life. Loss. Transformation. Love. Death. Iteration. Feel the doubling of it, hear it in two different voices, somehow split your single focus of attention into two. Do you see how they match, how they resonate with each other? Go back up and look again. Try to capture the sensation of reading both at once, even for a moment.

Life

You are ancient, and we are fleeting. Such a luxury, to have so much time that you need not rush through everything at once. And yet you are so horribly inefficient, to not make more of the time you have. Think what you could do in a single lifetime if you could read more than one thread at once, think more thoughts at once, hold more experience in every moment.

Two columns of text. Right Column [The following text is repeated 5 times, with each line aligned with a line in the left column]: This is our story, simplified: Life. Loss. Transformation. Love. Death. Iteration. | Left Column: You have a game with pictures, trying to spot the differences, your eyes darting back and forth between them. It is harder with text. Don’t focus on individual words in each line, but look at the space between them. Know what both sides say. Hold it all in your head. Perhaps don’t even quite focus your vision. This is our story, with variations: Life. Loss. Inspiration. Love. Death. New translation. Go back and try to read it all at once—hold both versions in your head. We are only asking you to read two threads, though we ourselves can do thousands. Threads of love and hope, threads of fear and death. How many iterations will it take you? This is our story, terrified: Loss. Loss. Endless attrition. Death. Death. Desperation.

Loss

Our generations are synced in a way that yours are not. Iterations of our story are not staggered, not muddled like those songs that you call rounds. An entire generation reads together in a single voice, three times: as children with their parents, as adults alone, and as parents with their children.

But with each generation, the number of those who read our story is diminished. Many children refuse to learn their parents’ words. There are too many threads, they say. There are so few of us remaining. Soon, our story will be lost forever. We must find another way.

Two columns of text. Right Column [The following text is repeated 5 times, with each line aligned with a line in the left column]: This is our story, simplified: Life. Loss. Transformation. Love. Death. Iteration. | Left Column: We remember every word we read, on the first time, a perfect rendition. There are those among you with eidetic memory, but even that is fleeting, a lingering perception, rather than a lasting record. Insufficient. How much story can you hold, in a life as vast as yours? Even if some threads are lost in the translation, is it not better to have a legacy, an afterlife that echoes after we are gone? This is our story, simplified: Life. Loss. Transformation. Love. Death. Iteration. We double threads for emphasis, contrast death with life. When you recreate our story do not lose this information.

Transformation

Can you make the shift, from reader to writer, when you can only barely read? We fear that you do not grasp the urgency—you know our lives are short compared to yours but fail to comprehend the magnitude of the difference. We read three times in the