Fear-inducing weaponry, steampunk cockroaches, bottled cities, martians, living books, wicked fathers, the dismantling of Earth, frogs and a telepathic dog…is this some SFF acid trip?

No! That, plus wicked fathers, alien invasion, economics, Lemony Snicket and so much more await you in this issue of Lightspeed Magazine.

Lightspeed Magazine is a monthly e-magazine featuring new and reprint science fiction and fantasy stories, author spotlights, feature interviews and exlusive novellas and book excerpts. I have only recently become aware of the way in which Lightspeed is structured and I have to admit that I very much enjoy what they do. John Joseph Adams gives a nice editorial intro for the month, the fantasy and science fiction stories are filed under their respective headings, and each author spotlight features interview questions geared specifically for the story in the issue. I love that. The stories printed in Lightspeed are released on their website throughout the month for you to read for free. It is quite an amazing concept really and I applaud them for that. By doing so they become this amazing repository for short fiction. Exclusive to each paid issue is a novella and a novel excerpt. By way of disclosure I generally don’t read novel excerpts unless I am planning on reading the novel and want an early sample but I think it is great that one is included as an extra every month for those who purchase the magazine.

The January 2013 issue was very, very good with a number of high-quality engaging short stories and a novella that has me wanting author Judith Berman to expand on the rest of the story. Maybe I can lead a Wool-style campaign to get her to write more. Hmmmm….

At any rate, I have structured this review to include a small quotation from each short story followed by my non-spoiler overview or impression of the story, the grade I give my experience of the story, and the date it will be released for you to view online. The stories that have a highlighted title are already available and you can travel directly to that story by clicking on said title. I strongly encourage you to take advantage of the stories that Lightspeed offers online. Yes, its like a free hit of crack. But getting high on story is a good thing, right kids?

Another disclaimer: I wrote each piece immediately after reading the story and before I read the author’s thoughts on their inspirations or what they were trying to achieve with the story. I have to say that I really enjoyed the Author Spotlights as they make me think even deeper about each story.

Ebook Exclusive Novella

“The Fear Gun” by Judith Berman is an adrenaline-pumping novella about life in a small town post-alien invasion. This gripping story of the aftermath of an alien invasion, one in which the war is not entirely won, had me glued to my seat. In the rural town of Lewisville, 15,000 people are doing their best to maintain order and safety. They are cut off from the world but have managed to salvage a degree of normalcy despite the occasional violent run-in with survivors of an alien shipwreck near their town. When the Army shows up to “restore order” and investigate the downed alien vessel, the result is anything but comforting for a people who have lived for a long time with a strong undercurrent of fear. Berman’s novella contains some familiar ideas that have been explored in print and on film but her use of multiple viewpoints from interesting characters and a high degree of tension that radiates off of the first person we meet in the story prevents it from feeling like more of the same. As I indicated in the introduction, this is a story that makes me understand what Hugh Howey’s initial readers must have felt when they first read “Wool” and realized how desperately they wanted to know the next chapter of the story. The story has a satisfying enough ending involving man’s best friend but that doesn’t stop me from wanting to get the next chapter, and the next. This novella alone is worth the $2.99 issue price, or the risk free 30 day trial subscription on Amazon dot com. (A) [Available exclusively in purchased ebook format]

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Short Stories: Fantasy

From that moment until the lunch hour and again from one o’clock until six, Olaf lived and breathed the exchange of foreign currencies. Under his practiced hands, dollars became pounds sterling; rubles became marks; pesos, kroner; yen, francs. Whatever exotic combination was called for, Olaf arranged with a smile, a kind word, and a question about the countries which minted the currencies he passed under the barred window. Over years, he had built nations in his mind; continents. Every country that existed, he could name, along with its particular flavor of money, its great sights and monuments, its national cuisine.

Daniel Abraham is an author who I have only sampled briefly and his short fantasy story, “The Cambist and Lord Iron: A Fairy Tale of Economics” is a reminder of why I need to read more. Olaf is a very unassuming character leading a quietly satisfying life, quiet that is until the day the despicable ruler Lord Iron decides that his amusement for the day will be the destruction of Olaf Neddelsohn. Olaf is given 24 hours to enact an impossible monetary exchange and in his desperation to hang on to his beloved career Olaf discovers the truth of value exchanged for value. In so doing Olaf sets a chain of events in motion that will not only affect his life but that of Lord Iron as well. This story is very good. I found myself silently cheering for Olaf as I read in the silence of a sleeping house. (A)
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She held him as long as she could in their house by the sea. But hands pressed to his skin, and stubborn lips and teeth refusing to shape words, could only hold him so long. His love was vast; it encompassed strangers dying in fields he’d never seen. He went to War. Her love was small, and encompassed only him. She stayed behind.

A.C. Wise’s “With Tales in Their Teeth, From the Mountain They Came” is a tale of words, or rather the pain caused from the lack of them and the healing that can come from surrounding oneself with words, written and more importantly spoken. When Alba’s lover dies in the war she leaves their home by the sea and goes up the mountain to the Library, becoming an Acolyte in service of the mysterious Librarians. Lost in the silence of the library the words pile up inside Alba until she can no longer contain them and as she speaks into the silence Alba, and the world around her, begins to transform. A beautiful story, celebrating words. (A-) [Available online 1/8]
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You’ve heard of bottled cities, no doubt—society writ miniscule and delicate beyond reason: toothpick spired towns, streets no thicker than thread, pin-prick faces of the citizenry peering from office windows smaller than sequins. Hustle, politics, fervor, struggle, capitulation, wrapped in a crystal firmament might reclaim the land, stoppered at the top to keep reality both in and out. Those microscopic lives, striking glass at the edge of things, believed themselves gigantic, their dilemmas universal.

“Daltharee” by Jeffrey Ford is a story of a bottled city and the scientist that created the diminutive humans who in turn created the city, housed in a milk bottle in a lab at some undisclosed location. Ford’s fantastical and whimsical tale begins with wry humor that initially masks the subtle shift to horror. You wouldn’t expect anything but absurdity from a story that contains the line “When I fart”, he said, “I set forth Armadas”, yet Ford surprises with his examination of the darker corners of mankind. I’ve read Ford before and he is a very skilled wordsmith. “Daltharee” contains imagination-stimulating ideas ultimately resulting in a story whose ending failed to satisfy my expectations. (C+) [Available online 1/15]
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My feet are scraped and bleeding, my slippers shredded and almost useless. The dress hangs in tatters around me. No longer white, it still bears the pearls along the bodice, and I hope I can keep them close and sell them in whatever town I find myself in.

Provided I find a town. Provided I ever leave these woods.

Kristine Kathyrn Rusch has for me become a name synonymous with good story telling. While the quality of any author’s work various from creation to creation I have yet to be disappointed with Rusch’s offerings and “Purity Test” is no exception. This short story, that feels as if it is nestled in the same woods in which a beauty slept and a girl with long hair was held captive, is the first fairy tale I’ve read from the author. It reminds me strongly of the work of Angela Carter in the Tales of the Bloody Chamber collection. “Purity Test” is woven from a tapestry of familiar stories, shot through with a thread of ever-darkening suspense that makes for a satisfying read. A rewarding story that satisfies while leaving the reader wanting more. (B+) [Available online 1/22]
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Short Stories: Science Fiction

Night creeps over the forest and the frogs begin their mating calls in earnest. The croaking rises to a din, and the kids pause and listen. The glorious stars emerge, and I’m not sure if it’s my imagination, but the frogs seem to plead to them, over and over again, “Save us, save us, save us!”

In Matthew Kressel’s “The Sound of Old Earth” we are introduced to Abner, one of the remaining hold outs on a decayed and dying Earth. Abner lives in a small wooded area behind a protective screen of his devising in an ancestral home listening to the frogs croak on the nearby pond, reliving memories from when Earth was a vibrant place. Most of Earth’s inhabitants have been transferred to New Earth, while some of the less fortunate live on corporate-owned orbital platforms. Abner wants nothing to do with New Earth and aches as he sees his children and grandchildren so easily abandon the home of mankind. Matthew Kressel’s short story visits the small tragedies and triumphs that make up a life and in the process presents a touching narrative on what it is that makes a home. (A-)
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There was a wagon with a broken axle, and two dead men lying beside a campfire. It looked like they’d been torn up by wolves, or maybe mountain lions, or some such creature. But inside the wagon he heard a little girl crying. He looked inside and she screamed, and she bit him–because like attracts like, I suppose, and the girl had a bad streak in her too. That’s shy he took her home with him.

“Addison Howell and the Clockroach” by Cherie Priest is a story told in three parts examining a local small-town legend of a rich and reportedly evil man who allegedly murdered his wife and adopted an equally evil girl, after which he constructed a demonic steam/coal-powered monstrosity and met an untimely demise. Or is it? The conceit of this steampunk campfire story is that it examines legend and folklore through three lenses and in so doing reveals truths of the nature of storytelling while also being a fascinating mystery in and of itself. Priest is in fine form here. This is my first experience reading her work in short form. I’m impressed. (B+) [Available online 1/8]
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What little I have, I have it because I make that my rule. I see everything coming, and I leave myself nowhere to run. I don’t anticipate running, but I’ve known people whose Lifelines turned out to be sociopaths. Or just everyday enemies.

I pray this one isn’t, but even an enemy would be something.

“Lifeline” by Jonathan Olfert takes place in a future that hints of collapse and an even greater divide between the haves and have-nots. In this future there is a mysterious pairing process that can be entered into, ran by a company called Lifeline, Inc. You are paired with your Lifeline through an unexplained process and the results of this connection can run a wide range from very good to very bad and everywhere in between. Olfert introduces us to Habiba who is waiting in a hole-in-the-wall tea shop to meet her Lifeline for the first time, a meeting that is brief yet consequential. “Lifeline” is the type of story that does not work for me. It is a tightly wound story that has you interested right from the beginning but leaves you with no payoff simply because it reads like the prologue of a novel and not enough like a self-contained story. At best it is the fragment of a larger story and its abrupt, telegraphed ending left me disappointed. I have not read anything by Olfert and were this an opening for a larger story I would still be reading, he gives good beginning. But the story is ultimately frustrating because an interesting story concept is left unexplained and unexplored. (D) [Available 1/15]
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In the month of Ind, when the flowers of the Jindal trees were in blossom and just beginning to scatter their petals on the ground like crimson rain, a messenger came to the court of the Child-Empress. He announced that a Hero had awakened in the valley of Jar.

Theodora Goss’ story “The Child-Empress of Mars” echoes with strains of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars with its mysterious Hero arriving in a cavern claiming to be from a place called Earth. Perhaps the easiest description of what this story is would be John Carter’s arrival as seen through the eyes of the Tharks, but that would be doing a disservice to the additional beauty that Goss brings to this idea. The reader is treated to the Hero through the eyes of the alien (by Earth standards) beings of this world as they set out to help him fulfill his quest. The Child-Empress and her court daily watch the ongoing progress of this quest through the eyes of an Observer sent along to record and transmit his life (an alien version of reality television?). Any familiarity with the normal course of this type of story is turned on its head near the end, allowing the reader to further experience the culture of this race that Goss has created. It is a very sweet story with visual imagery that for some reason called to mind scenes from Arabian Nights. One of the more interesting aspects of the story is the description of this culture from their own viewpoint and how they are able to see, through their advanced technology, the way in which the Hero sees them, which is utterly different. This was an interesting spin on a story I am very fond of. (B) [Available 1/22]
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Before I close I wanted to treat you to the full image of the cover art by Alexandra Knickel. Yet another thing I praise Lightspeed for is that they include an Artist Spotlight with the artist of the cover illustration in each issue featuring further hi-res examples of the artist’s work and a Q & A.

There are also two great long-form interviews in this issue, one with author Cory Doctorow and the other with author Daniel Handler (of Lemony Snicket fame).

This is my first read-through of an issue of Lightspeed Magazine. I bought my Kindle Fire HD in December in large part because I wanted to read magazines like Lightspeed more consistently in the format they were designed for. The layout and structure of the magazine is most impressive and if this month’s offerings are a hint of what is to come, 2013 is going to be filled with some great short story reading. The bar has been set high, I am excited to see what is to come.

Don’t forget that you can visit the Lightspeed website each week to get access to stories from that month’s issue as well as a large archive of cataloged fantasy and science fiction offerings, artist spotlights, and author interviews. It is a great resource for contemporary SFF short fiction.