LIGHTSPEED is an online 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 LIGHTSPEED's 116th issue! This month, both our SF originals wrestle with alternate realities. In "The Men Who Change the World," writer Christopher East creat...

**The Explosive Conclusion to Nexus and CruxWinner of the Philip K. Dick Award**Global unrest spreads through the US, China, and beyond. Secrets and lies set off shockwaves of anger, rippling from mind to mind. Riot police battle neurally-linked protestors. Armies are mobilized. Political orders fall. Nexus-driven revolution is in here.Against this backdrop, a new breed of post-human children are growing into their powers. And a once-dead scientist...

LIGHTSPEED is an online 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 LIGHTSPEED's 112th issue! This month's cover art is from Galen Dara. It's illustrating a new fantasy short by Brooke Bolander, "A Bird, a Song, a Revolution,"...

Climate change. Finite fossil fuels. Fresh water depletion. Rising commodity prices. Ocean acidification. Overpopulation. Deforestation. Feeding the world’s billions. We’re beset by an array of natural resource and environmental challenges. They pose a tremendous risk to human prosperity, to world peace, and to the planet itself. Yet, if we act, these problems are addressable. Throughout history we’ve overcome similar problems, but only when we’ve focused our energies on innovation. For th...

“Nexus is the most brilliant hard SF thriller I’ve read in years. It’s smart, it’s gripping, and it describes a chilling reality that is all-too-plausible… Ramez Naam is a name to watch for.” —Brenda Cooper, author of The Silver Ship and the Sea and The Creative FireMankind gets an upgradeIn the near future, the nano-drug Nexus can link mind to mind. There are some who want to improve it. There are some who want to eradicate it. And there are others who ju...

Finalist for the 2014 Prometheus Award.Six months have passed since the release of Nexus 5. The world is a different, more dangerous place.In the United States, the terrorists—or freedom fighters—of the Post-Human Liberation Front use Nexus to turn men and women into human time bombs aimed at the President and his allies. In Washington DC, a government scientist, secretly addicted to Nexus, uncovers more than he wants to know about the forces behind the ass...

“Halfway Human is a first novel that should help establish its author as a major new voice in science fiction.”—New York Review of Science Fiction“Beauty, pain, wit, and wisdom all suffuse this powerful novel, as it uses imagined futures to reveal our own world in starkest clarity...and yes, with a whisper of hope.” —LocusTedla is a 'bland,' an asexual class of people that exist only to serve their fellow beings.Val is an expert on alien cultures but has never seen ...

Corrigan Bain can see the future… but only about five seconds of it, and only what’s in front of him. He also can’t really control it, and on bad days is pretty positive he’s losing his mind. Still, whether it’s a gift or a curse, Corrigan uses his ability to help people when he can.But when FBI agent Maggie Trent asks for help on a case, Corrigan’s tenuous grip on reality is shaken. She’s got some dead college students whose deaths aren’t actually accidental, but the only person w...

When Thomas ‘Only’ Atkins signed up to fight for King and Country, half the boys he grew up with ended up fighting alongside him.The 13th Battalion of the Pennine Fusiliers were a ‘Pal’s Brigade,’ a whole town transposed to the Somme together to feed the Front’s relentless need for warm bodies. They also disappeared from the face of the Earth, on the 1st November 1916, along with nearly half a mile of mud and trenches, a Sopwith and a tank.Finding themselve...

This “interesting and excited to read” spiritual sequel to The Man in The High Castle focuses on the New Japanese Empire—from an acclaimed author and essayist (io9)Decades ago, Japan won the Second World War. Americans worship their infallible Emperor, and nobody believes that Japan’s conduct in the war was anything but exemplary. Nobody, that is, except the George Washingtons—a s...

Human cloning.Technology evolves faster than we do.The law shields us from our worst temptations.But the opportunity is there, dangling just out of reach—perfection and ascension… or delusion and destruction.In this collection of clone-themed stories, ten of today’s top speculative fiction writers explore our morality, our built-in societal restraints, and reflect upon our state of grace.Similar is not necessarily the same.“CLONES: The Antholog...

The Backworlds Books 1, 2, and 3: The Backworlds, Stopover at the Backworlds' Edge, and Boomtown Craze.In the far future, humanity settles the stars, bioengineering its descendants to survive in a harsh universe. This set contains the first 3 novels in the science fiction series, The Backworlds. A space opera adventure.The BackworldsAfter the war with the Foreworlders, Backworlders scatter across the remaining planets. Competition i...