Lightspeed magazine issu.., p.1
Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 51, page 1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Issue 51, August 2014
FROM THE EDITOR
Editorial, August 2014
SCIENCE FICTION
Undermarket Data
An Owomoyela
Morning Child
Gardner Dozois
A Box, a Pocket, a Spaceman
E. Catherine Tobler
Traveller’s Rest
David I. Masson
FANTASY
State Change
Ken Liu
The Djinn Who Sought To Kill The Sun
Tahmeed Shafiq
The Grass Princess
Gwyneth Jones
A Meaningful Exchange
Kat Howard
NOVELLA
The Rule of Engagement
Sherwood Smith
NOVEL EXCERPTS
Echopraxia
Peter Watts
Clockwork Secrets: Heavy Fire
Dru Pagliassotti
NONFICTION
Interview: Christopher Moore
The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy
Interview: Elizabeth Bear
The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy
Artist Gallery
Vitaly Timkin
Artist Spotlight: Vitaly Timkin
Henry Lien
AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS
An Owomoyela
Gardner Dozois
E. Catherine Tobler
David I. Masson
Ken Liu
Tahmeed Shafiq
Gwyneth Jones
Kat Howard
Sherwood Smith
MISCELLANY
Coming Attractions
Stay Connected
Subscriptions & Ebooks
About the Editor
© 2014 Lightspeed Magazine
Cover Art by Vitaly Timkin
Ebook Design by John Joseph Adams
www.lightspeedmagazine.com
FROM THE EDITOR
Editorial, August 2014
John Joseph Adams
Welcome to issue fifty-one of Lightspeed!
Hugo voting closed last month, but awards season continues with the 2014 World Fantasy Award nominations. No Lightspeed or Nightmare stories made the ballot (nor anything from my anthologies), but yours truly was once again nominated in the “Special Award, Professional” category for my work editing anthologies and magazines. That marks the sixth time I’ve been nominated for the World Fantasy Award (three times each in this category and the anthology category). I’m honored to again be nominated but of course I also wish to congratulate the other nominees. You can see all of this year’s finalists at worldfantasy.org/awards.
In other awards news, the Shirley Jackson Awards were presented at Readercon in mid-July. As you may recall, Maria Dahvana Headley’s story from Lightspeed, “The Traditional,” was nominated, as was “57 Reasons for the Slate Quarry Suicides” by Sam J. Miller from our sister-magazine, Nightmare. We’re sad to report that Maria didn’t take home the prize, but we’re simultaneously thrilled to announce that Sam did. Thus “57 Reasons for the Slate Quarry Suicides” becomes Nightmare’s first award-winning story! Congrats to Sam, and to all of the other winners and nominees, of which you can see the full list at shirleyjacksonawards.org/award-winners.
• • • •
In case you missed it last month, my latest anthology, HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!! and Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects came out. It’s an anthology of science fiction/fantasy stories told in the form of fictional crowdfunding project pitches, using the components (and restrictions) of the format to tell the story. This includes but is not limited to: Project Goals, Rewards, User Comments, Project Updates, FAQs, and more. The idea is to replicate the feel of reading a crowdfunding pitch, so that even though the projects may be preposterous in the real world, they will feel like authentic crowdfunding projects as much as possible. The anthology is on sale now. To learn more, visit johnjosephadams.com/robot-army.
In other anthology news, the next installment of The Apocalypse Triptych—the apocalyptic anthology series I’m co-editing with Hugh Howey—comes out next month. The new volume, The End is Now, focuses on life during the apocalypse. The first volume, The End is Nigh (about life before the apocalypse) is on sale now. Pop over to johnjosephadams.com/apocalypse-triptych for more information.
• • • •
With our announcements out of the way, here’s what we’ve got on tap this month:
We have original science fiction by An Owomoyela (“Undermarket Data”) and E. Catherine Tobler (“A Box, a Pocket, a Spaceman”), along with SF reprints by Gardner Dozois (“Morning Child”) and David I. Masson (“Traveller’s Rest”).
Plus, we have original fantasy by Tahmeed Shafiq (“The Djinn Who Sought To Kill The Sun”) and Kat Howard (“Meaningful Exchange”), and fantasy reprints by Ken Liu (“State Change”) and Gwyneth Jones (“The Grass Princess”).
For our ebook readers, our ebook-exclusive novella is “Rule of Engagement,” by Sherwood Smith, and of course we have our usual assortment of author and artist spotlights, along with feature interviews with bestselling authors Christopher Moore and Elizabeth Bear. We’ve also got novel excerpts from Dru Pagliassotti (Clockwork Secrets) and Peter Watts (Echopraxia).
Our issue this month is sponsored by our friends at EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing. This month, look for the aforementioned Clockwork Secrets by Dru Pagliassotti. Learn more from EDGE at edgewebsite.com.
Well, that’s all there is to report this month. Thanks for reading!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Joseph Adams, in addition to serving as publisher and editor-in-chief of Lightspeed, is the series editor of Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He is also the bestselling editor of many other anthologies, such as The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, Armored, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, and The Living Dead. New projects coming out in 2014 and 2015 include: Help Fund My Robot Army!!! & Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects, Robot Uprisings, Dead Man’s Hand, Operation Arcana, Wastelands 2, and The Apocalypse Triptych: The End is Nigh, The End is Now, and The End Has Come. He has been nominated for eight Hugo Awards and six World Fantasy Awards, and he has been called “the reigning king of the anthology world” by Barnes & Noble. John is also the editor and publisher of Nightmare Magazine, and is a producer for Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Find him on Twitter @johnjosephadams.
SCIENCE FICTION
Undermarket Data
An Owomoyela
A drink arrived that Culin hadn’t ordered.
No one sent drinks to the crowded annex where Culin sat, crammed in with seven other people, all with contagion bands on their sleeves and matching tattoos on their arms. Sending drinks was an affectation Culin didn’t see much in the Dead Engine at all.
The bartender who’d brought it over—Nis with the slit nostrils, the only one who’d serve the contages with anything approaching civility—shrugged, pointed to a woman at the counter, and said “Don’t ask me.”
“I can’t accept this,” Culin said. The thumb glass was sweating in the muggy air, and Culin could smell it from where he sat. It smelled like spices, something organic, something expensive. Everyone in the annex was watching.
“It’s paid and she won’t take it back,” Nis said, and pushed the glass at Culin. Culin took it. Then, as Nis walked away, and before any of the other contages could make an offer or express interest or make a grab for it, Culin tipped it back into his mouth.
The drink was red and full-bodied and savory-sweet, with only the breath of the alcohol keeping it from feeling syrupy on his tongue. He wasn’t worried about being drugged. His armband marked him as too virulent to take advantage of, and there were cheaper ways to get at someone in his profession. When he lowered the glass he saw the woman who’d bought it already on her way out the door.
He jumped up, abandoning his own cheap distillate, but by the time he limped out of the door she’d already vanished into the spider’s-maze of alleyways. It was shitting down rain, most of it hitting the walls and the wires and the dishes with their antennas nosing toward the shreds of sky; a few lucky droplets managed a direct path down onto Culin’s neck and shoulders, while the rest slid down the buildings and into the gutters. Not many people wanted to be out on nights like this. Not many got a choice.
Culin sighed, and unclipped his gloves from his belt. There was no point in returning to the bar; Nis made it his business to know as little as possible, and no one else would touch the mystery. A red cordial for a red-banded contage, a disappearing woman—what good would come of wondering about it?
He pulled the gloves on and fastened the buckles around his wrists, setting the rubber snug against his palms. Then he took hold of the data line running up the side of the bar and climbed into the disused vertical avenues of the city.
• • • •
The white flag, stained grey from rain and city grime, called him halfway up a block of flats to a job. People like him didn’t have territories, but this—inconvenient from the streets and rooftops both—was as close as it came to his: the space where it was easier for those who preferred to move in three dimensions than two.
There was no ledge at the window, but good climbers never needed them. This window had a clothesline anchor, an outdated and rusting data satellite, a data network link, a lectric link, an illegal lectric link, and a caniste
No one answered for a minute or so, then a shadow came up to the window grime and slid the plastic away. With that gone, the shadow became a young woman, who blinked blearily at him and then settled her eyes, as though by natural magnetism, on his arm.
“LEMR. What do you need?” Culin said, and shifted. If he hooked his foot against the bolts of the hydroponics pot he could lean away from the window. Give her some contage-free space to breathe.
She blinked at the band, then swallowed and looked at his eyes. “Data’s out. I’m running security on Tii Market; I can’t go dry.”
Culin grunted. “How many others on security?”
“Not enough. People don’t feel safe anyway. Losing one set of eyes is going to keep people home.” She shook her head. “I just need data back.”
“Soon. Yeah.” Culin glanced behind her into the flat. It was spare, like he’d expect from someone her age, living alone; new monitors and cables and keyboards, like he’d expect from someone on the data lines for a living. “What do you pay in?”
“Name a vendor,” she said. “I’ll get you your worth.” Her look got sharp. “Minus the time you spend.”
Culin nodded, and turned to the data line. The woman pushed the dirty window plastic closed.
A few meters up the data line there was a patch of lectric tape where another LEMR had hacked onto the line and patched it up. He peeled the tape away, pulled a reader out of his pocket, hooked it up, and went to work.
• • • •
Nis didn’t bother asking for an order, most days. There were only so many drinks Culin could afford, and when he came in moving like all his muscles ached and looking like his mind was in the wires, that meant he was on a job, working rough, and unlikely to afford more than the drink which would be his rent for the annex stool. The stuff he was getting today was from Nis’ backroom still, with flecks of sediment drifting at the bottom.
Least, that was what he ordered. Nis arrived at his table with another thumb glass of something sweet and red, and it took Culin a moment to react.
“You drink it,” he said, and pushed himself up to limp into the main room.
The woman from the other day was at the counter. Tall, solid, and pale, she had slick brown hair just verging on black, and a face people would call handsome—but probably not where she could hear it. Her eyes were a thunderstorm green.
She also had a halo of empty seats around her. Culin was used to seeing those halos, but mostly around contages.
If there was one thing she wasn’t, it was a contage. Even this close she looked clean and not quite real. Real was soggy cigarette butts on a pavement which had started off grey and grimed its way to charcoal; it was the smell of people who only afforded full showers when it rained and the water discounts hit. Real was acne scars and loose skin from lean months; it was yellowing, uneven fingernails and sour breath. Real wasn’t her.
Which meant one of two things: She was fantastically sheltered, or fantastically augmented. And sheltered didn’t come down to the undermarket.
“So, sit down,” she said.
Culin shook his head. “They don’t like me on the stools here.”
“No, but they like me. So, sit down.”
She took a sip of her drink, and didn’t seem that concerned with whether he sat or not. The bartender at this end of the counter—a burly woman who looked like she’d put out her share of fights—was scrubbing out a pitcher and not-looking at them as hard as she could.
“I’m sorry I had to disappear on you last night,” the stranger said. “I got a call. Not that it helped; nothing’s panned out.”
She turned, and something glinted behind her pupil. Culin startled; he’d never seen an ocular camera, but he could guess his picture had just been snapped. And who the hell was she, coming down here with optic implants and talking to him like he should know what she was talking about?
“I think you have the wrong person.”
“I don’t think so.” The corner of her mouth tugged up into a smile. “Culin Wei, the hook-footed LEMR contage who spiders the walls and frequents the Dead Engine. How many of you can there be in a city?”
Not many. Culin still didn’t take the seat. “Why were you looking for me?”
“Because you’re good and you’re desperate and you know things I’m never going to know,” she answered. “And we can help each other.” She extended a hand. “Name’s Jace. I keep the peace, Upcity.”
Culin ignored the cold dread at that intro, and ignored the hand. “Helping Upcity cops doesn’t end well for us, most days.”
“This isn’t most days.” Her voice cooled, and the smile disappeared. So did the offered handshake. Now she was giving him the look that rats gave injured pigeons. “Today, I want to help you. I’m probably the only person in the city who does. And today if we don’t fix this thing, it’s both our necks. So sit down.”
He still didn’t sit down.
She watched him like she really did expect that he’d just soil the nest for her, then sighed. “Fine. This data thing. You’re on it?”
“Every LEMR in the city is probably on it,” Culin said.
“What makes you say that?”
He exhaled. “I traced the signal,” he said. “Checked thirty, thirty-five cables—copper, optic, market, slough.” Legal, illegal, he didn’t say. “Everyone’s calling LEMRs to get it fixed.”
“Must be keeping you in bread,” Jace said.
Culin shook his head. “I don’t know how to get it fixed.” Besides, they’d been calling; he hadn’t been answering. He’d been trying to work out what was wrong. He could show up and play the hero once he could actually fix things.
“You got a lead?” Jace asked.
Culin grunted.
Jace watched him, then rolled her eyes and growled. “Fine. Here’s what I know.” She flipped a smartscreen out onto the table, and Culin noticed without surprise that it was a model he’d never be able to afford. And, if he could afford it, it would get him killed for carrying it. “All your lines are being clogged with encrypted data. We can trace it back, but it seems to be originating everywhere. Sounds like a virus, but it doesn’t look like it’s transmitting itself, and of the people who are actually willing to let me lay hands on their screens, none of them seem infected with anything. Have you got anything more than that?”
Culin digested that. “You’re a tech?”
“Special investigator,” she said. “Data is kinda important to us in Upcity.”
She said that with a note of self-deprecation. It was the first thing that made him think they could do business. “You looked at the nodes yet?”
She blinked. “Nodes?”
He grunted again. “You don’t know nodes?”
“Tell me about them.”
“Where all the data goes,” Culin said. “Everyone connects to nodes, nodes connect to each other. They keep data on hand, too, in case your smartscreen gets nicked or busted. You want a picture of what’s going through the data, you go to the nodes. If they’ll talk to you.”
Jace gave him a sidelong grin. “It’s less distributed, down here,” she said. “Would have made my job easier if I’d known that.”
None of that was adding up. “Who sent you down and didn’t know that?” Culin asked. Upcity might be insular and arrogant, but he found it hard to believe they’d dispatch a special agent who didn’t know how the thing they were investigating worked.
And Jace wasn’t even subtle about dodging the question. She shrugged, stood away from the bar, and said “So, show me to a node.”
• • • •
The way to the closest node took them out of the undermarket and into the slough, where the previous day’s rain had pooled in oily lakes on the pavement. It was a shorter path on the ground than the walls, although left to his own devices, Culin would have taken the walls anyway. As it was, he limped in front of Jace, trying without success to avoid odd looks from anyone. He was a limping contage leading some Upcity clean; there was no way to avoid people’s attention.
