Review: Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 1
For those of you who missed it in Twitterspace last week, a new science-fiction-oriented magazine has hit the intertubes. It goes by the name Lightspeed, and its editor-in-chief John Joseph Adams describes what sets the magazine apart:
Lightspeed is an online magazine focusing exclusively on science fiction. Here you can expect to see all types of science fiction, from near-future, sociological soft sf, to far-future, star-spanning hard sf, and anything and everything in between. No subject will be considered off-limits, and we encourage our writers to take chances with their fiction and push the envelope.
Each month at Lightspeed, we bring you a mix of originals and reprints, and featuring a variety of authors—from the bestsellers and award-winners you already know to the best new voices you haven’t heard of yet. When you read Lightspeed, it is our hope that you’ll see where science fiction comes from, where it is now, and where it’s going.
I shelled out the $2.99 cover price for two reasons. First, I’m renewing my love affair with science fiction after years of fantasy reading and I loves me a a good SF short story. Second, they offer the magazine in a number of downloadable formats, one of which is ePub. That’s something I want to see more of, and so I chose to vote with my money.
The format of the magazine is an interesting mix of fiction and non-fiction writing. The features run in triplets throughout; first a short story, then an interview with the author about the short story, and finally a non-fiction essay that is somehow related to the short story. This pattern was repeated four times in the course of the issue and it made for an absorbing reading experience. I truly enjoyed delving more deeply into what the author was thinking and feeling when they crafted the story and the non-fiction essay was a perfect dessert to the main course. This format of small meals sustained me on a flight from Cleveland to Asheville, NC last week, and I was grateful for it.
I’m looking forward to seeing where the staff of the magazine takes it next, but I want to recommend it. If you like short fiction and also want to learn a little something at the same time, I highly recommend Lightspeed. Go buy a copy. You’ll thank yourself for it.
Bonus: Read John Joseph Adams Editorial or Vylar Kaftan’s “I’m Alive, I Love You, And I’ll See You In Reno” which is the most emotional SF read I’ve absorbed since Mur Lafferty’s “I Look Forward To Remembering You.”
[...] Carrie Vaughn. The magazine as a whole has been well received–see a review at Tor.com and the Secret Lair, even at SF Signal though the reviewer felt let down by the non-fiction; Locus doesn’t so [...]