Lightspeed Magazine, January 2012 (Lightspeed Magazine, #20)

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.

In our January 2012 issue—the first showcasing our new format, which incorporates our sister magazine Fantasy—we have original science fiction by Megan Arkenberg (“How Many Miles to Babylon?”) and Ken Liu (“The Five Elements of the Heart Mind”), plus SF reprints by Paul McAuley (“Gene Wars”) and Nancy Kress (“Always True to Thee, in My Fashion”).

Plus, we have original fantasy stories by Marissa Lingen (“On the Acquisition of Phoenix Eggs (Variant)”) and Sarah Monette (“Blue Lace Agate”), and fantasy reprints by M. Rickert (“You Have Never Been Here”) and Aimee Bender (“A State of Variance”).

All that plus feature interviews with bestselling author Neal Stephenson and award-winning author R. A. MacAvoy, and our usual assortment of author spotlights.

And, for our ebook readers, our ebook-exclusive novella this month is a tribute to a science fiction legend who recently passed away: We’ll be reprinting the Hugo Award-winning novella “Weyr Search” by Anne McCaffrey, the first in her iconic Dragonriders of Pern series, plus we’ll have a memorial by her son—and collaborator—Todd McCaffrey.