Status Updates From Lightspeed Magazine, March ...

Author Spotlight: Karen Fowler - "Lily Red" - put it into a bit of perspective and made me like it more.

Author Spotlight: Sarena Ulibarri - "The Bolt Tightener" - interesting, but no new ways of viewing the story.

Author Spotlight: Felicity Savage - "Ash Minette" - neat getting her opinion of tropes and when they're helpful and how best to work with them in speculative fiction.

Author Spotlight: John Barnes - Interview with the author of "Things Undone" - this is the kind of interview I love with authors. Too often they focus on trivialities, but this one plumbed the depths of what was most fascinating about the story in the magazine.

"The Sense of the Circle" - A bit of an archeological mystery set on another world. The literary style is quite different, which makes sense as the author is South American. Some of the turns of phrase were odd - perhaps from translating idioms? Neat story, though.

"Let's Take this Viral" - So much to say about this. Lots of post-cyberpunk fiction has these worlds where everyone can do every drug because tech keeps us alive anyway. Also common theme of the lack of death leading to boredom leading to crazier stunts. This one hit me hard, emotionally, though. Especially the ending. Great example of an author doing short fiction so well;gets you to care about someone you just met.

"Three Days of Rain" - A moody piece about a city in Latin America where all the water has dried up. There's a background story about whether to stay or go, but the main story is just about living and doesn't really have any plot. Still, a good read.

"Biographical....Prince" (SF) - I always enjoy when an author doesn't use straight narrative to tell a story. Blog posts, newspaper clippings, etc have specific goals that don't align perfectly with story-telling. This story was in the form of the Wikipedia page of an author in a post-apocalyptic Earth. Like good SF lots of uncomfortable themes that help us reflect on today. Even more relevant with the Syrian Crisis.

"The Dream Detective" - This took a wildly different turn than the early parts suggested it might. It's a neat urban fantasy tale with a great ending. Good use of the short story form.

"The Dream Detective" - Well, the title says it all, but still in the middle of the story.

Ash Minette: Turns out it's a retelling of Cinderella

Ash Minette - So far, a family of 3 girls born into wealth suffers a reversal of fortunes. They get invited to a ball by a baron that doesn't realize the family is no longer noble. The two older girls go, leaving their younger sister - under the excuse that the rich are more evil than the mundane. We'll see what happens next...

Artist Showcase: Matt Thkocz - Cover Artist for this issue

"Lily Red" (fantasy) - A woman leaves life behind and goes to a small town. Metaphors for love, attraction, and gender.

"The Bolt Tightener" - A dude gets a job to tighten huge bolts on a seawall that protects a city from the ocean. At bolt 841 there's something terrible, but he's not to skip any. While the turn of events is predictable, the ending wasn't.

Interview with Angelica Gorodischer: insight into Argintenean SF. According to this author there isn't much of it. Odd, I thought everyone would have stories that speculate about tech or the future.

Interview with Philip Pullman: Discussion of various books he's written, teaching in England, and an example of being an athiest and respectful of religion.

"Midnight Blue-Light Special" (novel excerpt) - First few chapters of a pretty darned interesting-looking book. The premise: a woman is part of a multi-generational cryptozoologist family that helps and catalogs the "monsters". And to make ends meet, our protagonist also works as a dancer at a burlesque club in Manhattan. If I didn't already have such a ridiculously long to-read list...

"Things Undone" (Novella) - That was a crazy emotional ride. We often read time travel stories concerned with what might change. This one takes place in the alternate world in which a discovery changes the progress of technology completely. A catastrophic time travel event takes place and we follow investigators trying to root out what happened.

"Things Undone" (Novella) - what we know so far: alternate reality Earth, time travel exists and is regulated, some people remember the way things are supposed to be if time changes, semi-dystopia. I like the tone and the time travel rules of this story. It's approximately 65 pages long, so will probably take me a few meal sessions to complete.

Past the intros

Discovered this recently and the first novella is actually pretty good.