Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 119 (April 2020): Lightspeed Magazine, #119

By John Joseph Adams, Veronica Roth, Yoon Ha Lee and 2 more

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 119th issue. We're really excited to share "The Least of These," a brand-new short by Veronica Roth! We also have a snapshot of what creativity will look like in the future in Andrew Dana Hudson's new short, "Voice of Their Generation." Our SF reprints are by Yoon Ha Lee ("Always the Harvest") and Vandana Singh ("A Subtle Web"). Our new fantasy short by Celeste Rita Baker ("Glass Bottle Dancer") might make you appreciate the insects in your world just a little bit more. Rati Mehrotra writes about love, loss, and witchcraft in a new short called "The Witch Speaks." We also have fantasy reprints by Caleb Wilson ("Bow Down Before the Snail King!") and Fred Van Lente ("Neversleeps"). Of course we also have our usual assortment of author spotlights, along with our book and media review columns. Our feature interview will be with Katie M. Flynn. Our ebook readers will also enjoy an excerpt from the aforementioned Veronica Roth's new novel, CHOSEN ONES.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Joseph Adams
• Release date: Apr 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393267737

John Joseph Adams

John Joseph Adams is the series editor of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy and the editor of the Hugo Award–winning Lightspeed, and of more than forty anthologies, including Lost Worlds & Mythological Kingdoms, The Far Reaches, and Out There Screaming (coedited with Jordan Peele).

Book preview

sword_rocketLightspeed Magazine

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Issue 119, April 2020

FROM THE EDITOR

Editorial: April 2020

SCIENCE FICTION

The Least of These

Veronica Roth

Always the Harvest

Yoon Ha Lee

Voice of Their Generation

Andrew Dana Hudson

A Subtle Web: A Tale From the Somadeva Chronicles

Vandana Singh

FANTASY

Bow Down Before the Snail King!

Caleb Wilson

Glass Bottle Dancer

Celeste Rita Baker

Neversleeps

Fred Van Lente

The Witch Speaks

Rati Mehrotra

EXCERPTS

Chosen Ones

Veronica Roth

NONFICTION

Book Reviews: April 2020

Chris Kluwe

Media Review: April 2020

Christopher East

Interview: Katie M. Flynn

Christian A. Coleman

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS

Veronica Roth

Celeste Rita Baker

Andrew Dana Hudson

Rati Mehrotra

MISCELLANY

Coming Attractions, May 2020

Stay Connected

Subscriptions and Ebooks

Support Us on Patreon, or How to Become a Dragonrider or Space Wizard

About the Lightspeed Team

Also Edited by John Joseph Adams

© 2020 Lightspeed Magazine

Cover by Grandfailure / Fotolia

www.lightspeedmagazine.com

From_the_EditorCHOSEN ONES

Editorial: April 2020

John Joseph Adams | 176 words

Welcome to Lightspeed’s 119th issue.

We’re really excited to share The Least of These, a brand-new short by Veronica Roth! We also have a snapshot of what creativity will look like in the future in Andrew Dana Hudson’s new short, Voice of Their Generation. Our SF reprints are by Yoon Ha Lee (Always the Harvest) and Vandana Singh (A Subtle Web).

Our new fantasy short by Celeste Rita Baker (Glass Bottle Dancer) might make you appreciate the insects in your world just a little bit more. Rati Mehrotra writes about love, loss, and witchcraft in a new short called The Witch Speaks. We also have fantasy reprints by Caleb Wilson (Bow Down Before the Snail King!) and Fred Van Lente (Neversleeps).

Of course we also have our usual assortment of author spotlights, along with our book and media review columns. Our feature interview will be with Katie M. Flynn. Our ebook readers will also enjoy an excerpt from the aforementioned Veronica Roth’s new novel, Chosen Ones.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Joseph Adams is the editor of John Joseph Adams Books, a science fiction and fantasy imprint from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He is also the series editor of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, as well as the bestselling editor of more than thirty anthologies, including Wastelands and The Living Dead. Recent books include Cosmic Powers, What the #@&% Is That?, Operation Arcana, Press Start to Play, Loosed Upon the World, and The Apocalypse Triptych. Called the reigning king of the anthology world by Barnes & Noble, John is a two-time winner of the Hugo Award (for which he has been a finalist twelve times) and an eight-time World Fantasy Award finalist. John is also the editor and publisher of the digital magazines Lightspeed and Nightmare, and is a producer for WIRED’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. He also served as a judge for the 2015 National Book Award. Find him online at johnjosephadams.com and @johnjosephadams.

Science_FictionJohn Joseph Adams Books

The Least of These

Veronica Roth | 4256 words

Two women, Best and Least, woke in a bright room.

Best did so as if surfacing in a pool of water, her eyes wide and observant. Least woke with a start, and immediately slammed her back against the wall behind her, her arms splayed.

Where are we? asked Best.

Who the fuck are you? demanded Least.

Now, now, came a voice from the doorway. There’s no need to be coarse.

A tall, graceful Being entered the room, diaphanous fabric afloat around its slender body. It had an otherworldly shimmer to its skin, as if bathed in perpetual twilight. Its face was humanoid, but for the fact that its eyes had no whites and its nose more closely resembled a beak made of polished pearl.

The voice had not been human, but lilting and mechanical, and it came from a shining band of silver around the Being’s throat. As it spoke, it also emitted a series of faint notes, like a hummed song.

I know you are confused, the Being said. And possibly alarmed. But I will explain.

Both women had leapt to their feet at the sight of the Being. Best stood ready, and Least was inching toward the windows at the far end of the room. The space was large and grand, with wood floors that creaked beneath the women’s feet and tall windows with frames painted white to match the walls. Visible through the glass was a grass-covered hill and the smudged green of pine trees.

Best frowned, but sat. Least began to shake her head.

No way, she said. No. Fucking. Way.

Another Being appeared in the doorway, just behind the first. At the sight of it, Best’s eyes widened, and Least let out another litany of curses. The second Being had a fiercer look than the first, and snapped its beak at the women.

Sit, the Fierce One said.

This time, both women sat.

This is what the Beings said:

We come from a planet not dissimilar to your own, many galaxies away from here. Like you, we grew and developed and then laid waste to our planet. Like you, we faced a series of extinction events. For us, they were shudders in the ground and sicknesses that culled the vulnerable, and a superabundance of predatory species, thanks to the degradation of the environment.

We were able to pull ourselves back from the brink of annihilation. We rebuilt our planet, little by little, and were then able to focus our efforts on exploration of other worlds. We developed technology that allowed us to travel vast distances in little time, by stitching together sections of the galaxy like cloth.

On one such journey, we encountered a spacecraft. On it was a golden disc that, once deciphered, taught us about your planet. We searched for you for a long time.

When we found you, we endeavored to learn your languages, so that we would be able to communicate. We developed an automatic translator to facilitate such communication. We studied your cultures from our cloaked position in the sky. We observed that you had endured several planet-wide events that threatened your population, such as destructive wildfires, plagues, and rising global temperatures.

We felt a kinship with you, our fellow world destroyers. However, after careful study we determined that your people did not seem likely to unite in order to undo the damage you had done and remake your world. Our hearts broke for you. We decided to intercede. We summoned a larger ship that would be able to transport fifty thousand of your number back to our planet so that your species could survive and rebuild.

But we do not wish to cull your population indiscriminately. We wish to collect the best and brightest of your people. But who should determine the parameters for such a collection? It cannot be us. It must be you.

Thus we analyzed your population and selected two from among you. One of you, we determined, was most like ourselves: law-abiding, morally upright, intellectually and physically capable. And the other is least like ourselves. We felt this was only fair, to account for our own biases.

Our task for you is simple: You must decide who among you we bring back to our planet, and who we leave behind. You must sufficiently narrow your population such that the number of you does not exceed fifty thousand. There will be no exceptions—our planet’s ecosystem is delicate, and we must prioritize its health over even our own philanthropic inclinations.

You must come to us with your decision in two days’ time.

Excuse me? Best said.

She had a sturdier build than Least, and large, clear eyes that seemed to see everything at once.

You want us to decide who dies? she added, when it seemed the Beings did not understand the exact nature of her question.

The Gentle One said, We want you to decide who lives. This is not an act of cruelty toward those who will remain, as their fate was sealed long before our arrival. This is an act of mercy toward those who will leave.

I don’t think I can do that, Best said. Where would I even begin?

That is for the two of you to determine, the Fierce One replied. We dare not offer even a single example, for doing so would surely influence your decisions.

And we have to do this in two days? Best said.

Yes, the Gentle One replied.

We will leave you to discuss it further without the pressure of our presence, the Fierce One said.

Best put her head in her hands. The Beings left in silence, accompanied only by the swishing sound of their gossamer clothing.

• • • •

What’s your name? Best asked Least.

I think it’s better if we leave names out of this, Least replied.

Then what should I call you? said Best.

They said they chose us because one of us is better than the other one, Least said. Clearly that’s you. So why don’t you be Best, and I’ll be Least.

That seems unkind, Best said.

It suits me, then, Least replied. And anyway, it’s all I’m gonna answer to now.

In the room there was a circular table with chairs around it. Best sat in one of these, her hands folded on the tabletop. Her nails were trim, the cuticles around them unmarred. She looked at Least with her clear, wide eyes, as if waiting for the other woman to join her.

Least seemed immune to the unspoken summons. She had walked over to the windows and was peering out at the sweep of grass, the forest that surrounded them. Here there were no signs of the crowded civilization to which both Best and Least were accustomed. No smokestacks rising up in the distance, no crumbling structures now empty of life, no huge swaths of land with the burnt husks of trees poking up from it like shards of broken bone.

Where are we? Least asked herself.

How should we do this? Best asked Least.

Do what? Least said, as she opened the lock on one of the windows. Her sleeve was stretched at the cuffs, as if she had pulled it down over her hands too many times.

Best stormed across the room. This! Didn’t you hear them? We have two days to narrow a billion people down to fifty thousand!

Oh, that. Yeah, I’m not doing that. Least pushed the window up. It squealed horribly.

She sat on the windowsill and swung her legs over it to touch down on the grass outside.

Best argued, You can’t just . . . not do it! If we don’t, they could just leave, and not rescue any of us! This is our best chance at saving the most people.

The open window was between them. Least was shorter than Best by several inches. She had the look of someone who hadn’t slept in a long time.

I’ll be back, Least said. Probably.

I’m going to do it without you, Best said.

Cool, Least replied, and she walked away and into the forest.

• • • •

Least had come into the world in an idyllic suburb, where the ravages of world-ending had not touched her . . . until they did.

They had been safe from the fires, surrounded as their town was by water, and far from any fault lines. The asteroid struck the other end of the world, and its impact sent so much debris into the air that a cloud hung over her town for months, but they had stores of water, and plenty of supplies, and they endured.

The plague came next, as it had come for everyone in their region of the country, and it picked off their neighbors one by one; then Least’s aunts and uncles and cousins; then her parents and brother. Soon enough, Least had found herself alone on a quiet street that had become a graveyard. She stayed that way for a long time.

But then the tattered remains of the government rounded up all those still living—those who happened to have a genetic resistance to the plague’s effects—and took them to cities to live together.

Least was not suited for communal life. She didn’t keep to her strict work hours—she had no skills to offer this new world, so her job was tedious and often disgusting—and her truancy got her into trouble again and again, at which point she decided, if trouble was going to be her closest companion, she ought to really earn it. So she stole and smuggled and cheated and lied her way through life, a frequent resident of the nearest prison.

• • • •

Least had never thought of these experiences as useful until she was prowling around the house where she had woken. But she knew how to keep her steps silent, and to crouch at the corner of each window to peer over the sill, and to listen for muffled voices beyond the glass.

The house seemed to have belonged, once, to a fine family with a fine estate, and it had fallen into elegant disrepair, the paint peeling and the structure sagging under its own weight. It was large, but not so large that Least struggled to find the Beings.

They were in a sitting room, perched atop brocade sofas with fragile mugs clasped in their talons. Their hands resembled bird feet, with three fingers splayed wide, terminating in sharp claws. They sat across from each other, the silver bands around their throats abandoned on a nearby coffee table, and they were speaking in their high humming language. On a floating screen nearby was a video feed of the room where Least and Best had awoken. They had not been left in privacy, Least noted, though she also couldn’t recall the Beings promising that.

Least backed away from the window, and once she was far enough away that the Beings were unlikely to hear her, she began testing the other windows to see if any of them were unlocked. She had been carrying a phone in her pocket when she was brought here. Which meant it was somewhere in this house.

• • • •

Meanwhile, Best was still sitting at