Lightspeed Magazine - December 2016, page 1
Kindle Edition, 2016 © John Joseph Adams
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Editorial, December 2016
John Joseph Adams | 951 words
Welcome to issue seventy-nine of Lightspeed!
We have original science fiction by Rich Larson (“The Cyborg, the Tinman, the Merchant of Death”) and Joseph Allen Hill (“The Venus Effect”), along with SF reprints by Margo Lanagan (“The Fifth Star in the Southern Cross”) and Christie Yant (“This Is As I Wish To Be Restored”).
Plus, we have original fantasy by Carlie St. George (“Every Day Is the Full Moon”) and Charles Payseur (“The Death of Paul Bunyan”), and fantasy reprints by William Alexander (“The War Between the Water and the Road”) and Shweta Narayan (“Daya and Dharma”).
As usual, we’ve put together some terrific nonfiction, including an interview with award-winning author Nancy Kress, plus our usual author spotlight mini-interviews. Of course, our media and book review team has put together some sensational insights about what to read and watch, as well.
For our ebook readers, we also have an ebook-exclusive novella reprint from Michael Bishop (“Twenty Lights to ‘The Land of Snow’”) and a book excerpt.
Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016
As you may recall, in addition to editing Lightspeed and Nightmare, I am also the series editor of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, which launched last year. The first volume was guest edited by Joe Hill, and the 2016 volume (which came out October 4) is guest edited by Karen Joy Fowler. The table of contents for the 2016 volume includes two stories from Lightspeed (“Things You Can Buy for a Penny” by Will Kaufman and “Tea Time” by Rachel Swirsky), as well as Salman Rushdie, Adam Johnson, Kelly Link, Ted Chiang, Kij Johnson, Maria Dahvana Headley, Sofia Samatar, Sam J. Miller, Charlie Jane Anders, Catherynne M. Valente, Liz Ziemska, S.L. Huang, Vandana Singh, Dale Bailey, Dexter Palmer, Julian Mortimer Smith, Nick Wolven, and Seth Dickinson.
Visit johnjosephadams.com/basff to learn more and/or to order!
New Anthology Release: What the #@&% is That? (Saga Press, Nov. 1, 2016)
My latest anthology—co-edited with Douglas Cohen—published last month. Here’s the cover copy:
Fear of the unknown—it is the essence of the best horror stories, the need to know what monstrous vision you’re beholding and the underlying terror that you just might find out. In this anthology, twenty authors have gathered to ask—and maybe answer—a question worthy of almost any horror tale: “What the #@&% is that?” Join these masters of suspense as they take you to where the shadows grow long, and that which lurks at the corner of your vision is all too real, with stories by Jonathan Maberry, Seanan McGuire, Scott Sigler, Maria Dahvana Headley, Christopher Golden, Alan Dean Foster, Rachel Swirsky & An Owomoyela, and others.
Visit johnjosephadams.com/wtf to learn more or buy the book.
New Editions of Old Favorites
Lightspeed readers are probably already familiar with most of my anthologies, but in case you missed one here or there, I thought it was worth pointing out that I recently released new editions of my anthologies Federations and The Way of the Wizard. The new covers are both by the wonderful and talented Matt Bright at Inkspiral Design.
Visit johnjosephadams.com/federations and johnjosephadams.com/way-of-the-wizard to check out the new covers or buy the books.
People of Colo(u)r Destroy Horror and Fantasy!
In October, our “Destroy” series continued over at our sister magazine, Nightmare, where Silvia Moreno-Garcia served as the guest editor of People of Colo(u)r Destroy Horror! She collected original fiction from Nadia Bulkin, Gabriela Santiago, Valerie Valdes, and Russell Nichols to help celebrate the work of creators of color in the horror field. Reprint editor Tananarive Due brought us four horror classics, including one from Pulitzer Prize winning author Junot Díaz, and nonfiction editor Maurice Broaddus presented a stellar line-up of essays and interviews.
This month, the final volume in the POC Destroy series publishes as a special issue of Fantasy Magazine (which was merged into Lightspeed back in 2012). Guest editor Daniel José Older presents original fiction from N.K. Jemisin, Thoraiya Dyer, P. Djeli Clark, and Darcie Little Badger. Reprint editor Amal El-Mohtar selected four fantasy classics, from Sofia Samatar, Celeste Rita Baker, Shweta Narayan, and Leanne Simpson. And last but not least, nonfiction editor Tobias S. Buckell will be bringing us an assortment of insightful essays and interviews.
Learn more about both of these special issues—and the rest of the Destroy projects—at DestroySF.com.
John Joseph Adams Books News
In my role as editor of John Joseph Adams Books for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, I recently acquired a novel by debut author Bryan Camp: The City of Lost Fortunes, a novel about a magician with a talent for finding lost things who is forced into playing a high stakes game with the gods of New Orleans for the heart and soul of the city.
Publication date is tentatively scheduled for Spring 2018. Meanwhile, I also bought a story by Bryan for Lightspeed, so you’ll be seeing his short story debut sometime in the near future as well!
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That’s all we have to report this month. I hope you enjoy the issue, and thanks for reading!
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Joseph Adams, in addition to serving as publisher and editor-in-chief of Lightspeed, is the editor of John Joseph Adams Books, a new SF/Fantasy imprint from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He is also the series editor of Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, as well as the bestselling editor of many other anthologies, including The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, Robot Uprisings, Dead Man’s Hand, Armored, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, and The Living Dead. Recent and forthcoming projects include: Cosmic Powers , What the #@&% Is That?, Operation Arcana, Loosed Upon the World, Wastelands 2, Press Start to Play, and The Apocalypse Triptych: The End is Nigh, The End is Now, and The End Has Come. 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 nominated ten times) and is a seven-time World Fantasy Award finalist. 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.
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The Cyborg, the Tinman, the Merchant of Death
Rich Larson | 4180 words
Sarge knew before I did, of course, but I still had to take him the transfer orders. I didn’t know how to feel on my way to the officers’ mess. I would miss my unit and I would miss my Sarge, but it was an honor, everyone said, to get shifted up to Incisive Maneuvers.
To work with the Cyborg.
The Tinman.
The Merchant of Death.
There’s all kinds of names get floated around for him. Sarge calls him by his rank.
“So you’re with Petty Officer Cox,” he said, taking my half-rolled screen and pushing his thumb against it without hardly reading. He didn’t give it back right away. “That’s an honor,” he said. “Everyone been telling you that, I imagine.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
Sarge stared off into space. “High fatality rate in Maneuvers,” he said. “Everyone been telling you that?”
“Some,” I said, because my boy Hans told me I was good as dead going in with the Tinman, said his cousin’s cousin only lasted a couple months in IM. His breath was all commissary rum when he told me that and he cried a little.
“My advice is to stick close to him,” Sarge said, no need to explain who “him” was. “But not too close. He’s not like you and me. He doesn’t think like you and me. All right?”
“He’s a hero, isn’t he?” I asked. “I mean, decorated and all. Eight hundred kills or so.” I’d looked them up: 839 confirmed ghosts and maybe double that never got tagged. The Merchant of Death’s not human, like Sarge said.
“He’s a hero,” Sarge said. “He’s damn near a god. I seen him, once, in action on Pentecost. Took out an artillery nest single-handed. Must have capped a dozen soldiers and did the operators, too. Just slaughtered them.” He paused again. “When you’re a god, you don’t think of people the same way. All right?”
“Yes, sir,” I said, not sure what I was agreeing to. The Petty Officer was a legend, and the more enemy dead, the better.
“Good luck, Private.” Sarge threw a loose salute. “Dismissed.”
• • • •
Two days after that, the handler took me down to the shooting range to meet the Cyborg for myself. I’d seen the spliced-up combat footage from propaganda holos, and I’d seen him a few times from a good ways off, back when we first launched.
But seeing him up close was different. He was big as a freighter, a tower of armor that shifted and whispered against itself, all the little smart plates moving and interlocking. His face was armored, too, with a single convex sensor suite glowing like a sun. I still sometimes wonder what he looks like underneath, but I know the armor’s not meant to come off. Not ever.
He was shooting a submachine gun one-handed, knees locked, arm straight and drifting target to target, burst after burst, each one dead fucking center. Not human, I reminded myself.
“This is Mendoza’s replacement,” the handler said, meaning me. “Private Berenson. Top of his class. Top third of his class. He’ll be dropping with you when we hit Caldron.” The handler had a way of not quite looking at the Tinma
The Petty Officer turned his blank face at me. “Give me your weapon,” he said, with a voice that was feathered with speech synthesizer and higher than I expected.
I didn’t have my rifle, of course, only my sidearm, a little snub-nosed pistol. “Sir,” I said, and I clicked off its mag and handed it over, since he was my direct superior and all, and direct superiors sometimes want to see you maintain your kit well.
The Petty Officer took the pistol and fired it straight up at the ceiling without bothering to advise us. The swellies in my eardrums kicked in fast enough to damp the noise, but I still flinched. He fired again, and again, not bothering to aim, until it clacked empty. I looked up to see the slugs hovering in a little circle up there, caught by the grav field, and wondered dimly if I’d get them back.
He handed me my pistol, his gauntleted hand dwarfing mine, and said nothing.
I was pissed that he’d gone done me like that, wasting a clip for no reason, but I felt stupid, too, like I should have realized it was some kind of test. I threw a stiff salute and then the handler hurried me away so the Petty Officer could get back to his shooting.
“It’s a lesson, see,” the handler said eagerly. “Everything he does, there’s a reason. If you look. There has to be.” But he had an almost manic look in his eye when he said it. “That was a lesson about the importance of valuing your sidearm. And about trust. Trust can get you killed, see.”
“Yeah,” I said, even though I was thinking I should at least be able to trust my superior fucking officer. “I see. It’s a lesson.”
The handler nodded, almost relieved-looking. “I’ll introduce you to the rest of the squad now.”
• • • •
I’d been hoping for some vets, the tired grim kind who can tell you how things work, tell you how to survive, most of all tell me about the Petty Officer. But the rest of the squad was near fresh as I was. They’d only been called up to Incisive Maneuvers a few weeks ago. The last squad had taken full casualties, apart from the Petty Officer, of course. Some kind of weapons malfunction. An overcooked grenade, I think, with the warning circuitry fried.
The whole squad gone, just like that.
“We’re just along to soak up a few bullets,” Derozan, one of the Privates, said in the mess. All of us on the new IM squad—the suicide squad, some people were calling it—had gravitated together. “If the Tinman tries to put me on point, I’m telling him to stick it up his metal ass.”
That didn’t sit right with me. “He knows what he’s doing,” I said. “Look at his completion rate.”
“Look at the casualties,” Derozan argued, dishing the last of his protein slop onto someone else’s tray. “You think it’s just coincidence he’s the only one left from the first IM squad?”
“You can’t blame him for surviving shit that would kill a human,” I said. “He isn’t. Remember?”
“Yeah,” Derozan said. “That’s why I don’t trust him.”
And I remember I thought back to the pistol, the never-relinquish-your-weapon thing, and wondered if he’d done it to Derozan, too.
• • • •
We made planetfall a few weeks later. I knew the squad well enough by then, and we’d done plenty of sim time together, getting coordinated, getting in combat synch. Sometimes the Petty Officer ran the sims with us, more often he didn’t. Even with all the drills and sims, I still didn’t feel ready for combat. Not even close. I had to take a big old nervous shit before we loaded up into the dropship.
The Petty Officer climbed in last, not bothering to get strapped, just reaching up and bracing himself with a handhold. He stared around at each of us in turn, but I thought he stared longer at me than anyone else.
“Finally,” he said. “No more dialogue. Just action.”
We got his gist, and by that point our intravenous feeds were kicking in, pumping us up with combat chemicals. We all gave him an ooh-rah, even Derozan. Then the dropship was undocking and we were heading down to Caldron’s smaller continent, where the Coalition were dug in deepest. They had shields up to prevent orbital bombardment, but not for long. Not with the Petty Officer leading us right to the main generator.
Entering the atmosphere shook us like pennies in a jar, but then we smoothed out, swooped in low over terraformed forest valley. The chemicals were doing their thing, making me less scared, more angry, but in a cold, clear, ready-for-action way.
The dropship dumped us close as it could get to the edge of the Coalition forces and detached a little six-man hover to take us the rest of the way. I debarked, checking my gear, holding my chest-plate in place for the jump so it wouldn’t slam my chin. Just how I’d drilled it a thousand times. Then my boots were on the dirt and the dropship was thundering away.
Private Neumann, who was specced for driving, had the top scores and all, slid into the driver seat of the hover while the rest of us climbed aboard.
Except the Petty Officer didn’t. He walked to the driver side and stared at Neumann. “I want to drive,” he said.
In the back of the hover, we swapped looks. The Petty Officer had wired up reflexes and all, but he looked like he would barely fit behind the steering column, and Neumann had been assigned driver before we dropped.
“I want to drive,” the Petty Officer repeated, his voice cool, almost melodic.
“Sir,” Neumann said, with his face going red under his helmet, and he clambered into the back with the rest of us. The Petty Officer jammed into the driver’s seat and opened the throttle. We shot away like a rocket, and I ended up slamming my chin on my chest-plate anyways.
• • • •
I can’t say I remember much of that first mission, of the actual combat, the tensed-up waits behind cover and dashes in between, the aim and fire. There’s been too many missions since.
I do remember seeing the Petty Officer in action for the first time was like seeing God. His personal shields swallowed up bullets and bolts and spat them back out; his rifle cracked over and over and every single shot seemed to hit skull. He saw things before they happened, saw things happening behind us. Saw everything. The first patrol we ran up on, he deaded them both before the rest of us could even rise and aim.
The path to the generator, the last-minute swap when our primary detonator bugged out, the cover fire and the retreat and the big, beautiful explosion—I remember it in little pieces.
What happened after the mission, when we were getting back into the camouflaged hover, I remember clear as day. We were all riding the adrenaline high, all jazzed up that we’d taken the generator. Close enough to extraction to start feeling good.
“Those Coalie fuckers are waking up to hellfire,” Derozan said, hellfire being what we call an orbital bombardment. He settled back in the hover and grinned. “Wipe them right off the map.”
The rest of us Privates whooped, cheered a little. The Petty Officer didn’t.
“There’s going to be another generator,” he said. “There’s always another generator. Another checkpoint. Another op. It’s all a game. We’re just playing a game.” I’d been about to climb into the hover, but he reached out an arm and stopped me. I saw something glinting in his big metal hand. “Here’s another game,” the Petty Officer said. “Catch.”
He lobbed the cooked grenade right underneath the hover’s engine block. It was the closest I’d ever been to a ’nade going off, and the swellies in my ears didn’t do shit. The hover erupted in a fireball, spitting big shards of metal off in every direction, and nobody inside had time to dive out. I would’ve been dead too, if it weren’t for the Petty Officer’s personal shield enveloping me. Even so I felt the shockwave deep in my bones.
My ears were still ringing as he looked through the wreckage, the charred bodies. I could feel piss trickling down my leg.
“What will you tell them in the field report?” the Petty Officer asked. I looked at the mangled meat that had been my squad, our squad, only moments ago. I realized the Petty Officer had swiped my sidearm away from me, was holding it up to my temple. Maybe I should have made him kill me then.
“I’ll tell them there was a weapons malfunction,” I said quietly.
“A big one,” the Petty Officer agreed.
