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Lightspeed Magazine Issue 10, March 2011

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Lightspeed Magazine Issue 10, March 2011 Lightspeed Magazine Issue 10, March 2011 Table of Contents Editorial by John Joseph Adams “Saying the Names” by Maggie Clark (fiction) Author Spotlight: Maggie Clark “You Never Get a Seventh Chance to Make a First Impression: An Awkward History of Our Space Transmissions” by Genevieve Valentine (nonfiction) “Gossamer” by Stephen Baxter (fiction) Author Spotlight: Stephen Baxter Feature Interview: Walter Jon Williams by Chris Moriarty “Spider the Artist” by Nnedi Okorafor (fiction) Author Spotlight: Nnedi Okorafor “Retro Robots on the Battlefield” by Daniel H. Wilson (nonfiction) “Woman Leaves Room” by Robert Reed (fiction) Author Spotlight: Robert Reed “Immortal Jellyfish and Transhuman You” by Ekaterina Sedia (nonfiction) Coming Attractions © 2011, Lightspeed Magazine Cover Art by Donato Giancola. Ebook design by Neil Clarke www.lightspeedmagazine.com Editorial, March 2011 John Joseph Adams Welcome to issue ten of Lightspeed! Before we get to this month’s teasers, I just wanted to remind you that you can now subscribe to the ebook edition of Lightspeed, via Weightless Books, a new ebookstore managed by Gavin Grant and the team at Small Beer Press. Subscriptions are just $19.95 a year, which is over $15 off the cover price, so subscribe early and subscribe often—and tell your friends! Also, this month marks the beginning of my tenure as editor of Lightspeed’s sister-publication, Fantasy Magazine (www.fantasy-magazine.com). So if you enjoy fantasy as well, please pop over and check it out. (And you can tell your friends about that too!) With that out of the way, here’s what we’ve got on tap this month: In “Saying the Names,” debut author Maggie Clark gives us the story of a woman hired to navigate the sticky legal system of a complicated alien race, and her own equally sticky relationship with the defendant. And to accompany Ms. Clark’s story, we have, from Genevieve Valentine, an overview of our attempts to communicate with other species, in “You Never Get a Seventh Chance to Make a First Impression: An Awkward History of Our Space Transmissions.” “Gossamer” by Stephen Baxter takes us to Pluto and Charon, tidally-locked in their mutual orbit. A team briefly stranded there discovers that timing is everything, and that the relationship between the two worlds is more complicated than anyone had guessed. (Reprint) Author and reviewer Chris Moriarty presents our feature interview with Nebula Award-winning, bestselling author Walter Jon Williams, in which they discuss big ideas, “sub-genre busting,” and Walter’s latest book, Deep State. In “Spider the Artist,” Nnedi Okorafor takes us to Nigeria of the future, where Big Oil protects the pipelines with spider-like AIs known as zombies, and tells the tale of a woman who faces down one of the murderous machines armed only with a guitar. (Reprint) Roboticist/author Daniel H. Wilson examines the history of robotics and warfare in “Retro Robots on the Battlefield,” and reveals that these autonomous machines may have been around longer than you would have thought. “Woman Leaves Room” by Robert Reed gives us a view of immortality, forgotten files, and perhaps a reminder to be awake for the parts of life that matter. In the related nonfiction, celebrated novelist Ekaterina Sedia puts on her scientist hat and tells us about Turritopsis nutricula, a kind of jellyfish that seems to live forever, and speculates on what that means for humans, in “Immortal Jellyfish and Transhuman You.” That about does it for our fiction and nonfiction selections for March, but be sure to also look for our author and artist spotlights, and keep an ear out for our podcasts of “Saying the Names” by Maggie Clark and “Woman Leaves Room” by Robert Reed. So that’s our issue this month. Thanks for reading! Lightspeed editor John Joseph Adams is the bestselling editor of many anthologies, such as Wastelands, The Living Dead (a World Fantasy Award finalist), The Living Dead 2, By Blood We Live, Federations, and The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Barnes & Noble.com named him “the reigning king of the anthology world,” and his books have been named to numerous best of the year lists. He is also the editor of Lightspeed’s sister-publication, Fantasy Magazine. In addition to his editorial work, John is also the co-host of io9’s Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Saying the Names Maggie Clark On the shuttle out to our connecting flight, the Bo assigned to my mission fixes the bulge of his eyes unwaveringly upon me. I was told to expect this, the species so alien to death it finds our every parting curious; its sense of privacy so absent, not one of its forty-three languages contains the word. Though L-drive allows us to return long before our loved ones pass on, just the thought of my journey’s purpose already has me pining for home: of all the ways I’ve imagined meeting my father, as defense council in his murder trial does not rank high on the list. Our shuttle crests the white round of the L-ship’s hull, powering down non-essentials while preparing to dock. I can bear the Bo’s steady gaze even less in the dark. In-flight, I dream. Vega III, my home world, holds a species of deep-water squid that can regress at will to any prior phase in its development. When I was small my mother introduced me to this creature as a means of describing the Bo, and with them, my father’s permanent absence. No more was ever said about either the man or the mission, and for years I thought of the Bo as slimy cephalopods forever darting from the light. Not until the Academy did my perception of the species take its proper form, of large, mottled amphibians with forelimbs caught between quadrupedal and bipedal use, who did indeed revert to earlier stages of development when their warts grew too big for them to move. Before then, as a child embroiled in misconceptions, I dreamed of my father trapped at the bottom of the Bo’s oceans, assailed by giant barbed tentacles in underground caves. Now he is indeed held prisoner, as best the Bo understand the term, and while hurtling towards him in a prison all its own, my subconscious returns to these vague, inky nightmares of my youth. When I wake for meals, taken with the crew in a long, narrow galley sporting tiny portholes to the stars, we can hear the Bo singing through the ventilation shafts. I find it hard sometimes just to chew. The captain sits with me the day before our arrival. He has the appropriate look of a spaceman—hardened, lank, with an indifferent cast about his beard, hands lanced with burns and calluses from his work. I think he expects some move on my part for his companionship—the novice traveler’s last, desperate cleaving to the familiar before ejection into the great and terrible unknown—but I’ve decided to wait for the return trip to make such an overture, and only then if I can’t bring my father home. Captain Sedgwick sets a small parcel before me. “What’s this?” In the wrapping I find two small devices, each the size of an earbud. “White noise,” he says. “You’ll need it. To work, to sleep.” “Is it that loud?” “It’s that constant.” “I have a portable.” “That’s not enough. Here—” He shows me the settings, each one’s capacity to block out Bo songs on select frequencies. “You’re going to be speaking, I gather? For the trial?” “Of course. But surely then—” “It never stops. It can’t stop. You know the story of the first ambassador?” “And the last, yes.” I worry he’ll go on anyway, but the captain accepts my response at face value, or at least seems not to unduly favor the sound of his own voice. “Well, hold to it, then. They abbreviate nothing. Sentences can go on for days, and they don’t take kindly to being told to keep it short. You’re better off just blocking out the background bits.” “Thanks.” I remember the story of the ambassador from Conflict Differentials at the Academy, where it served as a classic anecdote on the limits of preparation. The poor, over- educated man in this case thought to ask what the Bo called themselves and their home world, so he might see both proper names used throughout the galaxy in place of other species’ words. Pleased by this gesture, the Bo proceeded to speak the names as they did everything else —at length, and sparing no historical or biological detail. For the first three hours, captivated by the sudden wealth of data, the ambassador recorded everything, noting patterns where he could, grappling with obscure referents whenever they emerged, but by the fourth, exhausted, and thinking at last of the realpolitik of his original query, he asked if there might be some shorter variant he could write down instead. Though slow to speak, his counterparts were surprisingly quick to anger, abbreviation an act of offense, of disdain, with no equal among their kind. In the immediacy of their contempt, they gave the ambassador one syllable, Bo, to serve for both requests, and thereafter declared a complete disinterest in diplomacy with the rest of the galaxy, its vast species all clearly lacking either the intelligence or civility to learn real words. The utterance of these vehement declarations of course took a week all its own, during which time the ambassador suffered a massive heart attack from the constant, thunderous rebukes directed against his person, and soon after—one hopes with a modicum of regret—the Bo shipped his body and field notes home.
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