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TABLE OF CONTENTS Issue 121, June 2020 FROM THE EDITOR Editorial: June 2020 SCIENCE FICTION Still Life with Hammers, a Broom, and a Brick Stacker Tochi Onyebuchi Single Malt Spacecraft Marie Vibbert The Marsh of Camarina Matthew Kressel Real Animals Em North FANTASY The Postictal State of Divine Love Julianna Baggott Danaë Megan Arkenberg Refuge Ben Peek What I Assume You Shall Assume Ken Liu EXCERPTS Trouble the Saints Alaya Dawn Johnson NONFICTION Book Reviews, June 2020 Arley Sorg Media Review: June 2020 JY Yang Interview: Jessica Cluess Christian A. Coleman AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS Julianna Baggott Marie Vibbert Ben Peek Em North MISCELLANY Coming Attractions 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 Reiko Murakami www.lightspeedmagazine.com Editorial: June 2020 John Joseph Adams | 221 words Welcome to Lightspeed’s 121st issue! We’re kicking off our tenth year with an original fantasy short from Julianna Baggott, “The Postictal State of Divine Love,” which blends myths of vampirism with the pain of living with someone with a chronic illness. The story is the inspiration for our cover art from Reiko Murakami. Ben Peek brings us our second piece of original fantasy in “Refuge,” another deep dive into the way history disappears into myth—this time in an all-too-believable secondary world. We also have fantasy reprints by Megan Arkenberg (“Danaë”) and Ken Liu (“What I Assume You Shall Assume”). Our science fiction originals begin with a cunning solution to a tricky problem: how to best age and market fine Scotch. Find out how in Marie Vibbert’s new “Single Malt Spacecraft.” In our other SF short, Em North has crafted a terrifying alien invasion in her story “Real Animals.” Our reprints this month come from Tochi Onyebuchi (“Still Life with Hammers, a Broom, and a Brick Stacker”) and Matthew Kressel (“The Marsh of Camarina”). Our nonfiction team brings you our usual assortment of author spotlights, along with our book and media review columns. Our feature interview is with Jessica Cluess. Our e-book exclusive excerpt is from Alaya Dawn Johnson’s new novel Trouble the Saints. 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. Still Life with Hammers, a Broom, and a Brick Stacker Tochi Onyebuchi | 4396 words Linc tucked down the bill of his worn Red Sox cap and closed his eyes against the sweat stinging them. The truck, lifting carpets of ash and dust into the air like someone spreading a bedsheet, provided the morning’s only sound. But Linc thought he could maybe hear the wreckers up ahead, monstrous, steel-tooth jaws spreading open to dump another load of bricks on the growing pile. In the shadows cast by the leaning, crumbling apartment towers stood black girls and a few jaundiced snow bunnies in leather, neon-colored short skirts, hips kinked to one side while the stone wall supported their lewd poses. The other men in the back of the truck with Linc, leaned over the side of the flatbed and whistled. “Them trackmarks get me a discount?” one shouted. “I’m just tryna put one in ya, guh!” “Love bites, Mami, and so do I.” “I get paid next Friday!” They laughed and it sounded like thunder, joyous, irresponsible laughter and even as Linc gripped the handle of his hammer, he couldn’t help smiling. He wanted to get at least a little bit of sleep before they got to the worksite, but the heat was just a few dozen degrees past sleepy, so why not holler at a few whores to pass the time? At least it wasn’t raining; at least it wasn’t cold enough to aggravate his busted knuckles and the smashed fingers and toes that belonged to any number of kids in various angles of repose in the flatbed. None of them looked up at the red-blue sky threaded with knife-scar clouds and the Colony hovering like a pitted moon overhead. The whores vanished behind a corner, and the young men retreated to their seats. Hunger hung around them like an odor. Linc knew the work would be the best thing to happen to them. Otherwise, they’d be out there just like he was before rehab, letting hunger compel him to destroy the very things he needed. “We pickin’ up Ace?” one of the youths asked. He had his hammer draped across his chest, his head propped against the rickety back of the flatbed, his hat brim low over his eyes. No one answered. “We pickin’ him up or what?” Linc stirred, then rapped loudly on the back window. When nothing happened, he rapped again, hard enough to crack the plexi-glas. The driver’s side window creaked downward and a leather-skinned black man with a lazy eye, the ratty remains of a cigar in his false teeth and a straw hat on his head, leaned out on his elbow. “You gon’ break my goddamn winda poundin’ like that.” Linc leaned over to be heard over the rumbling through the abandoned roads by the old Ivy Quarter. “Yo, Bishop, we pickin’ up Ace today?” “Whatchu think?” Bishop spat back. His cigar clung to his teeth. “His place comin’ up right now.” And with that, Bishop retreated. The window only went halfway up after that. They drove out of the old Ivy Quarter and the dilapidated houses got smaller, their lean more pronounced. The broken windows with their crumbling frames like Bishop’s droopy eye watched them pass. The houses here on the outskirts of that neighborhood looked no different, but out front, piled up on the sidewalk were mattresses, some with blood stains like large copper half dollars on them, children’s clothes mixed in with dirty linens, ants swarming over half-empty bags of fast food, old radios that looked like they’d only recently stopped working. When they got to Ace’s spot, a slouching duplex that used to be painted blue and yellow once upon a time, there was five-oh out front and a couple people that looked maybe like social workers. The County Sheriff was there, a large metal sphere with arms like a spider, one sporting a small caliber pistol. On its front, a display of a white man’s mustachioed face. Remote policing. The cops were likely partially cyberized, their essential parts replaceable; hence their stomping around irradiated wasteland. But the social workers looked flesh-and-blood enough. One of them looked like she might boot all over her jeans. Nobody in the truck bed stirred. The chalky dust on their overalls and their jeans and their boots didn’t even budge. But they all watched silently the man they’d worked with being dressed down like a bitch in front of his family. Linc wanted to spit but had run out of saliva. The front door hung open, and inside, Ace could be seen sitting down in his living room couch, his arms around his two kids, boy and a girl, relaxed but protecting them from the officer who, hand leisurely to his weapon, stood over them. Static-y blue and white from the TV flashed on the eviction cop’s back. Linc couldn’t hear what was being said, but Ace, from where he sat, raised his voice. The officer never raised his, but eventually Ace shot up from his seat and screamed, “This some bullshit!” Ace stomped out before the cop could make it look like he was being escorted, waited for the cop and made like he was standing his ground. “You ain’t got no right. You see this neighborhood? You see it? We the last family on the block. Ain’t no one livin’ here. So what goddamn difference it make if me and my family make a life here, huh? What difference do it make?” The cop raised his non-gun hand, inches from Ace’s chest. “Sir, leave the immediate premises or you will be arrested.” The social workers walked the children and Ace’s wife out onto the sidewalk and already movers had materialized to start offloading the family’s furniture. The TV blared. “Do you have a place where you can stay?” the social worker asked Ace’s wife. “No,” she said back. She seemed too tired to be annoyed or upset that their life was being brought out into the street like so much trash. “We ain’t heard from his family in a couple years.” The social worker’s face half-crinkled in sorrow. “There are some shelters further out.

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