Lightspeed Magazine Issue 36, May 2013 Table of Contents Editorial, May 2013 The Garden—Eleanor Arnason (ebook-exclusive novella) The 5th Wave—Rick Yancey (novel excerpt) Interview: Karen Russell Interview: Gregory Maguire Artist Gallery: Giuliano Brocani Artist Spotlight: Giuliano Brocani The Man Who Carved Skulls—Richard Parks (fantasy) Always, They Whisper—Damien Walters Grintalis (fantasy) The Aarne-Thompson Classification Revue—Holly Black (fantasy) Leaving the Dead—Dennis Danvers (fantasy) The Traditional—Maria Dahvana Headley (SF) The Missing Metatarsals—Sean Williams (SF) Water Finds Its Level—M. Bennardo (SF) Interview: On Any Given Day—Maureen F. McHugh (SF) Author Spotlight: Eleanor Arnason Author Spotlight: Richard Parks Author Spotlight: Damien Walters Grintalis Author Spotlight: Holly Black Author Spotlight: Dennis Danvers Author Spotlight: Maria Dahvana Headley Author Spotlight: Sean Williams Author Spotlight: M. Bennardo Author Spotlight: Maureen F. McHugh Coming Attractions © 2013, Lightspeed Magazine Cover Art and artist gallery images by Giuliano Brocani Ebook design by Neil Clarke. www.lightspeedmagazine.com Editorial, May 2013 John Joseph Adams Welcome to issue thirty-six of Lightspeed! In case you missed the news last month, Lightspeed is again a Hugo Award finalist for best semiprozine, and your humble editor is again a nominee for best editor, short-form. We’re extremely honored to be nominated again, so please allow me to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who voted for us. Additionally, our resident illustrator, Galen Dara, is up for the Hugo Award for best fan artist—largely, we assume, due to her work illustrating Lightspeed stories. If you’d like to check out all of Galen’s illustrations for Lightspeed, visit lightspeedmagazine.com/tag/illustrated-by-galen-dara. Speaking of awards, this year’s Nebula Awards will be presented at the Nebula Awards Weekend event, May 16-19, in San Jose, CA. Lightspeed has two finalists in the short story category: “Give Her Honey When You Hear Her Scream” by Maria Dahvana Headley and “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species” by Ken Liu; assistant editor Christie Yant and I will be on hand to cheer them on—so if you’re also going to be there, be sure to find us and say hi! In other news, the list of artists to appear in Spectrum 20, the latest edition of the prestigious art anthology series have been selected, and Hugo Award nominee (sounds good, doesn’t it?) Galen Dara is among them. So is Marc Simonetti, who provided our cover for the June 2012 issue. As we were going to e-press with this issue, which specific pieces of art they’d be reprinting was not yet revealed; all we know for sure is both Galen and Marc will have their artwork featured in the anthology. Congrats to them both! With all that out of the way, here’s what we’ve got on tap this month: We have original science fiction by Maria Dahvana Headley (“The Traditional”) and M. Bennardo (“Water Finds Its Level”), along with SF reprints by Maureen F. McHugh (“Interview: On Any Given Day”) and Sean Williams (“The Missing Metatarsals”). Plus, we have original fantasy by Damien Walters Grintalis (“Always, They Whisper”) and Dennis Danvers (“Leaving the Dead”), and fantasy reprints by Holly Black (“The Aarne-Thompson Classification Revue”) and Richard Parks (“The Man Who Carved Skulls”). For our ebook readers, our ebook-exclusive novella is “The Garden” by Eleanor Arnason, and of course we have our usual assortment of author and artist spotlights, along with feature interviews with Gregory Maguire and Karen Russell. Our issue this month is again sponsored by our friends at Orbit Books. This month, look for The Shambling Guide to New York City by Mur Lafferty. You can find more from Orbit—including digital short fiction and monthly ebook deals—at www.orbitbooks.net. It’s another great issue, so be sure to check it out. And remember, there are several ways you can sign up to be notified of new Lightspeed content: Newsletter: lightspeedmagazine.com/newsletter RSS Feed: lightspeedmagazine.com/rss-2 Podcast Feed: lightspeedmagazine.com/itunes-rss Twitter: @lightspeedmag Facebook: facebook.com/lightspeedmagazine Google+: plus.google.com/100415462108153087624 Subscribe: lightspeedmagazine.com/subscribe Before I go, just a reminder that our custom-built ebookstore I told you about last month is now up and running. So if you’d like to purchase an ebook issue, or if you’d like to subscribe directly from us, please visit lightspeedmagazine.com/store. All purchases from the Lightspeed store are provided in both epub and mobi format. And don’t worry—all of our other purchasing options are still available, of course; this is just one more way you can buy the magazine or subscribe. You can, for instance, still subscribe via Amazon.com or from our friends at Weightless Books. Visit lightspeedmagazine.com/subscribe to learn more about all of our subscription options. Well, that’s all there is to report this month. Thanks for reading! John Joseph Adams, in addition to serving as publisher and editor of Lightspeed, is the bestselling editor of many anthologies, such as The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, Oz Reimagined, Epic: Legends of Fantasy, Other Worlds Than These, Armored, Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures on Barsoom, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, The Living Dead, The Living Dead 2, By Blood We Live, Federations, The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and The Way of the Wizard. He is a six-time finalist for the Hugo Award and four-time finalist for the World Fantasy Award. He is also the editor of Nightmare Magazine and is the co-host of Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Find him on Twitter @johnjosephadams. The Garden Eleanor Arnason There was a boy who belonged to the Atkwa lineage. Like most of his family, he had steel gray fur. In the case of his relatives, the color was solid. But the boy’s fur was faintly striped and spotted. In dim light this wasn’t visible. In sunlight his pelt looked like one of the old pattern-welded swords that hung in his grandmother’s greathouse and were taken outside rarely, usually to be polished, though sometimes for teaching purposes, when adult male relatives were home. Not that anyone used swords in this period, except actors in plays. But children ought to learn the history of their family. The boy’s pelt was due to a recessive gene, emerging after generations, since the Atkwa had not gone to a spotted family for semen in more than two hundred years. This was not due to prejudice. Unlike humans, the hwarhath find differences in color more interesting than disturbing. Their prejudices lie in other directions. It was circumstance and accident that kept the Atkwa solid gray. They lived in a part of the world where this was the dominant coloration; and—being a small and not especially powerful family—they did not look to distant places when arranging breeding contracts. As a toddler, the boy was forward and active, but not to an extraordinary degree. At the age of eight or so, he lengthened into a coltish child, full of energy, but also prone to sudden moods of thoughtfulness. These worried his mother, who consulted with her mother, the family matriarch, a gaunt woman, her fur frosted by age, her big hands twisted by joint disease. “Well,” the matriarch said after listening. “Some men are thoughtful. They have to be, if they’re going to survive in space, with no women around to do their thinking.” “But so young?” the mother asked. “He spends hours watching fish in a stream or bugs in a patch of weeds.” “Maybe he’ll become a scientist.” The matriarch gave her daughter a stern look. “He’s your only boy. He’s been strange and lovely looking from birth. This has led you to pay too much attention and to worry without reason. Straighten up! Be solid! The boy will probably turn out well. If he doesn’t, he’ll be a problem for our male relatives to handle.” At ten, the boy discovered gardening—by accident, while following a tli that had come out of the nearby woods to steal vegetables. The sun was barely up. Dew gleamed on the vegetation around his grandmother’s house. The air he drew into his mouth was cool and fragrant. The tli, a large specimen with strongly marked stripes, trundled over his grandmother’s lawn, its fat, furry belly gathering dew like a rag wiping moisture off something bright. A metal blade maybe, the boy thought. A dark trail appeared behind the animal, and it was this the boy followed at a safe distance. Not that a tli is ever dangerous, unless cornered, but he didn’t want to frighten it. The animal skirted the house, entering the garden in back. There the tli began to pillage, a messy process with much (it seemed to the boy) unnecessary destruction. He ought to chase it away. But he was hit, suddenly and with great force, by the beauty of the scene in front of him. The perception was like a blade going into his chest. Don’t think of this as a figure of speech, exaggerated and difficult to believe. There are emotions so intense that they cause pain, either a dull ache or a sudden sharp twinge. Under the influence of such an emotion, one’s heart may seem to stop. One may feel wounded and changed as one is changed by a serious injury. This happened to the boy when he didn’t, as yet, understand much of what he felt.