Book Review - Lightspeed: Year One edited by John Joseph Adams

As stated in yesterday's post about Lightspeed magazine, the e-magazine full of great science fiction and fantasy stories, there was an anthology put out of every story published in the first year of the magazine. Lightspeed: Year One was a huge trade paperback (at least when I read it, though I see the Kindle version is almost half the price of the paperback right now) that was full of great stuff.

Not sure why there isn't a Lightspeed: Year Two out, which I just realized should have come out in November if they were going to do an annual thing. Maybe it didn't sell? I hope that's not the case.

Anyway, the first anthology has some wonderful stuff in it from a wide range of authors, even including an older story from Stephen King. Some well-known names in the genre are reprinted here, such as Bruce Sterling and Robert Silverberg.

The reprints are worth it in themselves, but then you have all of the great new stuff! Stories like the exquisite "Eliot Wrote" by Nancy Kress, wondering whether our memories help make us who we are, and what happens if some of those memories are taken away?

Here's my review of the book on Curled Up With a Good Book.

From the review:

"The problem with putting everything out there in book form, however, is that there will inevitably be some stories that don't work for some people. I used to subscribe to two or three SF magazines, and there was always the occasional clunker. No magazine is perfect, and tastes range too much for this type of anthology to ever achieve a five-star rating. For every story that has tons of fans, there will be somebody who doesn't like it. And while you can recognize the quality of the stories, that doesn't mean they'll all work for you.

That said, this is an excellent collection of old and new stories from some of the biggest names in SF writing (and even non-SF, as Stephen King has a science fiction story here). Each issue of the magazine features an old story and a new one, so you will be reading some classics. Yet the editors don't go for the easy ones. I've read a lot of SF, and all but a couple of these stories were still new to me (one wasn't due to its inclusion in a "best of the year" anthology that I had already read). Most of these are excellent, too."

Yes, there are a few clunkers in here that did nothing for me, but the hit/miss ratio is so huge that it's well-worth getting.

I highly recommend this volume of stories (the non-fiction from the magazines has been removed so it's a book of just stories) if you want to catch up on some great science fiction.

And then subscribe as I recommended yesterday.

You know you want to.

Lightspeed Magazine - For Those With Fantastical Tendencies

Yes, I realize this is the October issue.
I liked the art. So sue me.

E-books and e-magazines are becoming the wave of the future. While many outlets are available in multiple formats to please all reading types, magazines exclusively available online are becoming more and more popular. It saves on printing costs, among a host of other benefits.

Lightspeed is one of those exclusively online magazines. You can read many of the stories for free on their web site, but subscriptions are available through Amazon and many other means. This will get you all of the stories at once at the beginning of the month, rather than scattered throughout the month. It will also get you some exclusives that aren't available on the site. One of the first things I did when I first had my new Kindle Fire was to get a subscription.

It also is a mix of old and new, as they have managed to find some classic stories to publish in addition to highlighting new authors and stories. They've recently merged with Fantasy magazine to encompass both Fantasy and Science Fiction, which makes me happy (I'm a big fantasy fan).

I first became familiar with Lightspeed magazine after V-Con #36, the annual science fiction convention up here in Vancouver. I met author Sandra Wickham there, which led to me eventually following her Twitter feed, and then seeing that she was a slush reader for Lightspeed ("slush" basically just means unsolicited story manuscripts that a number of people involved with the magazine read to see if they would recommend publishing them).

I hadn't really hit the e-book phenomenon at that time yet, so didn't think much of it. It was interesting, and a potential new market to look at if I ever got up off my ass and wrote something, but that was about it.

Then Lightspeed: Year One hit, the first (I assume it will be annual) anthology of every story to have appeared in the magazine during their first year of publication. Watch for my review of the book to show up tomorrow, as I just realized I never posted it here.

Suffice to say, it gripped me enough that I didn't want to wait for each anthology.

Yet for some reason, I didn't bite the bullet and subscribe. Perhaps it was a misunderstanding on my part that the magazine would have a few more graphics than it actually does (namely, it has none that I can see), and thus I didn't want to get it when I had the old basic Kindle where pictures don't come across at all well.

Whatever the reason, while I wanted to do it, I just didn't.

I've now rectified that.

It's a steal at $2.99/issue ($3.99 if you buy issues separately, still not a bad price). Even better, you don't pay the subscription in one lump sum. You pay $2.99/month, not $36/year. Makes the hit seem better when it shows up on your credit card statement.

Not to mention that the first issue is a free trial, so you can cancel if you want.

What's not to like?

I've now finished my first issue (December 2012, Issue #31), and I have to say I loved it.

Stories by Marta Randall, Ken Liu, Yoon Ha Lee, and many others. A great interview with Tad Williams. The only story I didn't read was Kelly Link's "Catskin," and that's not because I didn't like it or don't like her writing. I've just read it so many times that I didn't want to read it again this time. (Yes, it's one of the reprints)

I'm looking forward to keeping up my subscription and receiving 80,000 to 85,000 words of wonderful fantasy and science fiction downloaded to my Kindle every month.

It will be like a birthday every month.

I highly recommend Lightspeed magazine. With one month free to try it, how can you go wrong?