[{"id":36734,"date":"2026-09-24T03:05:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T10:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?p=36734"},"modified":"2026-08-05T10:08:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T17:08:16","slug":"book-review-code-and-codex-by-yoon-ha-lee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/nonfiction\/book-review-code-and-codex-by-yoon-ha-lee\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Code and Codex<\/i> by Yoon Ha Lee"},"content":{"rendered":"

Code and Codex<\/b><\/i>
\nYoon Ha Lee
\nHardcover \/ eBook
\nISBN: 978-1668059975
\nSaga Press, October 2026, 304 pages<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Greetings, readers, and welcome back to another book review! This month it\u2019s time to put on your thinking caps, open up your dictionaries, and prepare to alter your conceptual framework of etymological reality\u2014that\u2019s right, we\u2019re diving deep into the lakes of language in Code and Codex<\/i> by Yoon Ha Lee!<\/p>\n

So, before I get into the meat of the review, I have to be very clear up front\u2014this is a book that requires your undivided attention and is going to expand your vocabulary in ways you\u2019ll probably need to stretch for. This is a book written by someone who loves words, as well as shifting perspectives, temporal hijinks, corkscrew metaphors, and esoteric ephemera, so don\u2019t expect a light beach read. Seriously. You will need to put in effort to keep up, but for those willing to do so, it\u2019s totally worth it.<\/p>\n

Okay, now that I\u2019ve scared most of you off, let\u2019s talk about why I absolutely loved Code and Codex<\/i>.<\/p>\n

The plot synopsis you see on the official publisher page is, I won\u2019t say, \u201cwatered down to avoid scaring people off,\u201d but it definitely does not do justice to the actual story Yoon Ha Lee has crafted. The bulk of the chapters are told from the perspective of Valentina, a censorship commissar in The Censorate, a galactic empire that cements its power by controlling the very transmission of information itself while ruthlessly exporting its own language as a vehicle of subjugation. Val serves as the Swan, an assassin leader of linguistic redactors, subservient only to Aurelia, the Peacock, whose panopticon gaze can gaze out through any of The Censorate\u2019s subjects\u2019 eyes, and whose words can rewrite reality itself. Unfortunately for Valentina, Aurelia also desires the power of the Basilisk, an ancient, imprisoned military commander capable of killing anything he sees, and who recently made his escape from his black hole prison. Aurelia is used to getting her way regardless of what it costs others, so Val must track down the Basilisk and bring him to heel, no matter what Valentina privately thinks of the wisdom of this course of action.<\/p>\n

Oh, and all of this takes place amidst an empire that runs on eldritch organization of information, conceptual battles against absence itself using spaceships made of ink and paper and forbidden words, and what may or may not be a secret order of AI servants working towards self-actualization. There\u2019s also a winged cat with an insect-eating problem, sentient other<\/i> starships (not the book kind), unreliable narratorship sprinkled heavily between seemingly unrelated vignettes that nevertheless reveal critically important story beats, and a twisted set of romantic relationships that most closely resemble a Mandelbrot set, so I guess what I\u2019m trying to say is there is a lot<\/i> going on here.<\/p>\n

Reading Code and Codex<\/i> reminded me a lot of Arkady Martine\u2019s A Memory Called Empire<\/i> mashed up with China Mi\u00e9ville\u2019s Perdido Street Station<\/i>, in that there is an obvious meta-textual story being told about the weight of empire and tyranny, but there is also an unabashed love of words and how they can be arranged in ways most people would simply never consider, all in service to present the reader with a fantastic (in the original sense of the word) landscape that is simply A Thing That Is Normal To Those Who Live There. The world-building in this book is absolutely sublime in how ridiculously baroque it is and the contortions it crams language into, but at its core, everything bends towards a very simple and timeless tale of control, desire, love, and loss.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, while I could continue waxing poetic about the many, many<\/i> layers of Code and Codex<\/i>, I am limited in the amount of words I am allotted (much like The Censorate\u2019s linguists), and I also don\u2019t want to spoil anything about the journey, so all I can finish with is this.<\/p>\n

Yoon Ha Lee has crafted something thornily transcendent, an embrace of letters and literacy that cannot be fully comprehended in a single reading. This is a book that rewards the patient excavation of meaning, a statue chiseled piece by agonizing piece from building blocks we all have access to, and it is absolutely worth the time spent uncovering its manifold depths. If you put in the work this piece demands, you will be rewarded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewer Chris Kluwe recommends\u00a0Code and Codex<\/em> for a book to really sink your teeth into.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27149,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[145,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-nonfiction","section-nonfiction"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBook Review: Code and Codex by Yoon Ha Lee - Lightspeed Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?p=36734\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Book Review: Code and Codex by Yoon Ha Lee - 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I\u2019m curious how and why you got started. What led up to sending off your first round of stories?<\/p>\n<p>Thanks! I appreciate the kind words. I feel like there are always other people doing more and accomplishing great things. But I\u2019m glad to have written what I\u2019ve written.<\/p>\n<p>As for how I got started, I think the short version is that I was working as an attorney and always hoped to try my hand at writing one day. I wrote for myself for most of my life as a hobby but never had the time or energy to devote to it as a career. But things started to shift after my kids were born. I ended up taking care of them full-time for a variety of reasons. It was very rewarding and might have been a temporary arrangement. But it was also around that same time that the COVID-19 lockdowns hit, and what might have been temporary became a new status quo. With everything feeling so tenuous and precarious, I think that felt like the time to try writing more methodically, i.e. not self-rejecting, submitting to magazines regularly. Gradually, after a lot of rejections, I started getting published, bit by bit, until I formed a body of work.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">Shifting gears to \u201cJempo,\u201d what was the writing process like for this one?<\/p>\n<p>This one started with the character of Aga\u2014someone who doesn\u2019t quite operate like others in her world. She thinks differently and is slightly out-of-step because of it. I find something interesting about a character like that, her commitment to her work.<\/p>\n<p>But sometimes that isn\u2019t enough to carry a story on its own, or I have a mental block in talking about that kind of character. So, my way around that is to use the perspective of another character as a throughway. My narrators and my \u201cmain characters\u201d are often not one and the same. Ruth became that narrator\/perspective character for me in \u201cJempo.\u201d Someone slightly more relatable, if less sympathetic. Her goals are more practical and tangible and ordinary. It\u2019s really her observations about Aga, the inherent tension that arises from their differing approaches, that gave me more to explore in the story.<\/p>\n<p>And with characters like Aga and Ruth, the plot beats tend to write themselves. I think Ruth\u2019s central decision about whether to use illicit information to her advantage was always a big part of the story. But there were versions that didn\u2019t involve her revealing Jempo\u2019s injuries to the man trying to rig the games. Or versions where the girls rematched in the final round. The version I settled on, though, I think, heightens the hollow sense Ruth is left with at the end of the tournament. She uses every angle she can, including ones she shouldn\u2019t, wins by an empty default, and then doesn\u2019t seem to improve herself in any lasting way. There’s a real thudding feeling for Ruth I get every time I read the end of that story. That final contrast between her on the one hand, and Aga and Jempo on the other, what Ruth seems to lack. Just a real \u201coof\u201d sort of feeling. I want it to go another way for her. But that version felt like the one that fit most.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">I am fascinated by the choice to name these matches \u201cdialectics,\u201d a term that suggests more conversational philosophy than gladiatorial spectacle. It pairs in a really interesting way with what seems to be the central conflict between Ruth and Aga over why they compete and what their\u00a0goals are. I am admittedly a writer looking at everything through a writer\u2019s filter, but I couldn\u2019t help but think about\u00a0how some creators remain focused on creating for\u00a0the love of creation itself\u00a0while others are climbing rungs, always intent on the next goal or landmark. I obviously have my own biases here, but I wonder if you could unpack your thinking around the choice to use \u201cdialectics\u201d?<\/p>\n<p>I think you\u2019re on to something. I try not to tie my stories to one meaning in case readers look up these interviews later. So the difference in mindset between Ruth and Aga could apply to other things. Any kind of competition, sport, or act of creation, has that potential to divide people and their approaches. But I\u2019d be lying if I said that the reasons I create, or others create, weren\u2019t on my mind in some way. There are definitely some aspects of writing that could apply when looking at Ruth and Aga.<\/p>\n<p>As for the choice of \u201cdialectic\u201d for the name of the game, I think that is definitely part of that idea. People in conversation, testing their values and philosophies. We\u2019re told there are multiple ways of winning the competition. At least two: the assembly of rings and direct, physical domination. But there are potentially more formats that are alluded to (duo, teams, etc.). I think the implication is that there might be more approaches out there. I also think of Ruth and Aga as two representative types. But anyone who creates or competes has a mixture of motives. I don\u2019t think this fully answers anything you asked, other than to say, I wanted the dialectic to have the connotations you picked up on! So that\u2019s great!<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">I love the elegant confidence of the world-building in this story. You offer just enough to hint at a much larger, more lived-in setting, but leave out so many details that could bog it down. Do you have any tips for how to find the balance?<\/p>\n<p>Thanks. I appreciate that. I think the balance is different for every story, and I\u2019m not convinced I always get it right. Sometimes, I load on too much information. Sometimes (often?), I strip out too much. Readers differ, too, about what feels obvious and heavy-handed versus what is inscrutable and frustrating.<\/p>\n<p>I guess my general advice (if any) is that I try to think up a lot about the world of the story, but I plan on scrapping most of it. I try to scale back the information as much as possible, unless it\u2019s directly relevant to the story at hand. Backstories, mechanics, little details, are usually taken out. I think however much you think you need to take out, most of the time, it\u2019s worth taking out a percentage point or two more.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJempo\u201d is a bit of an outlier, though, and maybe more on the information-heavy side than most of what I write. Usually, my characters don\u2019t dwell on the mechanics of their world, because I think we don\u2019t really dwell on the mechanics of our own world day-to-day. But I think, in this instance, because the characters are competitors sizing each other up and discussing each other\u2019s techniques, it felt okay to break down their thoughts a little more. They seem like people who would discuss their m\u00e1quina and approaches in detail, so I let that guide where the conversations went. Again, not my typical method, but I had a lot of fun writing it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">Finally, what can Lightspeed readers expect from you next?<\/p>\n<p>I usually keep a running list of my latest publications in a bibliography\u00a0on my website (bit.ly\/4w39DjD). You can also find me on Bluesky, where I\u2019m mostly messing around and not talking about writing seriously, but I do try to keep people updated on my work there as well. If folks are interested in my work but prefer physical media, I also have a debut short story collection that came out last fall,\u00a0<i>Uncertain Sons and Other Stories<\/i>, which is available at Undertow Publications and wherever books are sold. I also might have something coming up to announce in the near future (maybe around the time this story drops), so stay tuned!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This one started with the character of Aga\u2014someone who doesn\u2019t quite operate like others in her world. She thinks differently and is slightly out-of-step because of it. I find something interesting about a character like that, her commitment to her work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27149,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[20,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-spotlight","category-nonfiction","section-author-spotlights"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Author Spotlight: Thomas Ha - Lightspeed Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/nonfiction\/author-spotlight-thomas-ha-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Author Spotlight: Thomas Ha - Lightspeed Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This one started with the character of Aga\u2014someone who doesn\u2019t quite operate like others in her world. 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Dj\u00e8l\u00ed Clark\u200b, Ken Liu, Hugh Howey, Seanan McGuire, Rebecca Roanhorse, Veronica Roth, Jeff Vandermeer, and more. The campaign \u200bends \u200bOctober 15\u200b, so back now!<\/strong><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Jempo took a deep bow on the iron platform.<\/p>\n<p>His body flopped forward, limbs like thick braided wire. No obvious weapons in his large and rubbery hands. Little digital eyes and a bright smile that lit the rounded ball he had for a head. More clown than competitor at first glance.<\/p>\n<p>His maquinista sat a few feet out of bounds: a pale young woman, hunched on the rec center floor. Her hair a matted mess, her posture like a curved ammonite shell. This was just the quality you came across in westside neighborhood tournaments, maybe.<\/p>\n<p>Ruth did her best not to laugh, out of professional respect.<\/p>\n<p>She normally stayed to watch the other prelim dialectics but decided not to bother. Many in the audience had already wandered away from the bleachers. She stopped by the registration desk to confirm her third prelim win and schedule for follow-up matches. It was a little after, when she was heading to catch the city bus, that she heard it from the hallway.<\/p>\n<p><i>Winner: Jempo<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Through the gym doors, she saw a spectator on the bleachers standing very still, like they couldn\u2019t look away from the court.<\/p>\n<p>Jempo grinned and flopped over into another bow, something glinting in his rubbery hands. His competitor, a squat club-wielding figure in armor, seemed oddly unscathed, and the other maquinista looked aghast.<\/p>\n<p>Ruth wondered, in passing, what she missed in the dialectic, but not enough to look more closely.<\/p>\n<p>That evening, in her apartment, she listened to the rise and fall of motor engines and the rumbling clacks of the nearby elevated train while conditioning her m\u00e1quina, sharpening Galath\u2019s blade-hands and rewiring an area on his thigh that had been battered, wiping excess fluid at the edges of Galath\u2019s eyes. And as she did, she thought again about that strange player, Jempo, for some reason, and imagined that girl, too, the one who sat curled up on the floor, staring so carefully at every detail of the iron platform.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>The girl\u2019s name was Aga, Ruth learned, when they matched for the first time.<\/p>\n<p>The following Saturday, the tournament continued at the Matheson rec center. Like dozens of others in the apartment readying for work, Ruth got up before dawn and took the city bus to the westside. She spent the opening hour taking pieces of Galath out of her pack and assembling him. Tightening his joints, conditioning his plate metal. She checked his weight and height with the officials. He looked stern, sharp, and ready, blade-hands resting at his sides.<\/p>\n<p>In the hall, outside the double doors, she saw a silver-haired man talking happily with officials. Someone from the Matheson family overseeing the event, she suspected. She tried to catch his eye, but he glided past without so much as a glance.<\/p>\n<p>On the matchup boards, she saw Galath\u2019s name, and across from it, Jempo.<\/p>\n<p>The girls shook hands just before the game.<\/p>\n<p>Aga\u2019s hand, though delicate, was leathery and callused.<\/p>\n<p>Ruth decided she would make this quick. She didn\u2019t want to use too many move sets if she didn\u2019t have to. There were a few maneuvers she hoped to keep unseen until the quarterfinals. She marched Galath to her edge of the circular raised platform. Jempo tottered to his side. Behind them, on several iron platforms across the rec center, other dialectics were underway.<\/p>\n<p>At the blow of the whistle, Galath sprang forward, right blade-hand extended into a perfect stabbing point, which went through nothing but air.<\/p>\n<p>Jempo was fast\u2014much faster than Ruth had anticipated. The goofy-looking player bounced and began running away. Trying to create space and regroup, maybe, Ruth assumed. She tapped at her control bar and sent Galath chasing after him, swinging one blade, then the other, at Jempo\u2019s back. Nothing. Nothing.<\/p>\n<p>Then Jempo picked something up from the boundary of the platform, something that had been embedded within the ironwork\u2014a thin hoop about the size of a dinner plate. Was he, was his maquinista, were they\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. ? He dashed over to another edge of the platform, and Ruth came to realize what was happening: Jempo wasn\u2019t going to fight her m\u00e1quina. He wasn\u2019t going to fight at all.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, he reached down for a second iron piece on the platform, smaller than the first; he snapped the two rings together, one inside the other, causing the inner ring to rotate slowly.<\/p>\n<p>Across the way, the other girl, Aga, hunched forward, inspecting the iron platform for more embedded rings. They were never in quite the same place, since the iron platforms were designed to rotate and reconfigure between each match. The rings in the patternwork were only there because of tradition, Ruth thought. More decorative than functional. But the spinning rings in Jempo\u2019s hands brightened, and she grew nervous.<\/p>\n<p>Ruth flinched when Jempo got his large hands on a third piece, snapping it in with the others. The gyroscopic device they formed made a noise, like an almost melodic thrum, a sound she was hearing for the first time. How many were there? Five? Seven? Could he actually get them all before the end of the round?<\/p>\n<p>Ruth felt herself begin to panic, something that never happened in the middle of a match. Her thoughts kept slipping from m\u00e1quina to m\u00e1quina to the other girl. She did not know what else to do. She let Galath loose, forgetting about holding any maneuvers back.<\/p>\n<p>Just one quick tap of the control bar, and Galath extended his blade-hand beyond its seeming limit, an extra ten inches from the end of his wrist. One of his three hidden move sets. The point punctured Jempo in the back, causing a slight flutter of sparks. The strange player whirred his head and blinked twice before toppling in a heap. Jempo did not shift before the ten count, and the official blew the whistle, confirming the KO.<\/p>\n<p><i>Winner: Galath<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat was that?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ruth marched to where the other maquinista, Aga, was bent over Jempo. The girl was using a tool set to seal the stab wound in Jempo\u2019s back, after, it appeared, she\u2019d already replaced damaged motor parts near the spine. She wiped blood and biomass tissue out of the wound. Jempo lay smiling in his nonoperational state.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSorry?\u201d Aga did not look up from the damaged player.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo one does the rings. You know that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI do?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot sure if this is a joke, but some of us are trying. You\u2019re going to bring us down with that crap.\u201d Ruth didn\u2019t say fully what she meant, but she gestured to the other competitors, nearly all of whom were young or middle-aged men.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh.\u201d The maquinista pushed some of her tangled hair out of her face, her eyes not quite meeting Ruth\u2019s. \u201cNo. It\u2019s very much not a joke. I\u2019m sorry if you thought that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The clumsy way the girl responded, the absolute lack of self-consciousness, made Ruth\u2019s anger peter out. Aga then smiled politely, deferentially, but it was like she had to force her face to make the expression.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAre you new?\u201d Ruth asked. \u201cHow many pro medals do you have? Semi-pro? Any? Any at all?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh. I don\u2019t know,\u201d Aga answered, and it seemed genuine, like the thought never occurred to her to keep track.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou don\u2019t know?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot exactly. Sorry. I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A painful silence followed. Ruth was not sure what else to say or how to continue a conversation with someone so disinterested in her own standing among the maquinistas. She grew embarrassed, on both of their behalf, and went off abruptly, trying to satisfy herself with the victory, if nothing else. But it left her with an unfinished and agitated feeling, like there were words she couldn\u2019t remember, words that would bother her if she could not say them aloud.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>For the rest of the morning, Ruth thought about that girl, Aga, and her m\u00e1quina, Jempo, despite her best efforts to focus on other things. Even during a couple of follow-up prelim rounds when she was supposed to be concentrating on the dialectic, it came to her again. The detached, almost dismissive way Aga reacted to being confronted, how unworried she was. That was what irritated Ruth the most.<\/p>\n<p>She sat outside the rec center after morning rounds, eating a sandwich she had brought with her and watching a violinist performing across the street. Still in her head, Aga, Jempo. Their goofy faces, lingered.<\/p>\n<p><i>It\u2019s very much not a joke. I\u2019m sorry if you thought that<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>What an annoying way to put it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCongratulations.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Someone intruded on Ruth\u2019s unproductive thoughts. It was a man in a boater hat and light sport coat who waved from the rec center steps. He felt like someone she\u2019d probably seen, hovering here and there at the tournament, maybe other tournaments, too. The thought crossed her mind that he might be someone with a contract to offer. So Ruth straightened and wiped her face, cleared her throat, and turned to engage him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThank you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA cut-build. I liked the move at the end. Good idea to hide range. Never want to show full capability unless you have to. I assume you\u2019ll modify again before the later rounds.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He sat very close. Something about the stranger smelled, not off, but heavily perfumed. Ruth couldn\u2019t see into the lenses of his sunglasses, but she suspected he was recording with them and turned her face slightly away to avoid direct capture.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re not from this neighborhood,\u201d he asserted, without waiting for her to reply. \u201cEastside money. You\u2019re hiding it. But I know the bearing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know what you mean,\u201d Ruth said coolly. \u201cThis was the only game open this month. So I came by.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI like it,\u201d he replied. \u201cIt shows a willingness to travel. Pick up matches where they crop up. Pro medals. Build a record. You want to move fast. And that\u2019s good.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDoesn\u2019t everyone?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019d be surprised.\u201d The man in the boater hat turned, almost like he knew the unkempt girl, Aga, was crossing the street, Jempo bouncing alongside at her waist. She passed the performing violinist and dropped a few coins in his basket. Ruth followed the girl with her eyes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re aiming for duo matches, I take it? Then team after that?\u201d the man asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSure. Regional circuits. Sponsors. The path.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe path, of course.\u201d The man touched his beard and then his lips. \u201cSlower ways and faster ways on the path, to be sure. Many faster, here and there, if you know the right people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, and many pretending to be the right people, too,\u201d Ruth replied with some disappointment. She knew if he were someone who was going to make a firm offer of business, he\u2019d have done it by now.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow\u2019s that?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHucksters, grifters, whatever you prefer. Like you said, you\u2019re hiding it well. But I know the bearing, too.\u201d She wrapped up her things. \u201cGot to go.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOuch.\u201d The stranger smiled, but there wasn\u2019t anything particularly friendly in the smile. \u201cWe\u2019ll keep talking,\u201d he said with peculiar certainty.<\/p>\n<p>Ruth picked up her pack and headed in the direction where Jempo had last bounced away.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>She told herself it was boredom, restlessness before afternoon matches, that made her think of trailing Aga and Jempo during the break. Maybe avoiding the men in the games, like the one in the boater hat. But part of her knew it was more than that, though she couldn\u2019t explain the impulse.<\/p>\n<p>The people in the little neighborhood all seemed to know Aga, from what Ruth could observe. They looked at her with familiarity and a bit of condescension. Ah, it\u2019s that girl. That strange girl. Like everyone had a little sigh prepared, just in case they had to steel themselves to make way for her on the sidewalk or maybe take an extra second if they needed to explain something to her.<\/p>\n<p>Aga, from what Ruth saw, didn\u2019t mind or even notice. She and Jempo hurried forward, not registering the looks. She hustled into a small bar and cafe near a not-so-busy newsstand. Some man was yelling at her to move quickly for the lunch rush while she donned an apron. Jempo waddled somewhere between the front and back of house, bussing dishes. It was very odd, Ruth thought, working with her m\u00e1quina that way. But Aga must have had the control bar tight in her hand and kept almost seamless simultaneous movement going between her activity and Jempo\u2019s. The customers seemed used to it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCan I get a coffee?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne coffee. Yes, ma\u2019am.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It was clear from the way Aga rushed by that she didn\u2019t even recognize Ruth from their earlier match. Ruth would normally have been offended, maybe snapped her displeasure, but she was distracted by what was going on at the tables, with Aga and Jempo. It was the way they were both moving about. And it wasn\u2019t automated or some secondary routine in the m\u00e1quina. Aga was taking orders, nodding, and moving a pen on pad with one hand, and underneath it, with the control bar, directing Jempo to wipe surfaces down and move place settings. Something about the fluidity with which the m\u00e1quina and maquinista coordinated settled something for Ruth. This wasn\u2019t some trick or wanton amateur destructively mucking things about in the games. She realized this girl, whoever she was, was quietly and steadily skilled at what she was doing. And that changed Ruth\u2019s perception, like a crooked painting that otherwise would have bothered her had been fixed with just a slight tilt.<\/p>\n<p>When Aga returned with the coffee, Ruth asked a real question\u2014what she really wanted to understand, and it had nothing to do with pro medals or standing or anything like that. \u201cWhy the rings?\u201d she asked. \u201cIf it\u2019s really no joke.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The other girl, Aga, locked eyes with her for the first time, like she had just woken and was newly aware of who she was speaking to just then. And there was a steadiness and vibrancy in the look, something unexpectedly electric, with a brightness that almost made Ruth flinch.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, it\u2019s you,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes. It\u2019s me,\u201d Ruth replied. She stirred sugar into the coffee but did not look at the cup. She felt she had to be serious for some reason. Like if she broke her gaze, Aga would drift away again. \u201cI\u2019m sorry for being\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. sharp with you, after the dialectic. You said it wasn\u2019t a joke. You were trying to win by assembling the rings. You were going to put together the pieces. Knock Galath out with a directed pulse from the ring device instead of head-on combat, I assume. Why?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh.\u201d Aga blinked. \u201cIt\u2019s the way the game was meant to be played.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot for a long time. Not in our lifetime. Not since the \u201920s.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut it was the original format. Outmaneuvering to assemble the rings, using pieces of the platform. Thoughtfulness. Grace. Not cheap shots and violence. It was always meant to be a creative performance.\u201d Aga\u2019s hand was still moving her control bar under her tray, directing Jempo to carry a plate to another table while she spoke. \u201cThat\u2019s the way it was done. That\u2019s the way I want to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s boring. And audiences don\u2019t like it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Aga reached down for the cream on the table and looked to Ruth, who nodded slightly. She poured it and stopped. She reached for the spoon, took it gently from Ruth\u2019s hand, and stirred.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSome say that. When fighting became the fashion, it became the thing to say. But audiences don\u2019t always know what they really want.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd you do?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo. I only know what I want. There\u2019s art in there, in all of it. What it takes to move, run the platform, create, complete something before getting knocked down. It doesn\u2019t always work. But when it works, there\u2019s nothing else like it. The effort and complexity. It used to mean something. Not everybody wants that, but I do. I want that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Aga was still stirring the coffee. Ruth almost asked another question and then hesitated. Now, she stayed facing the other girl, not because she wanted to seem serious, but because the cafe around them felt more muted. It was almost as though she had a sense of what it was like in Aga\u2019s head, where the noise of everything else had suddenly seemed turned down. There was a bubble, and if only briefly, Ruth was inside of it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo you want that?\u201d Aga asked.<\/p>\n<p>Before Ruth could reply, the man in the kitchens shouted something. Aga apologized and went to the back of house. The bubble was broken, popped. Ruth sat quietly and drank her coffee. When it was time to pay, she looked at her purse and paused. She was still not used to checking how much she had on her. She\u2019d forgotten she needed to cover bus fare back and the coffee might put her under. It was possible she could walk, but with Galath\u2019s weight in the pack\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. She turned the coins over in her hands.<\/p>\n<p>A strange smiling face, Jempo, hovered in front of her.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re good,\u201d Aga whispered as she walked by with a tray. \u201cI took care of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ruth shifted uneasily. She finished the coffee and left quietly, murmuring a terse, \u201cThanks,\u201d before slipping out the door.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>The quarterfinals were posted outside the rec center a few hours later. The top eight included Ruth and a handful of maquinistas and m\u00e1quinas she had seen in the prelims, like Aga and Jempo. She and Aga were in different seeds and not matched this time, which was strangely disappointing.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, Ruth\u2019s round was against a heavy bruiser type, and it went very quickly. She moved Galath around his opponent\u2019s back and took a deep slice at the shoulder, disabling the other m\u00e1quina\u2019s arm. Then one of the legs, before a clean hit in the middle that took him out. While the attendants cleaned up the blood, Ruth looked for Aga. The matches were staggered so that Aga\u2019s had just finished earlier, and there weren\u2019t many spectators at her end. Word must have gotten around that Jempo was an odd one. Yet Ruth was unsurprised when she checked the boards.<\/p>\n<p><i>Winner: Jempo<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAre you doing anything after this?\u201d Aga and Jempo were waiting for Ruth outside in the dark. The streetlights were on, glass buzzing as the sun dripped away and the city cooled. That odd m\u00e1quina grinned at the girl\u2019s waist, weird little round head peering up, drops of liquid oozing around its eyes before Aga wiped them away.<\/p>\n<p>Ruth was planning to head home and get some rest before the semifinals. In the distance, she saw the silver-haired man get into a black motor, too late to reach.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019ll be fine. I saw you. You\u2019ll win,\u201d Aga said casually, like she was reading something off one of the brick walls.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh. Glad you think so. Feel free to let the Mathesons know.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYour technical precision.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s your talent. Your technical precision. In our match, you moved very precisely. A lot of practice, rhythm. You knew exactly how far your m\u00e1quina\u2019s arm extended. You knew which move set to use when. Precision. I don\u2019t have that. But you do. You spend a lot of time, maybe all of your time, practicing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh.\u201d Ruth cleared her throat. \u201cWell, I have to, if I want to make it to the finals. For the pro medal. That will be my tenth.\u201d Tenth medal meant bigger tournaments. Finding a partner for duo matches. And the rest. The path.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy what?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou asked \u2018why\u2019 about the rings, I\u2019m asking why about that. Why do you want that?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEveryone does.\u201d Ruth stopped, wondering how much more to say. She wasn’t sure if she\u2019d said it to anyone before, let alone another maquinista. \u201cAnd because I don\u2019t have a lot of time. My family, they don\u2019t really support this. They think this is silly entertainment. I\u2019ve got a year, maybe, to make something of this.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMake what?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA career. I\u2019ve got to get to the next level, or I\u2019ve got to find something else.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s the next level?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBigger dialectics. More money. Duo matches? Teams? Sponsorships? Aren\u2019t you doing the same? You don\u2019t want to play the same neighborhood tourneys forever, do you?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Aga furrowed her brow, like she\u2019d just heard something in another language and was trying to decipher it. She held nothing back in her face, and it was clear that she thought that worrying about those things was less important than the games themselves.<\/p>\n<p>Then sensing, perhaps, that she was about to unintentionally trample on something someone else cared about, and seeming like someone who was used to discovering a little too late that she\u2019d trampled on something, Aga forced a smile and then gestured at Ruth. \u201cAnyway, well, anyway,\u201d she strained her expressions the way she did in their first conversation, less like she did in the cafe, \u201cmaybe we should\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. let\u2019s go.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It could have been idle curiosity, or the months alone in the run-down apartment and not going anywhere but tournaments that were getting to her, but Ruth agreed to follow Aga and the bouncing, strange-looking m\u00e1quina, through that part of the city. They went by a three-block park as the air sharpened, past a sitting guitarist for whom Aga dropped a coin. Then over a stone bridge to an area of town that looked darker and more cramped between the buildings. Ruth hesitated, but Aga seemed comfortable and unworried, guiding her to a lively street where a number of motor cars were arriving and pulling away, men and women spilling out and into various building fronts.<\/p>\n<p>They went down steps into some kind of basement bar, filled with smoke and noise and heat. Ruth felt self-conscious that she wasn\u2019t dressed for going out, but Aga waved her off and led her around bodies and toward a back corner. She grabbed Ruth\u2019s arm and brought her next to the bar. The older women working there seemed to know Aga and nodded at her, maybe rolling their eyes slightly, like oh, there she is.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJempo likes the music.\u201d Aga patted the round head of her m\u00e1quina. Jempo\u2019s digital eyes blinked and his head tilted toward the stage. Aga pointed toward Ruth\u2019s pack, where Galath was folded up. \u201cWho was your m\u00e1quina, before?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For as long as Ruth had been a part of the games, she\u2019d never known anyone to talk about the m\u00e1quina that way. The cadavers used to donate muscle tissue were almost always anonymous. She glanced down at Galath\u2019s head through the opening of the bag and wiped away some liquid seeping out around his face.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy would I know that?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSometimes people know. It can work well if the maquinista is bonded with the m\u00e1quina. More meaning, I think, in what they create together. His name is Galath, right? How did you choose it?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI didn\u2019t. That was the name he had when I bought him. Maybe the donor chose. I don\u2019t really know. Did you choose the name Jempo?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Aga nodded. \u201cI had trouble talking when I was younger. Jempo was a garbled word I used to mispronounce. The world moves at a certain pace; he and I move at another. It felt like it fit. I think you\u2019re going to like the music here. It\u2019s Jempo\u2019s favorite.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHm.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not like what we do with the m\u00e1quinas. But it\u2019s not unlike it either. You\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The pianist on stage had been chattering with the audience and wiping his forehead under the hot stage lights. His companions on bass and drums watched his count, a-one, a-two, and away they went. The pianist\u2019s hands bounced, erratic, syncopated, up and down the keys while the drummer rat-tatted the cymbals in quick rhythm. The bassist plucked and nodded along with the drummer and kept time, his fingers bounding up and down the neck. The energy of the pianist carried a melody up and around and down the room, the music drifting in and over the smoke.<\/p>\n<p>The speed and strangeness of it reminded Ruth of something\u2014of Jempo, during the match, the previous day. The twisty and turny manner in which he moved about the platform, it had something of that kind of spark, the way it wound about in ways that seemed surprising yet natural.<\/p>\n<p>Watching the musicians, watching Jempo, watching Aga, her head nodding along, lost in the music, Ruth felt herself let go a little bit too. A relaxedness, an openness she had not felt in some time. She remembered this feeling, something from younger days, something spontaneous and unexpected she\u2019d felt only a few times with other people, so strong that it usually went a couple of ways. She knew she could become drawn into Aga if they grew closer, wholly subsumed\u2014or she would come to hate the other girl beyond all comprehension. That was the way these things tended to go.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBeautiful.\u201d Aga closed her eyes as though she felt nothing but the sounds of the room.<\/p>\n<p>Outside the club, later, when they emerged into the street, Ruth thought of thanking Aga for the night off, the little break from other things that awaited the next day. She probably would have said it too, if they weren\u2019t interrupted by a couple of people tooling along the sidewalk.<\/p>\n<p>Two men approached, at first acting like they were in conversation and about to pass the young women. They had a very heavy smell, a perfumed smell, that announced their presence more than their shapes. Then one of them turned to raise a small blackjack, like he was going to take a swing at the girls. Ruth almost screamed before a large rubbery hand slapped the weapon away. It clattered into the road.<\/p>\n<p>She saw Jempo bounce into one of the men, feet first. Smooth and kinetic, the m\u00e1quina bounded forward then around, wheeling his body out of the way of a firm kick from the second man. Jempo twisted, and his floppy arms cracked into one of them. The first man toppled and smashed his face into the cement; blood poured from his forehead. The second man gripped Jempo around the shoulders, trying and failing to get a handle on him. But the m\u00e1quina battered him in the gut, those large hands clasped like a directed ram, knocking the wind out of the man to the point where he looked very close to throwing up. Ruth had trouble seeing in the darkness in the moments after, but it looked like the man had just enough steadiness about him to reach for a knife in his coat pocket. The blade popped.<\/p>\n<p>As soon as it did, Jempo\u2019s body opened, like an animal changing posture. Ruth could not see everything from behind the m\u00e1quina, but the head and chest of the m\u00e1quina folded back. Something that looked almost like a limb reached out from the shell\u2014some long thing that did not seem fully to have the edges or definition of the living, like a thickened bloodstain flowing through the air. It grabbed the man\u2019s face and tightened.<\/p>\n<p>The man slashed wildly. In the shadows, it looked like the blade got a part of the inside of Jempo, at least one slice. The m\u00e1quina howled, a deep yet surreal chittering sound, and he flung the man against a nearby wall.<\/p>\n<p>The man fell in a heap, went still, then began to pull at the ground, his arms and legs swimming on the cement as he tried to rise. Jempo kept advancing toward him. His companion, the first man whose forehead was pouring blood from a gash above his eyes, stumbled to grab the other one off the ground. The two men, one dragging the other, staggered back down the avenue, with Jempo following slowly in their wake until they seemed out of sight.<\/p>\n<p>Aga was very still when all this happened. If she had been moving the control bar, Ruth had not even noticed.<\/p>\n<p>In the distance, Jempo closed his round head and his chest, turned, and smiled at the girls, as though he had done nothing more than finish a little dance. The side of his body, under the left arm, dripped blood on the sidewalk.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>Ruth didn\u2019t know who the men were or why they came. She assumed they were petty criminals, at first. But when Aga escorted her to the bus stop, both girls shaken by what had happened, she made a few comments about \u201cmoney men.\u201d People in the neighborhood who were always meddling with the dialectics. Some had apparently told her to take a dive in the quarterfinals. But \u201cI don\u2019t take requests, and they all know it,\u201d Aga said very matter-of-factly. She thought it was possible those men were with those people, but there was no knowing for sure. \u201cThe tournaments sometimes work differently out here. You\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And Ruth did see, the next morning, when preparing for the next match. She went straight to assembling and conditioning Galath, just as she always would, trying to focus on the ritual of the preparations. But in her mind, she kept imagining the night before, how quickly and decisively Jempo moved, the way he had overtaken those men. The frightening aggressiveness of it all. Aga apparently always had the ability to play that way, if she really wanted. She just didn\u2019t use it on Galath in the prelims.<\/p>\n<p>If they matched once more in the finals, Ruth realized, there was no guarantee Galath could handle something like that.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGood luck to you.\u201d She looked up, and it was the man in the boater hat and sport coat, from the other day. \u201cI heard your next round is a player called Karkin. Cut-build like yours.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes. I\u2019d like to prepare for that next round now, if you don\u2019t mind.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI understand. You\u2019re going to want to prepare thoroughly. He\u2019s a big one, don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve seen him in the other rounds.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHaven\u2019t had the opportunity, no.\u201d Ruth pretended to be busy with the m\u00e1quina.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cInteresting design. Two big claws. He almost always goes slightly over the limit at weigh-in. When that happens, they usually remove one claw to make weight.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFascinating.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat will make it look like his right side\u2019s open to attack. But it\u2019s something of a show.\u201d The man touched his beard and lips. \u201cThere\u2019s another claw on that side, hidden. Don\u2019t go for it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGet away from me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat I\u2019m really wondering,\u201d he continued, as though he didn\u2019t hear her, \u201cis who is going to make it through the other semifinal. You must be wondering that too. One of the m\u00e1quinas there is standard. Tough, but conventional. The other one, a lot stranger\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. so hard to predict.\u201d If his eyes were moving behind the dark sunglasses, she couldn\u2019t see them. \u201cHeard he might be injured, though.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It wasn\u2019t posed as a question, but Ruth could feel the question moving underneath the surface of the words. She hesitated and could not bring herself to look at the man in the boater hat. Something crept inside of her thoughts, like a strange sensation. And then she thought again of the night before. The bloodstain stretching out into the air, and the sound it made. She did not consider herself fearful, and maybe it wasn\u2019t fear, but something like a quiet and brittle doubt. There was no way she could see the way through something like that.<\/p>\n<p>Ruth touched Galath, under one of his arms, the left side, where Jempo had been bleeding at the end of the night. The man in the boater hat watched and didn\u2019t say anything indicating that he understood.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBreak some legs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ruth knew she should have called the referees over or said something to someone. Either at that time, or later at the weigh-in, when everything went just as the man had said. Karkin removed the claw, just like that. Made that side of his body open to attack, just like that. But still, she said nothing to anyone about what she knew.<\/p>\n<p>The rec center was split with a giant temporary divider. The other semifinal match was on the other side. She could hear the sound of Jempo\u2019s match but pushed it from her mind, focusing only on the iron platform in front of her, on Galath\u2019s blade-hands poised, and Karkin shuffling on short legs across the way, vulnerable clawless side slightly tilted forward.<\/p>\n<p>Waiting there, listening for the blow of the whistle, she saw next to Galath\u2019s foot, in the iron work, a hoop-like ring, embedded. She thought briefly about the notion of picking it up, maybe another ring piece, and another, if she could maneuver Galath around the other player. It was a silly, childish thought she immediately surrendered when the dialectic began.<\/p>\n<p>It was over in seven minutes.<\/p>\n<p>Galath feinted toward the vulnerable side. Karkin lashed out with another weapon folded beneath his underside, the hidden claw. Galath went the other way and jammed one hand right under Karkin\u2019s head. Another in the gut. Fluid spurted on the iron platform as the m\u00e1quina pulled sideways and wobbled. Ruth tapped the control bar, again, one stab to the front. Another, to the other side. Karkin screamed. His maquinista groaned with frustration. Ruth kept him turning, shuffling, swiping with his claws. She wanted the audience to lean in, so she let one of the claws get a light hit on Galath\u2019s shoulder. Just a little wound, to make things more interesting. Galath bled.<\/p>\n<p>Karkin went for another grab and managed to slide a claw around one of Galath\u2019s wrists. Galath\u2019s hand broke off with an audible snap, and the crowd gasped.<\/p>\n<p>Ruth directed Galath to spin around, a little influence of Jempo, maybe. A second tap of the control bar, and she used one of his three hidden move sets. Galath\u2019s remaining arm extended, the blade stretching out thirteen inches, sliding in one unimpeded slice across Karkin\u2019s throat. Operating fluid rained down on the iron, before his inevitable collapse.<\/p>\n<p>The crowd shouted and cheered.<\/p>\n<p>Ruth took it all in.<\/p>\n<p>Over her shoulder, just over the divider, she could see on the ceiling a brilliant flash, and the other side of the rec center where Jempo\u2019s match was happening went silent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>She found Aga in the maquinista area, where players were set aside for repairs. The girl was bent over with her tool set, cauterizing and rewiring pieces of Jempo\u2019s body. Her hair fell in her face, but she was too deep in concentration to push it away. The m\u00e1quina was misshapen and dented, his head bashed in. The digital eyes there flickered in and out.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, Aga. I\u2019m so sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Aga stemmed some bleeding in Jempo\u2019s side with gauze. She covered one of the pockets of his abdomen and used some kind of homemade sealant around other injuries. It was a few minutes before she realized Ruth was standing there. Much as she had before, she forced herself to smile.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019s going to be okay.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, that\u2019s good. I\u2019m so glad.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m going to need more insulation and a different size of plating to cover some of the wound. The other m\u00e1quina got in there and scrambled things. Maybe opened a previous injury.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s awful. It\u2019s terrible to lose that way, but at least he\u2019s going to be alright. That\u2019s what\u2019s important.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, we didn\u2019t lose.\u201d Aga cleaned blood off her tools.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe didn\u2019t lose. He did it.\u201d Aga touched Jempo\u2019s head.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh. Wow.\u201d Ruth froze.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe platform was bigger than it usually is, and in a configuration we\u2019d never seen before. It took us a while to find the starter ring, then the others after that. Jempo took a few big hits. Really slowed him down. But he still managed to assemble the pieces just before he fell. The whole device, assembled, one big pulse, right into the other m\u00e1quina\u2019s face. Knocked him right out in one blast. Jempo did it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s so\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. great.\u201d Ruth\u2019s stomach dropped.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDid you win too?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ruth blinked. \u201cOh. Me? I mean\u2014yes. Yes, we won.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSee,\u201d Aga said. \u201cI knew you would.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ruth felt a shakiness in her chest, and she wasn\u2019t sure if Aga was looking at her differently or if she was imagining things. The girl seemed sad, or disappointed, about something, but it could have been about Jempo\u2019s condition. It did not seem likely that she knew what Ruth had given up to the man in the boater hat, what she had revealed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI guess that means, you and I, we\u2019re up against each other in the finals.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think so.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think that\u2019s enough for Jempo. I notified them that we\u2019re withdrawing. I don\u2019t want to push him. It\u2019s just a tournament.\u201d Aga took one of Jempo\u2019s large hands in her own. \u201cWe learned a lot, and I think that’s a good note to end on. I\u2019d rather end things right.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEnd things right. Sure.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ruth felt an unexpected mixture of relief and bewilderment. Part of her was glad at the other girl\u2019s withdrawal. Part of her was distrustful, like this could be some ploy to lure her into letting down her guard. Could Aga really just walk away? Did it really mean that little to her, to pull out that late? To let Ruth win by default? She looked around the room until she found the man in the boater hat and sport coat, who was speaking to someone at the doors. They exchanged only a glance, but it communicated more than any of their conversations. He seemed satisfied with what he now knew about her, like he was reassured.<\/p>\n<p><i>Congratulations<\/i>, he mouthed with a smile.<\/p>\n<p>Ruth adjusted her clothes, coughed, and looked about, turning her attention to Galath for the first time since leaving the platform, to his wrist, weeping and bloody. She\u2019d forgotten to repair him. She moved clumsily to wrap and seal the leaking wound.<\/p>\n<p>As she knelt and worked, she felt the presence of someone moving behind her and over to the other girl. From the corner of her eye, she recognized the silver-haired man, the one with the Matheson family. He introduced himself politely to Aga and seemed keen to speak with her. From what Ruth could hear, he complimented her performance, said he hadn\u2019t seen a m\u00e1quina assemble the rings in quite a few years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI almost couldn\u2019t believe it, the pulse. Not going to forget it anytime soon,\u201d the Matheson man remarked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThank you,\u201d Aga said, sounding tired.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re Elling\u2019s daughter, aren\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, I am.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI thought I recognized you from the neighborhood,\u201d he said. \u201cHell of a musician, Elling. By far the best pianist on the westside. I used to listen to him down at June\u2019s a lot of nights actually, though that was a long time ago.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThank you. Yes, I\u2019m still there, at June\u2019s, all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was sorry to hear about him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh. You know. Thank you,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd I remember you, too. He\u2019d bring you around everywhere, even to those sets. He was very protective. No one would look at his daughter sideways while he was around.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know. Yes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think he would\u2019ve loved to see you play in that dialectic. I can\u2019t explain it. But I see him in it. I know it doesn’t make sense.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThank you. No. It does make sense.\u201d She smiled and looked at Jempo.<\/p>\n<p>Ruth would remember this moment, time and again, as the years went on. How calm and at peace Aga seemed, even without having won the tournament. The prospect of failure or success had no meaningful hold over her. And Ruth would remember, so keenly, how unsettling it felt to see that, how alien and incomprehensible it was. As though Aga perceived and enjoyed some invisible layer of the world with which Ruth could not interact. That there was something that Aga could experience, maybe the Matheson man could experience, that maybe others could experience, but that Ruth could never, and maybe would never, comprehend. There was an absence Ruth could not address, no matter how many tourney wins might follow. She would remember it when they announced Aga\u2019s withdrawal and presented the pro medal to her at the finishing ceremony, and she would remember it in the years after, when she won other tourneys, received other medals, traveled to other cities, other regions, and progressed on the path.<\/p>\n<p>She would imagine Jempo\u2019s balletic movements on the iron platform in that crummy little rec center. The off-kilter, unpredictable bounces, the swaying, sharp leaps. The girl behind him, watching the ground closely, every curve of the ironwork, studying the patterns with a small smile, with fixation and joy. And Ruth would wonder where they were, what they were doing, even as they reminded her of everything she wasn\u2019t, of a coldness within herself that would only grow over time.<\/p>\n<p>The silver-haired man finished speaking with Aga, shook her hand again, then helped her get Jempo up on his feet. The m\u00e1quina tottered and limped alongside his maquinista. He stopped and looked at Ruth, his digital eyes and crooked smile flickering. Jempo flopped forward into another uneven little bow. Aga looked back only once, and it was like she also recognized the differences between them. Something she clearly felt with everyone else and thought might not be there with Ruth. But there it was. Aga waved and left Ruth to her nominal victory.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIncredible match,\u201d the old man said. \u201cOne of a kind.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His eyes passed over Ruth without much regard, and he walked by her in silence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jempo took a deep bow on the iron platform. His body flopped forward, limbs like thick braided wire. No obvious weapons in his large and rubbery hands. Little digital eyes and a bright smile that lit the rounded ball he had for a head. More clown than competitor at first glance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27149,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[19,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fantasy","category-fiction","section-fantasy","status_flag-original"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Jempo - Lightspeed Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?p=36693\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Jempo - Lightspeed Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Jempo took a deep bow on the iron platform. 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Dj\u00e8l\u00ed Clark\u200b, Ken Liu, Hugh Howey, Seanan McGuire, Rebecca Roanhorse, Veronica Roth, Jeff Vandermeer, and more. The campaign \u200bends \u200bOctober 15\u200b, so back now!<\/strong><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>I\u2019m only doing maskwork until I find better, but there aren\u2019t many physical jobs to go around in Schr\u00f6dinger City. Most get done by gleaming machines, by hop-along bots and drone swarms. Luckily, maskwork needs a human touch\u2014and supposedly, village folk are better at it than the folk who grew up here. Could be. I always liked masks.<\/p>\n<p>Most days I wake up in the dark so I can get to the depot early and be near the front of the queue. There\u2019s a whole horde of us each morning, yawning and shivering in the cold, sometimes passing a caffeine stick up and down the line. I\u2019ve started recognizing faces, guessing village by accent. You can only do that on the way in, of course.<\/p>\n<p>Bells peal, the queue starts to move, and a drone comes along to scan for employment blits and electroprod the folk who don\u2019t have one. I still get a bit excited when I arrive at my work drawer, hear it whirring and printing.<\/p>\n<p>Who\u2019ll I be today?<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>In the village, the point of a mask was to be anonymous. People wore them for feast days, for parties\u2014and sometimes for punishments. I\u2019m speaking of the Saltman, of course, but if you grew up in the city you\u2019ve maybe never heard of him. He wears a baggy gray jumpsuit, and carries a switch, and only shows up when someone\u2019s done a real wrong.<\/p>\n<p>The best part is the Saltman\u2019s face: a crusty white lump with craters for eyes, grown from the calcified tears of all the sinners made to weep contrition. As a whelp, I was terrified of him\u2014but fascinated, too, by how he grew and shrank, by how he sometimes walked with a stiff-legged limp, sometimes with rolling hips.<\/p>\n<p>I was nine or so when I found his head in my grandma\u2019s cupboard, and found it to be a mask. I went to her wearing it, tasting my own hot breath and a hundred others, and startled her so bad she jumped. She explained the lotto system, then, the anonymity, the way a collective bogeyman can mete out justice without kicking off a cycle of grudges.<\/p>\n<p><i>Everyone\u2019s the Saltman eventually<\/i>, she said, not knowing how bad things would get, how soon the villages would empty out.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>Today I am Paul. No, wait, sorry\u2014Saul.<\/p>\n<p>The algorithm will tell me more as I need it. For now, I just have Saul\u2019s name and his face and the sort of clothes he would wear to do whatever it is I\u2019m about to do. I watch in the mirror as the freshly printed mask microadjusts to my skull, as its doughy pink mass ripples and reforms to capture all the precise ratios of jaw and nose and brow.<\/p>\n<p>Saul looks kind, with buttery black eyes and the wrinkles you get from laughing. He looks about the age my dad would be had he kept living, which means he\u2019s probably a couple decades older. People who can afford maskworkers can also afford telomere treatments, hair regrowth, dentistry.<\/p>\n<p>The drawer starts whirring again. There\u2019s always a mask and clothing, but sometimes it prints up objects, too, little props to help the scenario along. Today it prints a ribbon-topped giftbox.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>In the city, the point of a mask is to be everywhere at once. Most days I attend functions: The algorithm sends me to a gravity opera, or poetry recital, or sepak match, any place the client doesn\u2019t want to <i>be<\/i> but needs to be <i>seen<\/i>. I lean back in a comfortable seat, relish the chilled air, smile and nod and wave to whoever the algorithm says I ought to.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes I\u2019m seated beside a beautiful man or woman who looks uncomfortable or resigned, but more often my companion is smiling and nodding and waving just like I do. Sometimes I ignore the show and watch the rapt faces of the audience instead. I count the tell-tale ripples of false flesh, try to guess what percentage are maskworkers.<\/p>\n<p>The money\u2019s minimal, but the job is easy. Usually.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>This morning Saul needs to be seen at Stringam MediCenter, somewhere I\u2019d never get inside barefaced. They still scan the giftbox twice before they let me through. The staff is all bots, soft white pneumatic things, plus a live nurse at the desk who looks away when she spots me. My shining, fresh shoes clack against the hallway floor.<\/p>\n<p>The algorithm sends me to the last room on the left. The man inside is tiny, fragile-looking, with grease-paper skin and puffy veins that are fed by a whole web of tubes. He has Saul\u2019s dark eyes, or I suppose Saul has his.<\/p>\n<p>My first line of dialogue blinks in. \u201cHi, Dad.\u201d The mask deepens my voice as I read. \u201cMe again.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re dead,\u201d he gasps, through a collapsed, toothless mouth.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m thinking he\u2019s mixed up, how my grandma was at the end. Then I see my next line and realize I am not here to keep a dying father company.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s right,\u201d I say, dread churning, growing. \u201cYour son is dead. You drove him to it. Now watch.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The algorithm tells me to open the giftbox, so I do. Maybe Saul was kind. Whoever resurrected his face, whoever sent me here, is not. The gun is too flimsy to be real, and the bots let it through, but my hand still shakes as I put it under my chin.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot again,\u201d the old man moans.<\/p>\n<p>But maybe he deserves to be punished, to howl and whimper and writhe against his web of tubes. I can\u2019t look him in the eye, so I look across the bed to the window, where my reflection hovers between jagged skyscrapers. Saul\u2019s face seems pale and strangely grainy. I pull the toy trigger, <i>bang<\/i>, and my mask spatters itself red.<\/p>\n<p>The old man screams and screams like something broken, but eventually I\u2019m allowed to get up and leave. My legs tremble. My cheeks are slick with salt I can\u2019t wipe.<\/p>\n<p>But I\u2019m only doing maskwork until I find better, and tomorrow I\u2019ll be someone else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m only doing maskwork until I find better, but there aren\u2019t many physical jobs to go around in Schr\u00f6dinger City. Most get done by gleaming machines, by hop-along bots and drone swarms. Luckily, maskwork needs a human touch\u2014and supposedly, village folk are better at it than the folk who grew up here. Could be. I always liked masks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27149,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[19,5,220],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fantasy","category-fiction","category-flash-fiction","section-science-fiction","status_flag-original"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Maskwork Saltman Giftbox - Lightspeed Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/fiction\/maskwork-saltman-giftbox\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Maskwork Saltman Giftbox - Lightspeed Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I\u2019m only doing maskwork until I find better, but there aren\u2019t many physical jobs to go around in Schr\u00f6dinger City. 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I always liked masks.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/fiction\/maskwork-saltman-giftbox\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Lightspeed Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-09-24T10:01:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/LS-default-embed-graphic.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"576\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Leigh DeRouen\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/fiction\\\/maskwork-saltman-giftbox\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/fiction\\\/maskwork-saltman-giftbox\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Leigh DeRouen\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/c9239086e47db7180090b8afd674bdf0\"},\"headline\":\"Maskwork Saltman Giftbox\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-09-24T10:01:42+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/fiction\\\/maskwork-saltman-giftbox\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":1129,\"commentCount\":0,\"articleSection\":[\"Fantasy\",\"Fiction\",\"Flash Fiction\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/fiction\\\/maskwork-saltman-giftbox\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/fiction\\\/maskwork-saltman-giftbox\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/fiction\\\/maskwork-saltman-giftbox\\\/\",\"name\":\"Maskwork Saltman Giftbox - Lightspeed Magazine\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2026-09-24T10:01:42+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/c9239086e47db7180090b8afd674bdf0\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/fiction\\\/maskwork-saltman-giftbox\\\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/fiction\\\/maskwork-saltman-giftbox\\\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/fiction\\\/maskwork-saltman-giftbox\\\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Maskwork Saltman Giftbox\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/\",\"name\":\"Lightspeed Magazine\",\"description\":\"Science Fiction & Fantasy\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/c9239086e47db7180090b8afd674bdf0\",\"name\":\"Leigh DeRouen\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/d5bca77101579330d774784a5a32ee74eaebf1865a74c0ffdccd2f8b0d3bd641?s=96&d=monsterid&r=pg\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/d5bca77101579330d774784a5a32ee74eaebf1865a74c0ffdccd2f8b0d3bd641?s=96&d=monsterid&r=pg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/d5bca77101579330d774784a5a32ee74eaebf1865a74c0ffdccd2f8b0d3bd641?s=96&d=monsterid&r=pg\",\"caption\":\"Leigh DeRouen\"},\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/author\\\/leighadamantpress-com\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Maskwork Saltman Giftbox - Lightspeed Magazine","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/fiction\/maskwork-saltman-giftbox\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Maskwork Saltman Giftbox - Lightspeed Magazine","og_description":"I\u2019m only doing maskwork until I find better, but there aren\u2019t many physical jobs to go around in Schr\u00f6dinger City. 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He also enjoys spreadsheets, statistical curiosities, and brain teasers. Find his writing published or forthcoming in <em>Lightspeed<\/em>, <em>Scientific American<\/em>, <em>Strange Horizons<\/em>, <em>Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy & Science Fiction<\/em>, and the Toronto subway system, among many other venues. He is also a poetry editor at <em>Orion’s Belt<\/em>. Learn more at <a href=\"https:\/\/ian-li.com\">ian-li.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ian Li (he\/him) is a Chinese-Canadian economist, developer, writer, and poet, who started writing with no training after a lifetime of believing he was incapable of being creative. He also enjoys spreadsheets, statistical curiosities, and brain teasers. Find his writing published or forthcoming in Lightspeed, Scientific American, Strange Horizons, Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy & Science […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25713,"featured_media":37027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-authors"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Ian Li - Lightspeed Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/authors\/ian-li\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ian Li - Lightspeed Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ian Li (he\/him) is a Chinese-Canadian economist, developer, writer, and poet, who started writing with no training after a lifetime of believing he was incapable of being creative. He also enjoys spreadsheets, statistical curiosities, and brain teasers. Find his writing published or forthcoming in Lightspeed, Scientific American, Strange Horizons, Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy & Science […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/authors\/ian-li\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Lightspeed Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-09-22T03:17:22+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-09-22T03:17:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Ian-Li.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"300\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Madison Brake\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/authors\\\/ian-li\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/authors\\\/ian-li\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Madison Brake\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/f4c354e070126e8f5647b079a389ad11\"},\"headline\":\"Ian Li\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-09-22T03:17:22+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-09-22T03:17:44+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/authors\\\/ian-li\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":83,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/authors\\\/ian-li\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/Ian-Li.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Authors\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/authors\\\/ian-li\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/authors\\\/ian-li\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/authors\\\/ian-li\\\/\",\"name\":\"Ian Li - 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A woman returns to the site of an alien encounter with new friends who haven\u2019t been told the whole truth. Ghosts throw house parties and lure their fresh young neighbors into terrible situationships. A girl made of glass navigates a visit from her unintentionally dangerous, flesh-and-blood cousin.<\/p>\n<p>These stories and more make up <i>Black Arts<\/i>, the first short story collection from Megan Giddings, who previously graced readers with the medical science fiction novel <i>Lakewood<\/i> and the feminist dystopia <i>The Women Could Fly<\/i>. Like both of those books, the stories in this collection dance just at the edge of the real world, pushing at the edges of daily life and current events just enough to be deeply unsettling. All of the stories are horror, but not all of them are overtly supernatural or gory. Think <i>Twilight Zone<\/i>, not <i>Tales from the Crypt<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Several stories feature ghosts. Out of them all, \u201cDouble Exposure\u201d hits the hardest. It\u2019s set in a world where ghosts are part of the regular population, renting apartments, throwing house parties, and getting into romantic relationships like any other ordinary citizen. When two fully alive young women with high artistic hopes befriend their phantom neighbors, the resulting relationships lead to tragedy and uncomfortable revelations about what it might really take to \u201cmake it\u201d in the arts. There\u2019s a wistful, transitional quality to this story that perfectly complements a cast of characters closely occupying both sides of the line between the worlds of the living and the dead. While the plot twist that the story leads to is predictable, it\u2019s also very meaningful, especially if you\u2019ve ever seen an artist burn too bright without a stabilizing focus.<\/p>\n<p>Other stories teem with longing and regret for stolen and missed opportunities, other lives and even other lifetimes. While some of the ghost stories intersect heavily with these themes (most notably \u201cThe Art of Possession\u201d), other stories come at these feelings from sad, twisty angles that still manage to be more fascinating than depressing. In \u201cLast Meals,\u201d the impending end of the world is parsed through a series of vignettes titled according to final meals shared with friends and family, leading to a moment of well-earned hope in the midst of continued disaster. Like all of these stories, \u201cLast Meals\u201d is complex, intricate and exceedingly well-crafted. Every sentence has a meaning, and every detail builds on it. Grief, love, joy, and sorrow are balanced so well that a story about the world\u2019s end becomes a story about the struggles of maintaining relationships amidst the performances of acceptability that daily life can require, which then circles back to the existential dread of a predicted meteor hitting the earth one day and obliterating life as we know it. Giddings is an excellent writer with a near-perfect sense of literary balance, and it works best in stories like these, where she embroiders uncomfortable reality into familiar speculative fabric. It reads effortlessly, but more than a few times I reached the end of a story, said to myself \u201cWait, how did she do that?\u201d and immediately went back to the beginning to read again.<\/p>\n<p>Identity is a factor in many of these stories, but in an effortless, inclusive, non-performative way. There are quite a few gender diverse and queer characters. All of the stories centralize Black American culture in a way that is balanced and focused, not didactic. In some of the weirder stories, like \u201cBrittle\u201d and \u201cAre the Straights Okay?\u201d this is refreshing. In a story about a Black girl being literally made of glass, the focus is on ways of mothering and overprotection. In \u201cAre the Straights Okay?\u201d a man cursed with the tendency to catch on fire does so because of his own folly as a man. The author gives clues on how stories like this came to be in the final inclusion in the collection, the speculative memoir essay \u201cHow to Be a Black Writer,\u201d which initially seems to be a straightforward retelling of the author\u2019s days as a graduate student but unfurls into something much deeper.<\/p>\n<p>This collection is a thoughtfully filled treasure box of human experiences wrapped in weird, unsettling gift wrap. If you liked Marie N\u2019Diaye\u2019s novella <i>The Witch<\/i> or Samantha Mill\u2019s short story collection <i>Rabbit Test<\/i>, you\u2019ll probably like this as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you liked Marie N\u2019Diaye\u2019s novella <em>The Witch<\/em> or Samantha Mill\u2019s short story collection <em>Rabbit Test<\/em>, you\u2019ll probably like <em>Black Arts<\/em> as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27149,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[145,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-nonfiction","section-nonfiction"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - 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A few years ago, I read an article about the Pacific nation of Tuvalu. This piece of fact emerges in the world of this story\u2014the leadership of Tuvalu announced that it would become the first \u201cdigital nation,\u201d in an effort to preserve sovereignty and knowledge of the physical land if the country became uninhabitable due to rising sea levels. I started thinking about what this might look like much further in the future: how technology could be used to preserve and excavate culture that has been lost, but also the reality of how a system like this would be leveraged for profit.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">Can you tell us a bit about the story-making process? I\u2019m especially interested in how you selected specific details\/setting choices?<\/p>\n<p>I think that what makes this digital world compelling for our narrator and the people that might have built it at first is the ability to almost travel to the past and assemble an identity based on fragments of cultural expression and physical place that would\u2019ve been completely inaccessible otherwise. I wanted to speculate about what might cause a need for this in the future with climate change and physical displacement, but to also think about real moments of cultural displacement and destruction from the past. This made the burning and renovation of the Jaffna library feel like a very natural point of entry into the world.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">If you wrote another short story or a novel set in this world, where would you take it? Would you follow the same characters or is there something else in this world you\u2019d want to explore?<\/p>\n<p>It could be interesting to follow this story far off into the future, where maybe the entirety of the world would only exist in these imperfect digital forms. I wonder about how people\u2019s relationship to the Alterverse might change, and who would make the choices about what to keep.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">If people liked this story, what else should they read? Do you have any recent authors or stories you’ve enjoyed and would like to recommend?<\/p>\n<p>I am always inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin, and recently read <i>Searoad<\/i>, which is a collection of interconnected short stories that build the world of a small coastal town through the interior lives of different women. Reading it was a really refreshing way to re-encounter her voice and sense of worldbuilding. Some other recent favorites are <i>Liberation Day<\/i> by George Saunders and <i>salt slow<\/i> by Julia Armfield.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">What have you been working on lately? Is there any exciting news you’d like to share?<\/p>\n<p>My last big piece of work was a collection of five short speculative fiction stories for my senior honors thesis! I\u2019ve been reworking some of the stories into larger pieces and am hoping to start work on a novel in the upcoming year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few years ago, I read an article about the Pacific nation of Tuvalu. This piece of fact emerges in the world of this story\u2014the leadership of Tuvalu announced that it would become the first \u201cdigital nation,\u201d in an effort to preserve sovereignty and knowledge of the physical land if the country became uninhabitable due to rising sea levels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27149,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[20,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-spotlight","category-nonfiction","section-author-spotlights"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Author Spotlight: Sanjana Raj - Lightspeed Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/nonfiction\/author-spotlight-sanjana-raj\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Author Spotlight: Sanjana Raj - Lightspeed Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A few years ago, I read an article about the Pacific nation of Tuvalu. 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Dj\u00e8l\u00ed Clark\u200b, Ken Liu, Hugh Howey, Seanan McGuire, Rebecca Roanhorse, Veronica Roth, Jeff Vandermeer, and more. The campaign \u200bends \u200bOctober 15\u200b, so back now!<\/strong><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>\u00c1nar\u2019s bootheels echoed on the iron floor. What a groundbreaking honor this ceremony was for a landless tenant like him\u2014joining old house Veivilkas, of the wolf. Such an honor that it made him leaden to think of, made him long for sleep. At the conclusion of the ceremony, he would no longer be merely \u00c1nar from the undercity, scarab-kin, but \u00c1nar Veivilkas. Nobility. The first scarab-kin to wear that name, no less.<\/p>\n<p>Those who bore the Veivilkas name bore also their curse. The wolf-form they could assume would eventually twist their bodies into the shuffling horned monsters he saw haggling for feasts, hunched beside their younger relatives, who translated their grunts and gestures to sensible words.<\/p>\n<p>The curse was an honor he could not refuse. He\u2019d tried, but the Sovereign would see him landed, cared-for in old age\u2014as a wolf. The land he\u2019d turned down, but what could he say to the second offer? That he preferred to die, human, in the gutters? Plenty of veterans passed in the arms of drink, winter, or the corpse-blood of the god-dragon that ran through their streets. Easy to imagine dying alone, nameless, and broke\u2014harder to imagine being a monster of muscle and fangs, dying in bed.<\/p>\n<p>\u00c1nar had drunk the dragon\u2019s blood himself. Even now the yearning for it returned. He\u2019d drunk heady with the joy of slaying a god, spattered with its blood, kneeling at the Sovereign\u2019s side as she beheaded the dragon.<\/p>\n<p>Its tourmaline head fell, eyes shut. Its blood scalded his mouth, and when he looked up, the dragon\u2019s eye, big as his head, had opened. In a pupil the size of his hand, he saw himself and the Sovereign, animals bathed in blood who fancied themselves its equal simply because they were its butchers.<\/p>\n<p>When the dragon\u2019s blood began to leak from the throne room through the fine-set obsidian tiles, \u00c1nar felt that maddening hunger again. They called it the Sovereign\u2019s gift. None but the three present\u2014\u00c1nar, the Sovereign, and her man Revna\u2014knew about the god-dragon\u2019s living corpse; to speak of it would be heresy. \u00c1nar agreed to this so-called honor in order to be as far from the memory as possible. He expected they also wanted him to forget.<\/p>\n<p>Well. To forget, and for that guarantee of a life of retirement.<\/p>\n<p>\u00c1nar knelt at the center of the black room, floor scarred with a century of scraping claws. To either side of him stood two scions of Veivilkas, marked in their own ways by the curse: hair tufting from one\u2019s pointed ears, the other with bright yellow eyes and black talons that shone as they fidgeted.<\/p>\n<p>It was Revna himself waiting, his arms folded. Silver flashed in Revna\u2019s eyes, mirrored in the lines shot through his skin. Dark magic, his own body a conduit for forces \u00c1nar did not care to understand.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, you\u2019re now His Lordship Veivilkas as well?\u201d \u00c1nar said, head bowed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLord Veivilkas, who stands behind me, has kindly granted me permission to oversee the ritual,\u201d Revna said, unbothered. \u201cHe will begin officiation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With a chill, \u00c1nar realized the stooping shadow behind Revna was a beast, fully twice Revna\u2019s height, crowned in iron. Branching horns held the crown to his head. His fur bristled, mangled in spots. His yellow fangs bared as his maw split into a gruesome, vile-smelling grin\u2014 but he did not speak. The lord-wolf gestured. Revna stepped aside, a familiar calculating smile on his sallow face.<\/p>\n<p>\u00c1nar didn\u2019t have time to study the expression. The two scions stepped forward, each looping an arm around \u00c1nar\u2019s shoulders, knocking the breath from him and pinning him to the ground.<\/p>\n<p>Ah. This was going to hurt.<\/p>\n<p>He didn\u2019t mean to struggle. It was a side-effect of panic.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt doesn\u2019t hurt for long,\u201d the one with the ears whispered.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s worth it,\u201d the other one, with the talons, hissed.<\/p>\n<p>Anything he\u2019d had to be told was worth it wasn\u2019t. \u00c1nar grasped for words to make either of these grim-eyed children crack their fa\u00e7ade, or Revna sigh in impatience\u2014just to lift his own mood\u2014but Lord Veivilkas already stooped over him, digging a crooked claw into \u00c1nar\u2019s wrist. As the blood bubbled up over his skin, Veivilkas dug into his own wrist as well.<\/p>\n<p>Veivilkas pressed their wrists together, rumbling. The lord-wolf\u2019s bristles were coarse. Worse than the wound. \u00c1nar choked down his cry. This was not murder. They had all survived this. It\u2019d be over soon, if he endured.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHis heart\u2019s blood to yours,\u201d Talons said. \u201cHis name to yours.\u201d Translating? Their eyes shone with zealotry.<\/p>\n<p>Whatever else Talons said was lost in the pain. \u00c1nar\u2019s youth had long passed but he still remembered the ache from waking taller and this pain was that a thousand-fold, splitting his skin, leaving him throbbing and broken. He felt the hunger he\u2019d felt seeing the dragon\u2019s corpse, his self peeling away until he was fang and claw and nothing more, his back unfurling to lace, his swollen flesh hardening to shell\u2014shell?<\/p>\n<p>Talons flinched back. \u201cWings?\u201d they said in disbelief, no longer holding him down.<\/p>\n<p>\u00c1nar struck, seizing their arm in his jaw and severing it. It was not so fine a meal as the blood of a god, but it thrilled him nonetheless.<\/p>\n<p>The lord-wolf roared or shrieked; to his side, Revna stepped back, the silver in his arms crackling with arcs of light.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cInteresting,\u201d Revna said, mildly. \u201cThe Sovereign\u2019s blood? Or the scarab\u2019s influence?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLiar! You did not say he was scarab-kin!\u201d Ears said, crouched, skin rippling with the beginning of fur.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, are the effects known? You should have told me before I set up this little experiment, Vilke. I thought it would kill him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><i>Betrayer!<\/i> \u00c1nar would have shrieked, but his split maw no longer formed words. Even if he lived, he could no longer speak of the truth of the dragon\u2019s blood.<\/p>\n<p>The lord himself turned on Revna, but he was old. Slow. \u00c1nar, reborn, was much faster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00c1nar\u2019s bootheels echoed on the iron floor. What a groundbreaking honor this ceremony was for a landless tenant like him\u2014joining old house Veivilkas, of the wolf. Such an honor that it made him leaden to think of, made him long for sleep. At the conclusion of the ceremony, he would no longer be merely \u00c1nar from the undercity, scarab-kin, but \u00c1nar Veivilkas. Nobility. The first scarab-kin to wear that name, no less.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27149,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[19,5,220],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fantasy","category-fiction","category-flash-fiction","section-fantasy","status_flag-original"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Dragon, the Scarab, the Wolf, the Dragon - Lightspeed Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?p=36691\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Dragon, the Scarab, the Wolf, the Dragon - Lightspeed Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u00c1nar\u2019s bootheels echoed on the iron floor. 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The first scarab-kin to wear that name, no less.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?p=36691\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Lightspeed Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-09-17T10:02:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/LS-default-embed-graphic.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"576\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Leigh DeRouen\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36691#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36691\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Leigh DeRouen\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/c9239086e47db7180090b8afd674bdf0\"},\"headline\":\"The Dragon, the Scarab, the Wolf, the Dragon\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-09-17T10:02:49+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36691\"},\"wordCount\":1117,\"commentCount\":0,\"articleSection\":[\"Fantasy\",\"Fiction\",\"Flash Fiction\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36691#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36691\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36691\",\"name\":\"The Dragon, the Scarab, the Wolf, the Dragon - Lightspeed Magazine\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2026-09-17T10:02:49+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/c9239086e47db7180090b8afd674bdf0\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36691#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36691\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36691#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The Dragon, the Scarab, the Wolf, the Dragon\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/\",\"name\":\"Lightspeed Magazine\",\"description\":\"Science Fiction & Fantasy\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/c9239086e47db7180090b8afd674bdf0\",\"name\":\"Leigh DeRouen\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/d5bca77101579330d774784a5a32ee74eaebf1865a74c0ffdccd2f8b0d3bd641?s=96&d=monsterid&r=pg\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/d5bca77101579330d774784a5a32ee74eaebf1865a74c0ffdccd2f8b0d3bd641?s=96&d=monsterid&r=pg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/d5bca77101579330d774784a5a32ee74eaebf1865a74c0ffdccd2f8b0d3bd641?s=96&d=monsterid&r=pg\",\"caption\":\"Leigh DeRouen\"},\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/author\\\/leighadamantpress-com\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Dragon, the Scarab, the Wolf, the Dragon - Lightspeed Magazine","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?p=36691","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Dragon, the Scarab, the Wolf, the Dragon - Lightspeed Magazine","og_description":"\u00c1nar\u2019s bootheels echoed on the iron floor. 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The first scarab-kin to wear that name, no less.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?p=36691","og_site_name":"Lightspeed Magazine","article_published_time":"2026-09-17T10:02:49+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1024,"height":576,"url":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/LS-default-embed-graphic.png","type":"image\/png"}],"author":"Leigh DeRouen","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?p=36691#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?p=36691"},"author":{"name":"Leigh DeRouen","@id":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/#\/schema\/person\/c9239086e47db7180090b8afd674bdf0"},"headline":"The Dragon, the Scarab, the Wolf, the Dragon","datePublished":"2026-09-17T10:02:49+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?p=36691"},"wordCount":1117,"commentCount":0,"articleSection":["Fantasy","Fiction","Flash Fiction"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?p=36691#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?p=36691","url":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?p=36691","name":"The Dragon, the Scarab, the Wolf, the Dragon - 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Through design activities, panels, symposia and a mountain lodge retreat, they collaboratively imagined worlds that interrogate the\u00a0future humanity is heading towards. These stories can be found in the anthology, <i>Android in the Archives: Research, Creative Collaboration and our Speculative Futures<\/i>\u00a0(<a href=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/android\/\">lightspeedmagazine.com\/android<\/a>), soon to be published by MIT Press in 2027.<\/strong><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Asha is eight pages into the book before the words disappear.<\/p>\n<p>There are still hundreds of pages before the end of the book, so they must have had a record of the length of the volume, but lost the text. It\u2019s a common experience in this library, to encounter fragments of things, to have to make educated assumptions about what once was. She\u2019s an explorer in a world that has nothing new to explore. Everything has already been fully carved up, every molecule cataloged and appraised. The text was ostensibly about the history of Jaffna, which started when a piece of Northern Sri Lanka was given to a blind musician. She can guess at what comes next: The land passes hands, borders shifts, gods and demons shape the city into something with a heartbeat. She wonders what those timeless beings thought, when that heart stopped beating.<\/p>\n<p>Asha gets an alert that visitors have arrived, so she straightens her linen uniform and returns outside. She stands slightly to the right of the white concrete library, close enough that any wandering tourists will recognize her as a helpful representative of Semper Technologies, far enough that she doesn\u2019t disrupt their pictures. Time moves languidly, most days. A couple of visitors here and there, if she\u2019s lucky. In their absence, she spends her time studying this particular structure, tracing and retracing the scalloped arches and bulbous domes in her head. As with all else she experiences in this world, Asha carves each detail into her memory. There is nothing that she is willing to forget.<\/p>\n<p>She watches a couple\u2014white, middle-aged, floppy straw hats\u2014mill about the foliage. The woman taps away at her phone, taking a barrage of pictures. The man dons a navy-blue baseball cap, studying the statue of Saraswati with slight bewilderment on his face. He\u2019s thinking something along the lines of <i>surely no one needs so many arms<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>As she waits for the visitors to approach, she dreams of Jaffna as it used to be: painted with brighter hues, the soft hum of passing conversation, of people sprawled across different axes of the city, following their own patterns of life. It\u2019s a vision that returns to her again and again.<\/p>\n<p>A few years before she started working at Semper, they tried using AI to generate clusters of people inside the library, the steps in front of restaurants, all the places where the people of a community would usually gather. The feature was cut due to staffing shortages and low engagement from tourists. Some days she sees no people at all.<\/p>\n<p>The woman waves at her.<\/p>\n<p>Asha places a sugary smile onto her face and approaches them. \u201cHi!\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m Asha, and I\u2019m a tour guide from Semper Technologies. I hope you\u2019re enjoying the Alterverse and our model of Jaffna today!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The woman smiles gently and places a hand on her partner\u2019s shoulder. \u201cOh, it\u2019s incredible. We love South Asia\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0all the history, the nature,\u201d she murmurs. \u201cIt\u2019s such a shame.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Asha nods. It\u2019s the most common feedback she hears from visitors: <i>such a shame<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow old\u2019s this building?\u201d the man asks, gesturing broadly at the space in front of them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAh, well, that\u2019s actually a more complicated story than it seems,\u201d she responds. \u201cThe Jaffna Public Library was originally built in 1933, and it housed hundreds of thousands of one-of-a-kind manuscripts and artifacts. It, along with all of the literature and heritage inside, was burnt down in 1981, prior to the official start of the Sri Lankan Civil War. A reconstructed version of the library opened in 2003. The building you see before you is the closest representation we could model before Sri Lanka was x-ed in 2105.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a shame that we can\u2019t see the original.\u201d The woman sighs. \u201cIt must\u2019ve been beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Asha simply nods. In an era where whole countries are scratched off the map, few people remember the type of human brutality that occurred in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. They\u2019ve gone numb to the smaller violences: the burned libraries. That\u2019s why she was here: to bear witness and grieve. Asha believed that it all mattered. This city had been the capital of a conquered kingdom, the battleground of a civil war, an outpost for European colonists. Sometime between that fire in 1981 and the final flood in 2105, it had all been swept away.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThank you for talking to us,\u201d the man says. \u201cWe\u2019re on our way to Thailand now!\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>Asha has a pulsing headache by the time she logs off, which she attempts to stave off with two bitter pills. She takes her headset off the desk and shoves it into a drawer. It\u2019s a pretty sleek design: The heavy, gray goggles include eye tracking and audio engineering, interpreting intended movement much like legs receive neural signals from the brain. It still feels heavy, in a strange way, and she feels better when it\u2019s out of sight. Minutes later, she\u2019s taking a car through the streets of Des Moines. Her mouth is covered with a paisley handkerchief, a weak effort to ward off smog. The digital world contains clear blue skies, palm trees that stretch past her line of sight. It\u2019s no wonder she flees into it, escaping from a world covered in a haze of soot, and filled with the discord of overpopulation. Living in a landlocked city in the United States is not something she\u2019ll ever take for granted, though, not when the real Jaffna is swimming ten feet under the ocean.<\/p>\n<p>The car drives itself. She has an awkward amount of time before she reaches her destination, so she calls Tomu. Her best friend\u2019s holographic image appears before her as he picks up. He\u2019s swimming in a ratty blue sweater, his face a warm brown a couple shades lighter than her own. The wall behind him is covered in graphite sketches: the contour of a shifting coastline labelled with angles, a close-up rendering of the scales of a fish. They are eerily precise: resembling blueprints or maps more than artwork. He smiles at her and sets aside whatever he is working on. There\u2019s a tension to his shoulders that is strange on him but has grown more regular in the past few weeks.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRough day?\u201d she asks.<\/p>\n<p>He shrugs, then snaps his notebook shut. \u201cNo visitors,\u201d he responds. \u201cIt feels like I had a little too much time to think.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Asha winces. She knows how deeply Tomu cares for their work. His ancestors came from Tuvalu: the first nation to be x-ed out, the first nation to be digitized. Like Asha, Semper is all that ties Tomu to his past. It\u2019s been a long time since digital-twin technology was considered novel. Much like the physical places, tourist interest in Tuvalu and Sri Lanka has eroded over time. People like them, the descendants of these lost places, often can\u2019t afford the time or technology to enter the Alterverse in the first place. It\u2019s why they both work at Semper. It\u2019s why Tomu\u2019s sketchbook is filled with still images of the island, why Asha pictures the white facades of the library every night before she fades to sleep.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDid you find anything new?\u201d she asks.<\/p>\n<p>He perks up at that. Unlike her, Tomu isn\u2019t tied to a particular building or geographic location. He tends to guide individuals around the island, and adventure on his own when no one is logged on. \u201cCaught a type of eel I haven\u2019t seen before.\u201d He stretches his palms out, clearly exaggerating the size of it. \u201cIt was yellow, and spotted, and certainly extinct by now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Asha laughs. \u201cThat sounds terrifying, actually. I will never in a million years understand your fondness for eels.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Normally, Tomu would roll his eyes or tease her about how she pores over every book in a giant library, but instead he just sighs. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to be in there sometimes,\u201d he admits, \u201csurrounded by all of the things that we never got a chance to see or know. It gets harder each time to get lost in the dream and wake up to <i>this<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Asha swallows hard. It\u2019s a bitter pill that the most meaningful parts of their lives are completely tied to something that isn\u2019t real.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s almost like we\u2019ve been severed from something critical,\u201d she whispers, thinking aloud, \u201csomething we were never supposed to lose.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tomu lets out a harsh exhale. \u201cI, um, heard a rumor from one of the guys that works in Samoa,\u201d he says, \u201cthat they\u2019re going to be shut down. That Semper is going to scale down most of the Alterverse, actually.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Asha\u2019s heart stops for a moment. \u201cThey can\u2019t do that. Why would they ever do that?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are only a few places that still generate traffic. You know that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut that\u2019s\u2014not\u2014the point? The primary mission statement was always to keep an archive, to have a chance to hold on to these places.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s just a rumor for now, but\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u201d She recognizes the sorrow in Tomu\u2019s eyes. According to his intuition, it\u2019s a grounded rumor. \u201cI just wanted you to be ready for the possibility.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She nods. Her anger swells.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>Her mother is visibly smaller. She lays horizontally across her bed, thin oxygen tubes snaking across her body and into her nose. It\u2019s the best facility that Asha can afford: relatively low tech, but sanitary and regularly staffed.<\/p>\n<p>When Asha was in primary school, her mother, Reema, taught her the story of Atlantis, an enormous island, populated by the mightiest of men. The Atlanteans were proud, and believed they could take from those around them without consequence. Eventually, the gods turned their backs on them, and they, along with their mighty island, disappeared beneath the waves.<\/p>\n<p>Asha asked her mother if that was what happened to Sri Lanka, to her grandparents. Did they take too much? Were they too proud?<\/p>\n<p>Her mother\u2019s face looked like a statue\u2019s, creased with endless rage. \u201cNo, Asha,\u201d she whispered. \u201cBut others did, and someone had to pay for it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There really was no need to go back to Atlantis, to the allegories of Plato, to prove her point. By the time Asha was born, fifteen countries had met a similar fate. Most were small island nations, with little chance of fending off the rising sea: Tuvalu was first, of course, then Grenada, the Maldives. Some were larger countries in South and Southeast Asia: Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Indonesia.<\/p>\n<p>They weren\u2019t claimed all at once, of course. It wasn\u2019t one moment or tide that took Sri Lanka from a place to a myth. It was years of erosion, of the sea taking victims, of flaring heat waves and mosquitoes and skin cancer. It only seemed sudden in retrospect.<\/p>\n<p>Losing her mother felt similar. One moment, Reema was pulling Asha from town to town and teaching her everything she knew about the world; the next she was like this: immobilized and with lungs too damaged to breathe on their own.<\/p>\n<p>Reema\u2019s eyes are attentive as Asha recounts her day. Her mother insists on hearing about Jaffna in painstaking detail: every word she reads in the library, the signage on each empty storefront.<\/p>\n<p>Asha examines every piece of the small room: She fusses over her mother\u2019s pillows, examines the digital chart by her bed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYour oxygen dosage is higher this week,\u201d she notes. \u201cHow do you feel? Is it getting\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. \u201d She isn\u2019t sure how to end the sentence, to ask precisely what she wants to know.<\/p>\n<p>Her mother just shakes her head. \u201cIt\u2019s a progression, Asha. I don\u2019t want you to worry.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As if Asha could do anything else.<\/p>\n<p>They talk about Jaffna a bit more, about the silly tourists and the things she learned. Reema had left Sri Lanka when she was in her teens, when it was clear that no part of the country would be habitable for much longer. Her own parents chose to stay. When Semper launched the Alterverse, Reema was skeptical, but enamored by the idea of being able to see and touch her home once more. Asha could see how happy her mother was to have a small piece of her childhood back. The two of them explored the city together, and Reema pointed out the streets and buildings she recalled. It was a return for both of them, to a type of connection they had grieved long before. There was a free trial when the product launched, but it soon switched to an expensive subscription that they couldn\u2019t afford. That had been a huge incentive to take the job. Asha had tried to let Reema\u00a0into the world using her employee pass, but biometric gating and authorization prevented it. Asha asked if they could have a guest pass for a tour, but got a polite but firm <i>no, because then we\u2019d have to give everyone one<\/i>. Looking at her mother now, Asha regrets not pushing back harder. Wasn\u2019t that the point of all this? To let people inhabit memories of places they could no longer go, preserve the last vestiges of the lives their children never got to lead?<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>When Tuvalu sank, cartographers created new versions of the Cartesian world map with the dot representing the small island nation removed for accuracy. A few years later, they created another one. Then another. It became a new normal, for pieces of the world to be erased in their entirety, as if a child was arbitrarily drawing Xs across a coloring book of the world.<\/p>\n<p>The idea of a digital nation began with Tuvalu. A group of historians and developers created a rudimentary simulation of the whole island: a lifelike model of every shoreline, animal, and cultural record. Once it became clear that the sinking of Tuvalu was not an isolated event, that more countries and peoples would want some way of experiencing their land once it was gone, Semper Technologies acquired a clone of Tuvalu\u2019s digital twin. They went on to create virtual representations of the most environmentally vulnerable countries. It was a massive undertaking, and the company grew exponentially. They connected each of the digital nations in a platform called the Alterverse, which allowed users to move between different twins. It was an extremely profitable digital graveyard.<\/p>\n<p>Asha followed every piece of news about the digitization of Sri Lanka with great interest, so it felt like a dream when she received her job offer from Semper. She and Tomu met in the digital world before the real one, just over four years ago at a Semper orientation event for new guides. The company picked one of the most cherished settings of the old world\u2014an empty white conference room\u2014and crammed dozens of jittery recruits into it. This was before most of them had gotten comfortable with the technology. As a result, most of their avatars had a stilted broken-puppet quality. Asha couldn\u2019t help but stare at the spotless table in front of her, the ironed navy pantsuit of the women lecturing them on Semper\u2019s rules and regulations from the front of the room. She tried to concentrate, but something about the clean lines, the shuttered look to everyone\u2019s gaze threw her off-balance. <i>It\u2019s not real<\/i>, she told herself. <i>It\u2019s not real<\/i>. She\u2019d had panic attacks before, in her real body, and wasn\u2019t interested in finding out what it would feel like in her fake one.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHey,\u201d the boy sitting next to her whispered. She hadn\u2019t seen him when they\u2019d first arrived, too focused on her own nerves. He was the first person to truly look at her, and there was a kindness in his eyes that calmed her down. \u201cIt\u2019s easier if you pretend like this is a dream, that it\u2019s something your brain has experienced before.\u201d She nodded and muttered her thanks. The advice quickly eased her panic.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>Asha sits down in front of the TV as soon as she gets back to her apartment. It\u2019s a one bedroom with a shabby kitchen and a living room filled with found furniture. There was a time where it seemed homey to her\u2014a symbol of her independence, her ability to fend for herself. On days like today, it feels like the walls have tightened up, like they\u2019re gradually closing in on her.<\/p>\n<p>She shifts between different shows on her favorite streaming service, until she lands on the news. She turns up the volume to hear the end of the AI-generated anchorwoman\u2019s sentence: <i>uninhabitable by the year 2330<\/i>. They\u2019re talking about Italy\u2019s mainland, which, despite its proximity to the ocean, was able to avoid being destroyed for so long due to high investment in terraforming and artificial flood banks. Asha leans back and lets the stories wash over her: increased investment in the colonization of Mars and the Asteroid belt, <i>Fortune<\/i> 500 companies still refusing to eliminate their use of fossil fuels, tidbits of celebrity gossip. She feels her brain go numb, as if it\u2019s opened a loop, asking <i>what else what else what else<\/i>, without processing any of the answers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>The next few days of work wash over Asha. No one visits, and the boredom lends itself to a prickly, dissatisfied feeling she cannot shake. She sits on the steps of the library, ventures in to thumb through manuscripts with careful hands.<\/p>\n<p>A week later, she wakes up to the sound of pattering rain outside her window, the rush of traffic underneath the windowsill. Asha eats a breakfast of dried fruit and granola, sets her headset on her desk, and runs a piece of cloth over its crevices to remove any dust that had settled there during the night. She enters her login information and closes her eyes, expecting to be in Jaffna upon opening them. Moments later, she feels the breath of air conditioning, a cold surface behind her shoulder blades. Something is wrong.<\/p>\n<p>Asha opens her eyes to a white conference room, walls emblazoned with the Semper logo. She\u2019s sitting in a chair tucked under an oblong table. In front of her is a woman with short brown hair and wearing a white pantsuit. She recognizes her as the head of HR, but can\u2019t quite recall her name.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHi, Asha.\u201d The woman cocks her head and smiles at her. \u201cHow are you doing today?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She keeps trying to think of her name: Pam? Beatrice? It\u2019s certainly something she should know.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m\u2014good?\u201d She can\u2019t quite stamp out the nerves in her voice. \u201cA bit confused about why I\u2019m here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The woman nods, eyes wide with sympathy. \u201cI can imagine. I\u2019m going to cut right to the chase. You\u2019re a great guide\u2014such positive reviews, and I know that our guests appreciate you. Unfortunately, Semper is in a bit of a\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0<i>transitional<\/i> state in our journey of growth, and we will not be continuing our deployment of digital Sri Lanka. It\u2019s happening to all the twins in that region of the Alterverse, really.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Asha has to hold back bile: She\u2019s not sure whether it\u2019s in her real body, or this one. She feels herself switching gears, entering autopilot. \u201cThat\u2019s\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0difficult to hear,\u201d she says. \u201cWhat\u2019s going to happen to them?\u201d There\u2019s an unspoken <i>what\u2019s going to happen to me<\/i> that she lets linger.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, you\u2019ve certainly noticed that tourist interest in our twins has been quite reduced over the last couple of years. Our board wants to create worlds that are more\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0engaging, ones that take people where they want to go. Instead of visiting a sunken country, you\u2019re immersed in a <i>story<\/i>, a trip to another planet, an excursion under the sea.\u201d The woman realizes that Asha isn\u2019t going to say anything and keeps rambling. \u201cYou\u2019re a great guide, and we want to keep you on as we move forward! Even though Sri Lanka is going to be shelved, you\u2019ve got a long future ahead of you in the Alterverse.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Asha feels her breaths grow shallow, a faint buzzing in her head. Perhaps it\u2019s the sound of her world ending. \u201cWhy can\u2019t you just keep them open?\u201d she asks, not successfully masking the quiver in her voice.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, well, we\u2019re already losing money on database storage and hosting,\u201d the woman says, \u201cand more importantly, we want it to be clear to our consumers that we are pushing towards the future, not the past.\u201d The woman pushes herself away from the desk and walks towards the door. She pulls it open. \u201cNow, I\u2019ll let you get back to work. Jaffna will be open for the next two days, and then we\u2019ll start your onboarding for your new role.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Asha feels her legs move towards the door as though she\u2019s sleepwalking. She pauses for a moment. Only two days left.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy mother.\u201d The words are out of her mouth before she\u2019s thought them through. \u201cShe\u2019s\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0dying. Soon. All she wants is a chance to see Sri Lanka again, to say goodbye.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The woman takes longer to respond this time. She doesn\u2019t have a pre-scripted answer for this one. \u201cI\u2019m afraid that it\u2019s still against policy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Asha walks through the door and into Jaffna.<\/p>\n<p>White concrete, books through the window, a faint breeze.<\/p>\n<p>She rips her headset off and throws herself toward the dustbin next to the desk before she vomits.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>Tomu finds her before she finds him. They make their way to the fire escape outside her apartment. The silence between them is suffocating. Between the redness of his eyes, and the trembling of her fingers, they both understand that they have a loss in common. Their lives have split open, their world sentenced to rot.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have to do something,\u201d she whispers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow do we\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u201d His voice is fuzzy, barely audible. \u201cWhat could we possibly do?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Asha had thought that between the two of them, they had experienced every possible type of grief.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve never felt this powerless,\u201d she tells him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHave I ever told you the story of the Eel and the Flounder?\u201d he asks.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think so,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<p>He tilts his head towards the sky, his eyes fixate on the wispy gray clouds. \u201cA long, long, time ago, there were two friends, one an Eel, the other a Flounder. They were both strong and brash. One day, they found a large rock and started arguing over who was the strongest and could carry it best. As they started fighting, the Flounder was pinned beneath the stone. The Flounder freed itself and chased the Eel throughout the ocean, until the Eel was hit hard in the stomach and began vomiting. Eventually, the Eel had vomited so much that the Eel was able to hide in a hole and escape the rage of the Flounder. After the Flounder died, the Eel threw the stone into the air, which broke into the eight islands of Tuvalu. Each island had a flat body like the Flounder, and the islands had palm trees that looked like the thinned body of the Eel.\u201d Tomu finally looks away from the sky and looks at her. \u201cWhen the land described by that story was lost, the Alterverse was supposed to be our way of preserving its meaning.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His voice finally shatters, as they both collapse towards the wall, towards each other.<\/p>\n<p>The founding myths of Sri Lanka were similar: steeped in betrayal and violence and endless sacrifice for a <i>place<\/i>, for a way of being. It was sacrilege, what this world had done to their oldest gods.<\/p>\n<p>Asha thinks of the figure on the news, talking about sending tourists to the sky as the world burns. Their society had severed itself from the past, choosing to let it repeat in an infinite, desolate loop. They were burning their library, their archive of who they were at this moment in time, and Asha didn\u2019t think it was something that they could ever recover from.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have to do something.\u201d she says once more.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>On her last day, Asha is determined to take in as much of Jaffna as she can. She takes circuitous paths: around the edge of the town, scanning every spine on every bookshelf in the library.<\/p>\n<p>After hours of research, she and Tomu found a plug-in that could record a first-person experience of a digital twin. The description said it could evade detection, and Jaffna is so close to decommission that security measures are less concentrated here than elsewhere in the Alterverse, but she knows it\u2019s only a matter of time until some alarm is triggered and she is disconnected and let go. She\u2019s surprised she\u2019s been able to remain for as long as she has.<\/p>\n<p>Asha runs through the plan again: As soon as she is disconnected, she will encrypt the recording and send copies to Tomu, her mother, and a secure storage account. Once the data is safe, they\u2019ll start looking for someone to reconstruct the data from the recordings and make an open-source version of their ancestral worlds. She doesn\u2019t want to think about the uncertainty of it all, the danger that might lie in front of them. There\u2019s a chance that they won\u2019t be able to recreate Jaffna, or that it will be a low-quality facsimile without Semper\u2019s resources.<\/p>\n<p>She wants to experience the Jaffna she has known, for as long as she still can. She ventures farther and farther from the city. The palm trees grow denser and denser until she only sees thin strips of blue through the fronds. She can hear the steady tide of the ocean, salty air snaking through her nostrils.<\/p>\n<p>She could be the last person to ever feel the heartbeat of this city. She wonders what her ancestors must have felt, as they watched the library burn. It must\u2019ve felt like their world was ending, that their descendants would be permanently cut off from the most sacred pieces of who they were. It must be the same way her mother felt when she saw the footage of a churning ocean, where Sri Lanka once was. They found a way to recreate, to keep an ember alive. In a moment, everything will be gone, but she will do the same.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p class=\"center\"><strong>Based on research by Irving Affiliate Faculty<br \/>\n<\/strong><strong>Dartmouth College<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/irving.dartmouth.edu\/about\/people\/faculty-and-research-affiliates\">irving.dartmouth.edu\/about\/people\/faculty-and-research-affiliates<\/a><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Asha is eight pages into the book before the words disappear. There are still hundreds of pages before the end of the book, so they must have had a record of the length of the volume, but lost the text. It\u2019s a common experience in this library, to encounter fragments of things, to have to make educated assumptions about what once was.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27149,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-science-fiction","section-science-fiction","status_flag-no-anthology","series-android-in-the-archives"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Alterverse - Lightspeed Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?p=36680\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Alterverse - Lightspeed Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Asha is eight pages into the book before the words disappear. 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Lightspeed Magazine","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/#website"},"datePublished":"2026-09-17T10:01:34+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/#\/schema\/person\/c9239086e47db7180090b8afd674bdf0"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?p=36680#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?p=36680"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?p=36680#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Alterverse"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/","name":"Lightspeed Magazine","description":"Science Fiction & Fantasy","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/#\/schema\/person\/c9239086e47db7180090b8afd674bdf0","name":"Leigh DeRouen","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d5bca77101579330d774784a5a32ee74eaebf1865a74c0ffdccd2f8b0d3bd641?s=96&d=monsterid&r=pg","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d5bca77101579330d774784a5a32ee74eaebf1865a74c0ffdccd2f8b0d3bd641?s=96&d=monsterid&r=pg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d5bca77101579330d774784a5a32ee74eaebf1865a74c0ffdccd2f8b0d3bd641?s=96&d=monsterid&r=pg","caption":"Leigh DeRouen"},"url":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/author\/leighadamantpress-com\/"}]}},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27149"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36680"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36931,"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36680\/revisions\/36931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":36695,"date":"2026-09-10T03:05:36","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T10:05:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?p=36695"},"modified":"2026-08-03T10:44:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T17:44:13","slug":"book-review-africanfuturism-short-stories-by-chinelo-onwualu-ed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/nonfiction\/book-review-africanfuturism-short-stories-by-chinelo-onwualu-ed\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: <i>Africanfuturism Short Stories<\/i> by Chinelo Onwualu, ed."},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"center\"><i><b>Africanfuturism Short Stories<\/b><\/i><br \/>\nChinelo Onwualu, ed.<br \/>\nHardcover<br \/>\nISBN: 978-1835622735<br \/>\nFlame Tree Collections, September 2026, 432 pgs<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Africanfuturism-Short-Stories-Gothic-Fantasy\/dp\/1835622739\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"remove_epub alignright size-medium wp-image-36696\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AfricanFuturism-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AfricanFuturism-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AfricanFuturism-681x1024.jpg 681w, https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AfricanFuturism-768x1154.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AfricanFuturism-220x331.jpg 220w, https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AfricanFuturism.jpg 998w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This book is a gift. Over four hundred pages of amazing work by African creators from all over the world. It\u2019s part of Flame Tree\u2019s \u201cGothic Fantasy\u201d series, which may not really be the right name for the series at this point. Some of the books in the list definitely fit, but volumes like <i>Black Sci-Fi Short Stories<\/i>, <i>Immigrant Sci-Fi Short Stories<\/i>, and a few others? Probably not. Regardless, they are doing some lovely things for genre, and this book is essential for folks who love short fiction. Moreover, Chinelo Onwualu (along with anyone who may have helped in whatever ways behind the scenes) has created something that improves and expands on not just genre, but English language literature.<\/p>\n<p>The book opens with notes by Minister Faust, Yvette Lisa Ndlovu, and Onwualu, which discuss the term \u201cAfricanfuturism\u201d and its relationship to SFF labels, colonialism, and more, including glimpses into the history of SFF written by African authors. These entries should be considered required reading for folks who are in the business of labeling things, from reviewers to booksellers to publishers and more. Following these, over forty stories are on offer: a mix of original pieces sourced through submissions and reprints pulled from a broad range of places. Previously published materials include excerpts such as a section from Tlotlo Tsamaase\u2019s innovative novel <i>Womb City<\/i> (Erewhon, 2024); works pulled from beloved genre publications, such as a few pieces originally appearing in <i>Omenana<\/i>, Adelehin Ijasan\u2019s \u201cFrom Earth to Io, with Love\u201d and Kenechukwu Udoetuk\u2019s \u201cNewborn\u201d from <i>Fiyah<\/i> and <i>Anathema<\/i> respectively, and others; Shingai Njeri Kagunda\u2019s <i>Locus Magazine<\/i> recommended, Ignyte Award winning <i>We Who Will Not Die<\/i>; and so on, excavated from cool anthologies, projects, and more.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll go over a handful of original stories, just to give a sense of how cool this book is, though even this is a bit deceptive, as the pieces range so greatly in style, form, and purpose. But hopefully this teaser will be enough to encourage you to spend money on this book, and in this way, to support the authors and editors, as well as to tell the world that we need more like it.<\/p>\n<p>The first story in the book, \u201cFloodplain Mayor\u201d by A.A. Ademola, begins, \u201cThey call me mayor and I call myself a man who can\u2019t stop counting the price of kindness.\u201d This is, to me, such an interesting opening line, with possibilities of meaning and implications of tensions both internal and external and possibly, to some degree, imagined. This opening also creates allusions to character: perhaps someone cynical or grumpy but also a bit self-deprecating. Or perhaps someone burdened by impossible choices, someone with unbearable responsibility who struggles to see themselves as ever doing good enough. It\u2019s an opening that conveys so much, while being anything but trite or going for standard violence; this is, simply put, a really promising way to start a story, as well as an anthology. Floods have devastated Lagos as well as the land in general, and the Mayor is actually just an engineer trying to keep a floating city, well\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. <i>floating<\/i>. The city is little more than a set of barges welded together, but as the sea and storms make more and more land disappear, more and more refugees come seeking uncertain shelter, pushing the limits of how much the city can take and still stay afloat. Ultimately at question is what separates one group of people from another, and how being in a position of power or privilege can change you; as well as whether or not that change is inevitable. What\u2019s also at question is whether or not communities can actually function as communities, or if they are inevitably driven to conflict and violence, especially when any kind of scarcity is at issue. This is science fiction, but it is also speaking to direct concerns of the area, as flooding is driven by climate change and other factors and gets worse and worse every year. It\u2019s a seriously well-told story, with occasional literary flair and an interesting conclusion.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMatters of the Lung\u201d by C.M. Nomxolisi showcases a great concept. Ms. Nkabinde is being asked to insert a tiny writhing plant into her nose, which will ultimately enter her lungs and fundamentally change the way she breathes. The image and descriptions render the moment both a bit funny and somewhat uncomfortable. There\u2019s also a subtle juxtaposition at work, between Nkabinde, whose contract demands she undertake this action despite hesitations, and the blue-eyed \u201cplastic person\u201d doctor who is \u201chelping.\u201d It\u2019s a brilliant and effective opening which is doing a lot within a few sentences, a lot which, if you aren\u2019t familiar with various kinds of power disparities and related situations, you might not fully get. As the seedling moves into her nose, essentially invading her body but also saving her, Nomxolisi does fantastic work of grounding the moment in physical, visceral sensation, while not going overboard, making it seem all the more real. From here the story shifts into flashes of moments, like vignettes, outlining both the future of humankind and Nkabinde\u2019s life. Where things go is fascinating and unexpected and had me pondering while exploring the feelings the tale engendered.<\/p>\n<p>With Ben Murigu\u2019s \u201cThe Boy Dreamer,\u201d one thing that struck me immediately was the ordinary nature of misery, the matter-of-fact way the author blended the terrible into a narrative of dreams, perhaps because the terror of bad things is simply part of what <i>is<\/i>. In other words, unpleasant moments and pain are all a part of this person\u2019s reality; they are present and unexplained because they are the baseline of existence, but pain is not necessarily the <i>point<\/i> of the story. Mwai is a boy (something of a chosen one, but perhaps also a stand-in for the potential of all of us) who can, to some degree, influence reality with his dreams. The city of Nairobi needs him to avoid falling into utter despair and disrepair. But he\u2019s not the only dreamer, and importantly, a lot of the dreamers are people who face hardship but still have hope. There are shadowy figures who would stop them, and others who would exploit them, but ultimately, it doesn\u2019t matter. Through dreams they find empowerment, community, and joy. So, for me, this story is, in ways, more compelling than many of the stories that come to mind if I think of only a set of specific moments, or if I focus only on certain elements of the piece; this story is, I think, specifically about connection, about imperfection being perfect, and about finding hope, cherishing it, and letting it make your world feel more complete. It ends with communion and joy and reminds us that these are things we should not forget.<\/p>\n<p>Charity Ogechi\u2019s \u201cThe Soil Remembers\u201d starts with wonderful sensory details and something that seems specific but incredibly important: It hasn\u2019t rained in so long that 12-year-old Olunna has never seen rain. The writing is evocative and sometimes beautiful, and the story finds dreams to be as important as waking. Initially, it feels to me like an exploration of the connection between land and people. Soon the focus changes, and it also becomes an exploration of governmental control, both over people and resources. Despite the government\u2019s militaristic attempts to limit access to moisture, as well as trying to control speech and, to some degree, even thought, Olunna\u2019s journey takes a turn for the mystical, guided by dreams that help her find what she needs in the waking world. She becomes a connection to forgotten pasts as well as cultural truths. Ogechi perfectly blends futuristic elements with things that can only be understood on an emotional or instinctual level, allowing for a narrative of resistance which is quiet but active, layered but clear, fictional but true.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDoll\u201d\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. ! Okay, I almost hate to talk about this one because I feel that I won\u2019t be able to do it justice. Chidera Solomon Anikpe has put together something you should just read for yourself. This is a world where people\u2019s consciousness can be transferred into Manifests, which are similar to but different from the concept of robot bodies in striking and imaginative ways. The length is perfect, and the writing is immersive, while also being a fantastic (and rare) exemplar of a floating third person, which works smoothly and beautifully. The phases of the story explore complex interactions and feelings around identity, mirroring, and to some degree, in thoughtful and honest ways, things that many of us have experienced, while also making them feel unique and specific to the story. What is striking and wonderful is that no one is perfect or purely innocent, the narrative never feels overly simplified or one-sided, and it speaks to larger-scale things while also feeling incredibly intimate and personal. Close consideration of the characters involved, their moments, and interactions will reveal ironies and nuances that are sad, hilarious, frustrating, and more, all at once. The ending had me in tears, and if you aren\u2019t thinking deeply and feeling moved by the time the conclusion unfolds, you just didn\u2019t get it, which is by no fault of the author. See? In the end, I didn\u2019t tell you much about what happens in the actual story. Maybe I just don\u2019t want to spoil any of it. Go read it. This is incredible work.<\/p>\n<p>Another fantastic anthology that I get to read! Seriously? I love this job. But don\u2019t take my word for it. Order a copy and settle in. Do not skip the introductory writings\u2014they are critical for situating the collected works within the context of the field and of literature in general. Most likely, they will only deepen your appreciation of the stories themselves. Take your time with this book, meet the authors on their own terms, and let them take you on the journeys that are important to them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Looking for a big collection of speculative fiction by African writers, curated by the always wonderful Flame Tree Press? Arley Sorg recommends <i>Africanfuturism Short Stories.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27149,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[145,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-nonfiction","section-nonfiction"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Book Review: Africanfuturism Short Stories by Chinelo Onwualu, ed. - Lightspeed Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/nonfiction\/book-review-africanfuturism-short-stories-by-chinelo-onwualu-ed\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Book Review: Africanfuturism Short Stories by Chinelo Onwualu, ed. - Lightspeed Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Looking for a big collection of speculative fiction by African writers, curated by the always wonderful Flame Tree Press? 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