Futures & Fantasies [Free eBook]

Futures & Fantasies is an anthology of science fiction and fantasy collected from the pages of the digital short fiction magazine, Lightspeed. In its pages, you will find science fiction: from near-future, sociological soft SF, to far-future, star-spanning hard SF—and fantasy: from epic fantasy, sword-and-sorcery, and contemporary urban tales, to magical realism, science-fantasy, and folktales.

Launched in 2010, Lightspeed is a two-time winner of the Hugo Award, and stories from the magazine have been nominated for major genre awards dozens of times, including the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Award. Lightspeed has published short fiction from a wide variety of authors—from the bestsellers and award-winners you already know to the best new voices you haven’t heard of yet.

The stories in Futures & Fantasies run the gamut from mythic, lyrical epic fantasy (“A Love Story Written on Water” by Ashok K. Banker) to far-future space opera (“A Bond as Deep as Starlit Seas” by Sarah Grey)… from  rough-and-tumble cyberpunk dystopia (“And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead” by Brooke Bolander) to historical, tragic fantasy (“The Litigation Master and the Monkey King” by Ken Liu)… from post-modern portal fantasy (“Not by Wardrobe, Tornado, or Looking Glass by Jeremiah Tolbert) to counterfactual hard science fiction (“The Old Equations” by Jake Kerr).

Download the ebook for free and discover the wonders within!

Table of Contents

Futures & Fantasies contains the following stories that first appeared in Lightspeed Magazine:

  • “The Thing About Shapes to Come” by Adam-Troy Castro
  •  “Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World” by Caroline M. Yoachim
  • “Not by Wardrobe, Tornado, or Looking Glass” by Jeremiah Tolbert
  • “And You Shall Know Her by the Trail Of Dead” by Brooke Bolander
  • “The Master Conjurer” by Charlie Jane Anders
  • “Invisible Planets” by Hao Jingfang
  • “The Jaws That Bite, the Claws That Catch” by Seanan Mcguire
  • “Unauthorized Access” by An Owomoyela
  • “A Love Story Written on Water” by Ashok K. Banker
  • “A Bond as Deep as Starlit Seas” by Sarah Grey
  • “The Last Cheng Beng Gift” by Jaymee Goh
  • “The Old Equations” by Jake Kerr
  • “Observations About Eggs From the Man Sitting Next to Me on a Flight From Chicago, Illinois to Cedar Rapids, Iowa” by Carmen Maria Machado
  • “Deep Blood Kettle” by Hugh Howey
  • “Jump” by Cadwell Turnbull
  • “How to Get Back to the Forest” by Sofia Samatar
  • “The Litigation Master and the Monkey King” by Ken Liu
  • “The Knight of Chains, the Deuce of Stars” by Yoon Ha Lee
  • “Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology” by Theodora Goss
  • “The Venus Effect” by Violet Allen
Robot Wizard Zombie Crit! Newsletter

JOIN US!

No thanks! Close this stupid thing.
Keep up with John Joseph Adams' anthologies, Lightspeed, and Nightmare—as well as SF/F news and reviews, discussion of RPGs, and other fun stuff.

Delivered to your inbox once a week, starting January 2025. Subscribers get a free ebook anthology for signing up.