Our 51st issue is another strong one one, with four of our acquiring editors finding tales for us. Michael Bracken has an original Bev Vincent mystery, and Barb Goffman has a winner from R.T. Lawton. Cynthia Ward turns the tables on fellow editor Michael Bracken and selects a haunted house story by him! And too-long-absent editor Paul Di Filippo has picked a powerful story by Sheree R. Thomas. Good stuff.As if that’s not enough (which it never is for the Black Cat!), we have gone b...

The tongue Sheree Renée Thomas dreams in is soft and sharp, ethereal and down-home.This book of poems, stories, and essays draws together examples illustrating a mind immersed in Black legends and white myths, and in the growing realization of our place in the world and time, and in irresistible pull of the future: starships, floods, dancers twinned by crystal-filled caverns, and iridescent crops of living retribution. In her interview, Thomas explores the intricat...

The stories collected in Nine Bar Blues weave emotion, spirit, and music, captivating readers with newfound alchemy and the murmurs of dark gods. Rooted in rhythm, threaded with magic, these tales encompass worlds that begin in river bottoms, pass through spectral gates, and end in distant uncharted worlds. These stories describe the pain that often accompanies the confines of sanctuary and the joy that is inextricably bound to the troubles of hard living. Nine Bar Blues sings a multiverse...

A travel guide to hauntings and the haunted, to lands with their own power, and to the communities that spring from these strange realms.In your hands is a guide to the strange and surreal. From arcades along a boardwalk and jetties at the edges of tourist towns, to a rural village in Pakistan and hollows hidden deep within a forest in Pennsylvania, strange things can happen no matter where you are. You can become lost in a city crowded with people, haunted within your own home, an...

Winner of the 2023 World Fantasy Award for Best AnthologyWinner of the 2023 Locus Award for Best AnthologyA 2023 NAACP Image Award NomineeA 2023 British Fantasy Award NomineeA NPR Best of the Year pick**A Book Riot Best SFF of the Year pick"[A]** magnificent and wide-ranging anthology . . . A must-read for all genre fan...

An all-new re-imagining of the legendary Black Panther comics arc, Panther's Rage, from an award-winning authorFollow Wakanda's high-tech king across the savannah, into the deepest jungles and up snow-topped mountains in this prose adaptation of the landmark comics series by Don McGregor, Rich Buckler and Billy Graham. This arc expands on the life and culture of the Wakandans, also introducing us to Panther's historic enemies. See T'Challa channel the stre...

This volume examines the school-to-prison pipeline, a concept that has received growing attention over the past 10–15 years in the United States. The “pipeline” refers to a number of interrelated concepts and activities that most often include the criminalization of students and student behavior, the police-like state found in many schools throughout the country, and the introduction of youth into the criminal justice system at an early age. The school-to-prison pipeline negatively and dis...

An Alphabet of Embers is an anthology of unclassifiables – lyrical, surreal, magical, experimental pieces that straddle the border between poetry and prose. It lives in a place between darkness and sound, between roads and breaths, its pages taut with starlight; between its covers, words talk to each other, and have an occasional cup of tea.Edited by Rose Lemberg, featuring work by:Alvaro Zinos-AmaroAmal El-MohtarArkady MartineCeleste Rita Baker...

He had never, in all the long minutes and hours of his days, seen a sight like this.The yard was all torn apart, as if a great hand from above had reached down and unzipped the dark earth. He walked over to the crack nearest him and eased over, his knee and his whole leg tense. Doc craned his head to see how far the hole went, and realized there was no bottom to see, just darkness leading down and thick, twisted roots and stones and things he wasn’t sure he actually did see.

LIGHTSPEED is an online science fiction and fantasy magazine. 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.Our cover story this month is an original science fiction short by Sarah Grey (“A Bond as Deep as Starlit Seas”), illustrated by Waiji Choo. We also have original SF fro...

A galaxy of voices. A universe of belonging.The innovative fictions in Infinite Constellations showcase the voices and visions of 30 remarkable writers, both new and established, from the global majority: Native American/First Nation writers, South Asian writers, East Asian writers, Black American writers, Latinx writers, and Caribbean and Middle Eastern writers. These are visions both familiar and strange, but always rooted in the mystery of huma...

From an award-winning team of editors comes an anthology of thirty-two original stories showcasing the breadth of fantasy and science fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora.A group of cabinet ministers queries a supercomputer containing the minds of the country’s ancestors. A child robot on a dying planet uncovers signs of fragile new life. A descendant of a rain goddess inherits her grandmother’s ability to change her appearance—and perhaps the world.Created in the l...