To Slay a Dragon

Russell Banner is a military vet. In his senior years life is mundane, except for Fridays at the VFW. Shane’s had work troubles. Today his problems escalate, and his life takes a complete turnaround learning a family member has died. Homeless for the past 30 years, James Fredrickson is offered an opportunity at gaining supernatural abilities, tying together the lives of these three characters.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.In our August 2012 issue, we have original fantasy by Kat Howard (“Breaking the Frame”) and Linda Nagata (“A Moment Before It Struck”), along with fantasy reprints by Wil McCarthy (“The Necromancer in Love”) and Delia Sherman (“Cotillion”).Plus, we’ll have original science fiction by 2012 Nebula Award-winner Ken Liu (“The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species”) and a collaboration between Caroline M. Yoachim and Tina Connolly (“Flash Bang Remember”), and SF reprints by io9’s Charlie Jane Anders (“Love Might Be Too Strong a Word”) and award-winning author Michael Swanwick (“Slow Life”).For our ebook readers, our ebook-exclusive novella is “A Separate War” by Joe Haldeman, and we have an excerpt of Kitty Steals the Show, the new Kitty Norville novel by bestselling author Carrie Vaughn.All that, plus our usual assortment of author and artist spotlights, and feature interviews with bestselling authors Kim Stanley Robinson and Seanan McGuire (a/k/a Mira Grant).