Lightspeed Magazine Archives - Jeremiah Tolbert

The Dragon of Dread Peak

A fantasy novella published in Lightspeed Magazine, October, 2017.

Flip and friends are hard at work training to take on Dungeonspace for more loot and adventure, but the team is struggling to come together in the face of hardship. When news of an escapee from the Black Hole dungeon arrives, Flip’s world is thrown into disarray. He and his party take a job with the powerful formulist Briggsby, and it’s no big deal. They just have to rob the great dragon Karnifex…

“The Dragon of Dread Peak” is the novella sequel to “The Cavern of the Screaming Eye” and a continuation of the adventures of Flip, Domino, and Basher, teen Dungeonspace adventurers. Their current storyline will conclude in a future novella.

Read Listen

The West Topeka Triangle

A fantasy novelette published in Lightspeed Magazine, January 2017.

Another child has disappeared in 1980s West Topeka, but this is only part of the strange events that Jason attributes to his very own “West Topeka Triangle,” an area of oddities and disappearances he equates with the more famous Bermuda Triangle. Jason struggles to make sense of the mysterious happenings and finds himself with an unlikely ally in the process.

Read Listen

The Cavern of the Screaming Eye

A fantasy novelette published in Lightspeed Magazine, October, 2016.

The first in the Dungeonspace sequence of stories, “Cavern” is the story of a young man struggling with the legacy of his dead brother, a great dungeonspace crawler lost to one of the most deadly dungeon anomalies the City has ever seen–The Black Hole. His mother will kill him if he takes up d-space adventuring–she […]

Read Listen

Men of Unborrowed Vision

A science fiction short story published in Lightspeed Magazine, January, 2015.

A story of near-future lefitist politics, protest movements, drones, and right-wing genetic engineering designed to end it all. When protest organizer Mara’s ex-boyfriend brutally murders his roommate, Mara is called home from college to investigate. And when fellow protesters drop out of the movement one by one, she begins to suspect a conspiracy. We […]

Read Listen

In the Dying Light, We Saw a Shape

A science fiction short story published in Lightspeed Magazine, January, 2014.

The story is about our desire to explore space. It’s about love. It’s about failure. You know, human stuff. Thom met Lilian under a Nebraska sky, stars shining through the fabric of space so intensely that he sometimes mistook them for the falling whales, burning brightly. He tended to stargaze; it was the frustrated astronomer […]

Read Listen

La Alma Perdida de Marguerite Espinoza

A fantasy short story published in Lightspeed Magazine, November 2012.

I’ve been obsessed with the idea of the human soul for as long as I can remember; the idea of some crucial essence that makes us, us. In this fantastical setting, human souls are rare, and people can fill the hole where a soul should be with the soul of an animal. Human souls become […]

Read Listen

Not by Wardrobe, Tornado, or Looking Glass

A fantasy short story published in Lightspeed Magazine, February, 2016.

The silhouette of a centaur beckoned towards the gathering crowd from within the rabbit hole. In a melodious voice, she called out, “Richard! Come quickly. Without your aid, the Inkies destroy everything that is beautiful and good in our world!” A middle-aged man in a gray business suit laughed and ran forward, the crowd begrudgingly […]

Read Listen

Taste the Singularity at the Food Truck Circus

A science fiction novelette published in Lightspeed Magazine, August 2016.

A near-future story about a Kansas City food truck scene set against the backdrop of a global climate change crisis. In the Circus, anything goes, and damn the FDA. Food that mixes pleasure and pain, illegal cloned meats, and stranger dining experiences can be had, if you know the right people.

Read Listen

Published in Lightspeed Magazine