iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 16/09/2026

For other time zones—The 2026 LIGHTSPEED + NIGHTMARE Kickstarter is NOW LIVE! Check out our star-studded lineup of authors & peruse our rewards: subscriptions, signed books, rare collectibles, t-shirts, mugs & other fun stuff. Thanks in advance if you're able to offer your support.💖 bit.ly/LS-NM-26

02320

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 17/07/2026

Excuse me, but where my motherfuckin cookies at

Yasso cookies and cream wrapper next to a Yasso with no cookies in the cream

2201

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 06/07/2026

I curated a new Amazon Original Stories Collection called MAGIC & MYSTERY, with stories by: @robertjbennett.bsky.social @travisbaldree.bsky.social @sarahbethdurst.bsky.social @scottlynch78.bsky.social @tananarivedue.bsky.social, Heather Fawcett & J.M. Miro Out July 28! amzn.to/4gjGIDF

Magic & Mystery: an Amazon Original Stories Collection. A cat's face with eyes glowing with pink and white magic. Below it are seven book covers, described below.

"Miss Gentle and the Case of the Very Flat Monk" by Travis Baldree: A figure in armor with a full closed helmet stands in the foreground, with a tall stone bell tower behind it. Purple magical energy swirls around a collection of trinkets hanging from the figure's neck.

"The Lion's Tusk" by Robert Jackson Bennett: A stained-glass window depicts two finely dressed medieval nobles clasping hands, one holding a bouquet.

"Battle of the Round House" by Tananarive Due: A figure in a wide-brimmed hat stands beneath a wooden gate at sunset, facing an enormous cloud in the sky in the shape of a bull's head.

"The Wednesday Witches Book Club" by Sarah Beth Durst: A white teapot with flowers and a cat etched onto it pours tea into a similarly-decorated teacup. In the background are shelves filled with books.

"A Labyrinth of Honeybees" by Heather Fawcett: A large honeybee with maze-like markings on its abdomen hovers above a garden.

"The Wizard Who Kept Himself Suspicious" by Scott Lynch: A wizard with a long white beard stands waist-deep in water. He's holding a wooden staff and wearing a pointed wizard hat; on the had are several small trees as if his hat is an island, and some waterfalls cascade off the brim of it.

"The Carindale Orphan" by J.M. Miro: A stout man wearing a bowler hat and overcoat walks beside a young boy down a dark Victorian-era cobblestone alley.

26117

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 11/05/2026

For those who don't read my newsletter: I've become a baker! These are my second attempt at "Halfling Oatmeal Sweet Nibbles" from the HEROES' FEAST cbook (also in DECK OF MANY MORSELS). Naturally, a DM screen is protecting them from enemies (i.e., my dogs). Main flavors: Butterscotch/Choc Chips.

A batch of oatmeal cookies cooling on a wire rack, surrounded on all four sides by a Dungeon Master Screen

3210

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 19/03/2026

Look at this extremely upsetting way Disney+ has the Star Wars movies organized. Episode 4, then 2, then 6, then 3, then The Clone Wars tv show (?!), then 5, then 7, then 8, then 1. Then I realized... they're alphabetical, but it doesn't look like it because they don't ignore the initial articles.

Screenshot of Disney+'s carousel showing the Star Wars movies, in this order Episode 4, then 2, then 6, then 3, then The Clone Wars tv show (?!), then 5, then 7, then 8, then 1.

241

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 16/01/2026

I made this one too, but it's very basic. Still, use it if you want it!

010

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 16/01/2026

I just made this protest gif. Feel free to share and/or repost. [bsky forced me to put it in a certain aspect ratio to attach it to the post (thus the black bars). You can grab the bar-less version here: www.lightspeedmagazine.com/wp-content/u... ]

1135

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 10/11/2025

In the wake of the Democrats' feckless capitulation re: the shutdown, it's clear that it's far past time we have a change in Democratic leadership. That's right: We need to primary the donkey and elect a cat instead. Who loves donkeys? No one! Who loves cats? Everyone! I've already got the logo.

Drake Hotline Bling meme with Drake holding his hand up to protest the top option (Donkeys) but then pointing and smiling at the bottom option (Cats).

Proposed new democratic imagery, using a cat silhouette as the symbol instead of a donkey. The cat is half blue, half red, with a white line separating the two halves, with four white stars at the bottom of the blue half. The word DEMOCRAT appears above the cat, and the cat is reaching one paw up to pull the R down so that it reads like "Democat."

3113

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 09/11/2025

I use MailerLite for my newsletter, and recently they made this UI change that is maddening. See attached image. The DONE EDITING button changes to PLEASE WAIT every time you make a change (as it saves progress). The buttons also resize slightly. It's SO DISTRACTING. Whyyyyyyyyyyy.

370

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 07/11/2025

If you wrote an SF/F/H story that was published in 2025 (or read a story that you thought was great), tell me about it in this thread! Authors, also send your story to me here: johnjosephadams.com/basff-submis... (Please read the guidelines before submitting.)

The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy stylized as cover text.

65171141

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 03/11/2025

THE TIME TRAVELER'S PASSPORT is now available, a new collection from Amazon Original Stories. 99¢ each or free w/ Prime/KU membership. Stories by: John Scalzi, RF Kuang, Peng Shepherd, Kaliane Bradley, P. Djèlí Clark, & Olivie Blake. www.amazon.com/dp/B0FN8CHTQD

A multicolored mobius strip with folds and angles to it, with the silhouette of a person walking on one side of it.

361

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 22/10/2025

"Origin Story" by Tochi Onyebuchi, from OUT THERE SCREAMING (2023) www.johnjosephadams.com/projects/out...

RECKLESS EYEBALLING
N.K. Jemisin
EYE & TOOTH
Rebecca Roanhorse
WANDERING DEVIL
Cadwell Turnbull
INVASION OF THE BABY SNATCHERS
Lesley Nneka Arimah
THE OTHER ONE
Violet Allen
LASIRÈN
Erin E. Adams
THE RIDER
Tananarive Due
THE AESTHETE
Justin C. Key
PRESSURE
Ezra Claytan Daniels
DARK HOME
Nnedi Okorafor
FLICKER
L.D. Lewis
THE MOST STRONGEST OBEAH WOMAN OF THE WORLD
Nalo Hopkinson
THE NORWOOD TROUBLE
Maurice Broaddus
A GRIEF OF THE DEAD
Rion Amilcar Scott
A BIRD SINGS BY THE ETCHING TREE
Nicole D. Sconiers
AN AMERICAN FABLE
Chesya Burke
YOUR HAPPY PLACE
Terence Taylor
HIDE & SEEK
P. Djèlí Clark
ORIGIN STORY
Tochi Onyebuchi

040

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 21/10/2025

BEST AMERICAN SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY 2025, edited by me and guest editor @nnedi.bsky.social is now available! See the cover and full TOC in the attached image. This is volume 11 (!!!) of BASFF. www.harpercollins.com/products/the... @marinerbooks.bsky.social

2025 Table of Contents

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2025 contains the following stories.
FANTASY

Look at the Moon by Dominique Dickey
from Lightspeed
The Witch Trap by Jennifer Hudak
from Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet
Ushers by Joe Hill
from Amazon Original Stories
Country Birds by Kij Johnson
from Sunday Morning Transport
The Wonders of the World by ‘Pemi Aguda
from Ghostroots: Stories
Also, the Cat by Rachel Swirsky
from Reactor
What Happened to the Crooners by Russell Nichols
from Nightmare
The River Judge by S.L. Huang
from Reactor
A Stranger Knocks by Tananarive Due
from Uncanny
An Ode to the Minor Arcana in a Triplet Flow by Xavier Garcia
from Death in the Mouth, Vol. 2

SCIENCE FICTION

The Three Thousand, Four Hundred Twenty-Third Law of Robotics by Adam-Troy Castro
from Lightspeed
The Weight of Your Own Ashes by Carlie St. George
from Clarkesworld
We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read by Caroline M. Yoachim
from Lightspeed
Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole by Isabel J. Kim
from Clarkesworld
The Forgetting Room by Kathryn H. Ross
from FIYAH
The Audit by Olivie Blake
from Januaries
Yarns by Susan Palwick
from Asimov’s
Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! by T.J. Klune
from In the Lives of Puppets
Fuck Them Kids by Tatiana Obey
from FIYAH
The Sort by Thomas Ha
from Clarkesworld

04312

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 10/10/2025

Since DUNGEONS DEEP just came out, I wanted to post again about my indie-published adventure, ASCENDANCY OF NUR'RY'ZA. It's about missing wizards-in-training, a cursed game, and monks who worship a dark entity. PDF: www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/5... Roll20: www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/5...

Cover of ASCENDANCY OF NUR'RY'ZA, a 5e Adventure for PCs of 5th or 6th level by Ennie and Hugo Award winner John Joseph Adams. Cover image depicts a female monk standing in a powerful martial arts pose, with the earth shattering around her as if from the force of her feet striking the ground.
TEXT: PLAY THE GAME. LOSE CONTROL. FEED THE GOD.
What begins as a simple missing persons case quickly spirals into a descent through obsession, curses, and cult sacrifices. Ascendancy of Nur’Ry’Za is a one-shot adventure easy to slip into any campaign. Set in a monastery high atop a remote mountain, a cursed game is dominating minds and feeding the bottomless hunger of a dark eldritch entity.

This 50+ page adventure includes:

A narrative-rich mystery adventure with elements of horror and psychological tension
A Go/Chess-like game called Ascendancy that curses its players and enthralls them to a dark eldritch entity
A climactic ritual encounter where timing and choices matter
A monastery dungeon with tactical encounters and dramatic set-pieces
Three original full-color, highly-detailed hi-res maps (including player versions, GM versions, and a GM versions with creature placement)
3 original monk statblocks, inspired by Brazilian jiu-jitsu: Monk, Grappler Monk, and Grappling Master Monk
4 original “disciple” statblocks, designed to be warlock-monk cultists: Disciple Initiate, Zealous Disciple, Dark Disciple Priest, and Ardent Disciple
Tokens for all creatures and NPCs
Adventure text that uses special formatting conventions and hyperlinks to help GMs easily navigate the text while running the adventure
Four player handouts
An original monk subclass, The Way of Control, inspired by Brazilian jiu-jitsu

Designed for 5 PCs of 5th level (Hard-Deadly) or 6th level (Medium-Hard), this adventure is perfect for groups who enjoy a mix of intrigue, combat, and unraveling ancient secrets.

030

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 02/10/2025

My article series about Downtime Activities in 5e/Tales of the Valiant concludes with Performing. My favorite part is the result you get if you roll a 1-10 on your Performance check (i.e., the worst you can roll). koboldpress.com/your-bard-ca... Whole Series: www.johnjosephadams.com/projects/dow...

Text Screenshot: Your performances are somewhere between middling and dreadful. There are either some hecklers or someone falls asleep during the show and begins snoring loudly—or both. You lose the money you spent on setting up and promoting your show. In addition, you lose a number of fans equal to 20 minus your check result (the minimum number of fans you can have is 0). Here’s the good news: No one who saw your act will ever come to another one of your shows, and anyone else almost certainly won’t have heard of you, so when you do your next show it’ll be like it’s your first, which is just as well, really.

010

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 01/10/2025

Hey! I've got two adventures in this book that just came out from @koboldpress.com. They're both co-written with dope author @bryancamp.bsky.social. Our adventures are “Clockwork Phylactery” and “The Dark God’s Ziggurat.” koboldpress.com/kpstore/prod... www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/5...

DUNGEONS DEEP: 16 Classic Ready-to-Play Drop-in Dungeons. A young female wizard with long black hair holds a lantern in one hand and a crystal in the other, side by side with a male warrior in splint armor holding a sword and shield. Both face a grick—a large serpent-like creature with a head opens like tentacles, with a large beak in the center.

2256

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 14/08/2025

After being missing since June 3, my cat Bender finally came home last night! We saw him in our driveway on July 23 and have been seeing him around now and then since, but he wouldn't come inside. Last night he finally did. And boy did he want pets.

1631

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 26/07/2025

Ever since druids could easily get a familiar I wanted to live out this fantasy in game. In 2024 if you're a moon druid you could be the weasel not just riding the bird but the weasel blasting enemies with starry wisp from afar. Now you can also talk in WS so you could be a weasel almost full-time.

Photo of a weasel riding on the back of a woodpecker.

110

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 25/07/2025

Some of the 2024 changes are hilarious in how much of a 180 they are. Like: 2014 True Strike=absolute dogshit; 2024 True Strike=maybe the best cantrip in the game. 2014 Witchbolt=terrible; 2024 Witchbolt=super good! (My lvl 5 sorc upcast WB at 3rd level, crit, and did 69 points of damage!)

140

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 12/07/2025

Here's a picture of the inside of my dusty-ass computer, showing the RAM.

120

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 14/05/2025

LitHub is showcasing this year's class of Best American anthologies, including Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy (for which I'm series editor). lithub.com/here-are-the... If you visit my website, you can see the full TOC and list of Notable Stories. www.johnjosephadams.com/projects/bes...

810734

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 14/05/2025

To sign up and get your free ebook anthology, visit johnjosephadams.com/newsletter

000

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 14/05/2025

So! There's a taste of what you get by subscribing to the newsletter. I also share my thoughts on movies/tv and talk about TTRPGs, short fiction, my anthologies and magazines, and other fun stuff. PLUS frequent dog pics like this one of our Blue Heeler/Aussie Shepherd, Lore.

A blue heeler//aussie shepherd mix, white with black markings. His head is on his dad's leg looking up at him balefully, desperately in hopes that it might possibly please please please be dinner time now.

230

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 14/05/2025

DEATH OF THE AUTHOR. 8/10 A landmark achievement for Okorafor. I tore through it, loved it. I have no doubt it will be one of the most discussed books of the year. Everyone should read it! (You may be wondering if it really is a genre book, even once you're reading it; I promise that it is.)

100

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 14/05/2025

EXHALATION. 10/10 This is a re-read for me, but I had never listened to the audiobook, and I'm on an audiobook kick lately, so I decided to revisit. Ted Chiang is amazing—there's pretty universal agreement on that. But I'll just say that for me to give 10/10 to ANYTHING is extremely rare.

120

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 14/05/2025

A DROP OF CORRUPTION. 9/10 I read the first in this series, The Tainted Cup, and loved it, so I was really excited to dive right into book 2, which just came out as I finished that. And Robert Jackson Bennett did not disappoint. I was just as enthralled with this one as I was with the first.

230

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 14/05/2025

TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW. 9/10 Firstly, I'll note this book is not SF/F/H in any way, though as noted above it is about video game designers. I didn't even know what to classify this as, but I see online it is called "Friendship Fiction"—and yeah, that's totally what it is.

100

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 14/05/2025

YELLOWFACE. 9/10 This book sounded like fire when I first heard about it, but despite that I wasn't prepared for how incredibly unflinching and incisive it would be. The prose is electric, and Kuang gets every single aspect of the story right—

100

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 14/05/2025

SOMEONE YOU CAN BUILD A NEST IN. 7/10 Having not read the cover copy at all, this book was not at all what I was thinking it would be based on the title. I thought it would be kind of urban fantasyish, but nope it's a secondary world fantasy, with a protagonist who is an actual monster.

100

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 14/05/2025

BABEL. 8/10 This was the book of the year the year it came out, so you probably don't need me to tell you how great it is. But it IS great—I absolutely loved it. The audiobook narrator is really special in this one—they're able to really pull off that vocal chameleon thing that is so hard to do.

100

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 14/05/2025

THE MINISTRY OF TIME. 8/10 A compulsively readable time travel novel. It uses a very similar plot point as the John Varley story "Air Raid" (adapted to film as Millennium), but otherwise it felt like a very fresh take on time travel tropes.

111

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 14/05/2025

SERVICE MODEL. 8/10 Really fun and fast read about AI, free will, and a very occasional murder. The audiobook is included in the Hugo voters packet, which I thought was pretty much perfectly narrated by the author.

100

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 14/05/2025

PIRANESI. 9/10 Fascinating, compelling, and super super strange—in the best way possible. I loved it... and have never read anything like it.

220

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 14/05/2025

WHAT FEASTS AT NIGHT / WHAT MOVES THE DEAD. 7/10, 7/10 These two Hugo-nominated novellas are both very compelling and I really enjoyed them as I was reading them. I've read a couple other things since I finished them, and I find myself struggling to remembering a ton about them.

120

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 14/05/2025

THE TAINTED CUP. 9/10 A mystery/fantasy hybrid that excels with both the mystery and fantasy elements. Incredible book—well deserving of its recently-announced Hugo nomination.

130

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 14/05/2025

BLOOD OVER BRIGHT HAVEN. 8/10 I kind of surprised myself how much I enjoyed this. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised—it was a NY Times Bestseller and gotten rave reviews (including one that compares it to Le Guin... I don't know about all that, but still).

130

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 14/05/2025

In my Robot Wizard Zombie Crit! newsletter, I've been posting a bunch of capsule reviews of books I've been reading lately. I'm going to post a bunch of them in this thread. If you sign up for the newsletter, you get a free ebook anthology. johnjosephadams.com/newsletter

1276

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 14/04/2025

Here's an image of the cursed game Ascendancy that appears in the adventure:

A tree round with a chessboard-like pattern on it, but hexagonal instead of square. Three groups of pieces are arranged on the board, one turquoise, one maroon, and one yellow.

010

John Joseph Adams @johnjosephadams.com · 08/04/2025

I just published a 5e-compatible D&D adventure I wrote on @roll20.net and @drivethrurpg.com! "Ascendancy of Nur'Ry'Za" is a monk-centric adventure designed for 5 PCs of 5th or 6th level. Included with the adventure is an original Way of Control monk subclass. www.johnjosephadams.com/projects/asc...

2182