JULY/AUGUST 2026
Welcome to Asimov’s Science Fiction! Discover the Who’s Who of award-winning authors, stories, editorial insights, news, reviews, events… Come tour our universe!
EXCERPTS:
Last Train to Gertrude Stein
Sandra McDonald
Better the Devil You Know
Allen M. Steele
EDITORIAL:
The 2026 Must Read Books Award
Emily Hockaday
REFLECTIONS:
One Thing Happens
Robert Silverberg
ON THE NET:
James Patrick Kelly
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FEATURED STORY
Sydney Sackett – Transmission from Niels-4
We had trained for years to undertake missions on hostile exoplanets, but the cold of Niels-4 threatened our limits, scathing us to the marrow as though our EVA suits weren’t there. The hail bursting on our faceplates was frozen methane. It formed a colorless sheet of crystalline fragments on the rocky surface we slogged through. My feet and hands felt like solid bricks beneath my thermal layering, breakable on impact, even as the suit’s internal heaters tried to compensate. Our team captain, Xiang, spoke an inaudible command, drowned by the battering our helmets were taking. Then he shouted it, feedback…
Keep readingMore stories from the latest issue:
From the archive:
SNEAK PEEK
Our next installment is our annual super-stuffed slightly spooky special issue. We have two substantial novelettes opening and closing the volume—“Visiting Skins” by Christopher Ruz & Rich Larson has us wondering who we can trust; Dale Bailey is back with another exquisitely crafted tale, this time exploring grief and a mysterious “Night Caller from Outer Space.”
AWARDS
OVER 45 YEARS OF AWARDS
Asimov’s Stories
- 55 Hugo Awards
- 30 Nebula Awards
Asimov’s Editors
- 20 Hugo Awards for Best Editor
- 16 Locus Awards for Best Editor
Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine
- 18 Locus Awards for Best Magazine, including the last four years in a row!
EXPLORE ASIMOV’S
Welcome to Asimov’s Science Fiction. Fulfilling a lifelong goal, I started my career with Asimov’s in 1982 believing it was the best magazine on earth. I still do.
Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine continues to bring together celebrated authors, new talent, and award-winning stories, poems, and articles as it has for over 35 years. The premier literary magazine in the genre, Asimov’s rewards readers with an exciting new trove of adventures in each issue that transport them on journeys examining the human experience across the Universe.
The perfect gathering place to meet the Who’s Who of Asimov’s Science Fiction authors! We feature posts, articles, and podcasts from our writers. Come by frequently – you never know what you’ll discover!
Our current issue features not one but two incredible novellas. Sam W. Pisciotta sends us to the eighteenth century, where married scientists try to tame chaos after traveling to the New World—but they find their reason is only “A Flame in the Dark.” Reader favorite Allen M. Steele also sends us back in time: we travel with his chrononauts to a major historic disaster—where the mission is to assure the deadly event comes to pass. Is it really “Better the Devil You Know”?
A potpourri of resources both practical and whimsical – from Writer’s Submission Guidelines, the Calendar of Science Fiction events, and Asimov’s editorial archives to News you can use, the Asimov’s Index, Podcasts, and Cartoons.
More From Must Read Magazines!
AN INSIDE LOOK
by Sandra McDonald
After Henri dies in their Versailles cottage—alive and joking on Christmas morning, flown to heaven before noon—Claudine needs a new purpose. She moves back to Paris, pays the movers to hoist her belongings up through the window of a cozy attic in the Latin Quarter, and begins teaching mortal tourists how to make tarte Tatin.
After all, she’s more than a thousand years old, give or take, with no heirs to dote on. Her condition makes childbirth impossible, and Henri sired no children elsewhere. Everything is in order—jewels and gold caches hidden throughout the city, overseas bank accounts in multiple names, legal trusts and contracts updated with a very expensive and long-lived firm of solicitors. Until her demise and next incarnation, then, she can host strangers in her humble accommodations. She can manage tart red apples, organic flour, and sugar caramelized on a hot plate, all served up with folklore and charm. READ MORE
by Allen M. Steele
September 8, 1934; 1:30 a.m.
In the darkest hours of the cool autumn night, with sunrise still several hours away, the Atlantic Ocean seven miles off the New Jersey coast lay silent and still. The stars were masked behind thick rainclouds shrouding the night sky; when morning finally arrived, it would be with the amber glow to the east that an old nautical rhyme admonishes sailors to be wary, foul weather is approaching. But when the rain finally came, it would be welcome, for it would help control the inferno that would soon be blazing out here on the ocean.
Alone in the darkness, the cruise ship Morro Castle sailed the quiet waters. Now on the last leg of its latest nine-day round trip between New York and Havana, the liner was heading home, scheduled later this morning to drop anchor on the East River. There the two hundred passengers still asleep in their cabins, most of them East Coast residents, would disembark at the wharf where they expected to be picked up by friends and families. READ MORE
