Authors in This Issue
John Richard Trtek, “The Lady in Camo”
John Richard Trtek’s fiction and poetry has appeared in Asimov’s, Analog, and Star*Line, and his historical play about pioneer Oregon feminist Abigail Duniway was recently performed by a local theater group. He and his wife taught together in the same high school and continue to live in Portland, where they now spend their retirements alternating among reading, writing, volunteering, gardening, and more writing.
Alexander Jablokov, “Ecobomb”
Alexander Jablokov’s short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, Analog, F&SF, a range of other magazines, and various anthologies. Alex’s latest Sere Glagolit story for Asimov’s (“How Sere Kept Herself Together,” March/April 2024) is included in The Year’s Top Tales of Space and Time 5, edited by Allan Kaster. He’d like to thank both the Cambridge Science Fiction Workshop and the Rio Hondo Writers’ Workshop for help with this story. Alex is newly remarried, but still lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He does occasionally visit his website, ajablokov.com.
William Preston, “Stay”
William Preston’s short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, Stone Canoe, Midway Journal, and Zoetrope: All-Story (where his “A Crisis for Mr. Lion” won the 2006 Short Fiction Prize). His first story for Asimov’s, “You Will Go to the Moon,” was republished in Neil Clarke’s lunar anthology The Eagle Has Landed. Retired from teaching, he now writes full time, albeit slowly, from his home in Syracuse, New York. Years ago, the author realized that much of life involves an exchange of goodbyes.
R.T. Ester, “The Tourist”
R.T. Ester works full time as a graphic designer and spends his off hours raising three young kids with his wife. His short stories have appeared in Interzone and Clarkesworld, and his debut novel The Ganymedan was published in November 2025 by Solaris Books. The author’s first story for Asimov’s features a unique travel service that can help you go anywhere if you pay the right price.
Adam-Troy Castro, “As Long as We’re Here, We Might as Well Dance”
Adam-Troy Castro has been bouncing around fantastic fiction since 1987, publishing, among other things, three novels and half a dozen novellas about his far-future murder investigator Andrea Cort. He is also known for his horror, much of which appears in Nightmare magazine. He won a Seiun with Jerry Oltion for their Analog story, “The Astronaut from Wyoming,” and he has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Stoker, and World Fantasy Awards. He bought the very first issue of Asimov’s in 1977, and has spent the last five decades not single-mindedly, but certainly with dedication, trying to sell a story to this publication. His first tale for us is a love story about not leaving a beloved place until Armageddon of a sort is set in the immediate future. It’s a little like being at a condemned amusement park the morning before the wrecking crew arrives.
“The Greenway,” by Susan Palwick
Susan Palwick has published four novels with Tor Books: Flying in Place (1992), The Necessary Beggar (2005), Shelter (2007), and Mending the Moon (2013). Her first story collection, The Fate of Mice, appeared in 2007 from Tachyon Publications, and her second collection, All Words Are Real, was published in 2019 by Fairwood Press. Susan’s fiction has been honored with a Crawford Award from the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, an Alex Award from the American Library Association, and an Asimov’s Reader’s Award, and it has been shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award, the Mythopoeic Award, and the Philip K. Dick Award. Several of her stories have been selected for the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy series. She was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame in 2023, having received their Silver Pen Award in 2006.
“The Man With the Ruined Hand” by Sean Monaghan
Sean Monaghan <seanmonaghan.com,@seanmonaghanauthor, facebook.com/seanmonaghanauthor> is currently working on a new novel in his Captain Arlon Stoddard series. Sean studied geography and geology, and while spending more time on writing than with rocks these days, he still takes every chance he can to get out into the desert.
“Replacement Theory” by Jack Skillingstead
Jack Skillingstead has been writing professionally since 2003 when his first sale to Asimov’s—the Sturgeon Award finalist “Dead Worlds”—appeared in the June issue. Readers interested in the years of struggle, experimentation, and sometimes wobbly faith leading up to that first pro sale and all those that followed can find this information in Jack’s essay “The Writing Life,” which is included in his most recent collection The Whole Mess and Other Stories.
“The Imaginative Youngster’s Guide to UFOs” by Will Ludwigsen
For more than twenty years, Will Ludwigsen’s stories of what he calls “weird mystery” have appeared in places like Lightspeed, Nightmare, Weird Tales, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, as well as several times in Asimov’s. His latest novella, A Scout is Brave, appeared in 2024 from Lethe Press. Will taught genre creative writing at the University of North Florida for five years but now works in corporate education and communications, writing fantasy nonfiction for capitalism by day and fantasy fiction by night for you. For his latest below, he returned to his favorite section of his elementary school library, Mysteries and the Unexplained, at Dewey Decimal 001.9, to add a book he always wanted to find.
“All My Birds” by K.A. Teryna (translated by Alex Shvartsman)
K.A. Teryna <www.k-a-teryna.blogspot.com> is an award-winning author and illustrator. She was born in two places at once—one of which is beyond the Arctic Circle. Her fiction has been translated from Russian into six languages. English translations of her stories have appeared in Asimov’s, Reactor, Apex, F&SF, Podcastle, and elsewhere. Her English-language short story collection Black Hole Heart and Other Stories was published by Fairwood Press. As of late, Chekhov the Cat has become K.A. Teryna’s coauthor. He’s in charge of keeping her warm and firmly in her seat. The author’s latest story is about a protagonist who lives in a city she can’t leave without a special ticket. But she had misplaced it and is trapped in the past and in her grief. Until the birds show up.
“The Moribund” by Lavie Tidhar
Lavie Tidhar is the World Fantasy Award and Campbell Award winning author of novels ranging from Osama to Central Station to the forthcoming The Three Coffin Problem. He was traveling through the more remote parts of Australia, he tells us, when the seed for this story first took root. The Australian environment infiltrated the tale, which deals with death, its process, and our obsession with it.
“And We Shall Find Rest” by James Sallis
Jim’s most recent book, Bright Segments: The Complete Short Fiction from Soho Press, contains 160 stories from the sixties up to last year. The collection is dedicated to, and the title taken from, Theodore Sturgeon. Early next year Soho will publish Jim’s “mosaic novel” World’s Edge, five novellas set in a near-future, balkanized America. Portugal’s fado makes much of saudade, a yearning for something so indefinite as to be inexpressible; saudade comes to life in the space between the singer’s inability to express what was felt and the urgency with which it must be.