Authors in This Issue
“Weather Duty” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s fiction has won the Asimov’s Readers Award the past two years running. She also won The Short Fiction Mystery’s Derringer Award for the best novelette for a story that was in The WMG Holiday Spectacular. She expects to have a new novel in the Diving series in 2025. Kris is finishing a big saga in her Fey series as well, with a new book coming out in September. The author moved to Las Vegas in 2018, and as a Midwestern girl, had to learn how to live in the heat. She was doing fine until this past summer broke all heat records and lasted longer than any previous summer. Yes, living there inspired her to write her latest story. That, and having been on jury duty one too many times.
“The Hidden God” by T.R. Napper
T.R. Napper <X: @TheEscherMan, BlueSky: @trnapper.bsky.social, Facebook: trnapper, Instagram: trnapper> is a multi-award-winning science fiction author, including the Australian Aurealis three times. His short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, Interzone, F&SF, Grimdark Magazine, and numerous anthologies and year’s best collections. He received a creative writing doctorate for his thesis: Noir, Cyberpunk, and Asian Modernity. Before turning to writing, the author was an aid worker, delivering humanitarian programs in Southeast Asia for a decade. During this period he was a resident of the Old Quarter in Ha Noi for several years, the setting for his acclaimed debut novel, 36 Streets. These days he has returned to his home country of Australia, where he runs art therapy programs for people with disabilities.
“Quantum Ghosts (Part I)” by Nancy Kress
Nancy Kress is the author of twenty-five novels, five collections of short stories, and three books about writing. Her fiction has won six Nebulas, two Hugos, a Sturgeon, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Her most recent work is Observer, written with Dr. Robert Lanza. Subatomic particles have always both fascinated and baffled Nancy, and over the course of her forty-five-year writing career, quantum physics has only gotten weirder.
“On the Night Shift” by Zohar Jacobs
Zohar Jacobs <X: @zoharjacobs and Bluesky: @zoharjacobs.bsky.social> has published short fiction in the Sunday Morning Transport, Analog, and Clarkesworld. A graduate of Viable Paradise, she grew up in New Hampshire and now lives in England. Last year she finally made a pilgrimage to Johnson Space Center. Zohar’s latest tale for Asimov’s tells the story of a Mars mission entering orbit during a chaotic hurricane evacuation from Houston, and sudden new responsibilities for a young engineer
“My Heart a Streak of Light Across the Sky” by Samantha Murray
Samantha Murray <Blue sky: @samanthamurray.bsky.social, X: @SamanthaNMurray, Facebook: www.facebook.com/samantha. bailey.murray, and Instagram: Samantha_n_murray> has sold short fiction to Clarkesworld, F&SF, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, Interzone and many other places. Her stories have won Aurealis Awards and been included in The Best Science Fiction of the Year anthology. Samantha lives in Western Australia, in a household of unruly boys. Her debut story in Asimov’s is a tale of a scientist working with nanoscopic robots on a lifeless, lonely planet.
“Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon” by Donald McCarthy
Donald McCarthy <www.donaldmccarthy.com> is an author from Long Island, New York. He’s published short fiction with The Baltimore Review, Mythaxis Magazine, James Gunn’s Ad Astra, Pseudopod, The Creepy Podcast, The Grey Rooms, and more. His nonfiction has appeared at Salon, Undark Magazine, The Huffington Post, Nightmare Magazine, and other venues. The author’s latest story concerns a UFO hunter who had a supernatural experience as a child and will do anything to have one again.
“The Demon of Metrazol” by Ray Nayler
Ray Nayler <raynayler.net> is the author of the novel The Mountain in the Sea, which won the Locus Award for Best First Novel, and the novella The Tusks of Extinction, praised by the New York Times and the Washington Post. Called “one of the up-and-coming masters of SF short fiction” by Locus, Ray’s stories have won the Clarkesworld Readers’ Poll and the Asimov’s Readers’ Award, and his novelette “Sarcophagus” was a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. A Russian speaker, Ray lived and worked abroad for two decades in Russia, Central Asia, Vietnam, and the Balkans. The author currently resides in Washington, D.C., also the location of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, which opened in 1852 as the Government Hospital for the Insane, a forbidding red brick castle where the inventor of the icepick lobotomy once worked.
“The Mystery of My Death” by Rob Chilson
Rob Chilson is a retired Federal employee. He has had seven novels and over seventy short pieces published, notably in our sister zine, Analog. His first story in Asimov’s appeared in 1979: “Written in Sand.” His first story anywhere appeared in 1968, which means that he is elderly. Old people are seasoned time travelers, much given to pondering the ins and outs of time and its travelers.
“A Brief Hustory of the Afterlife” by Anthony Ha
Anthony Ha <@anthonyha on Instagram and Bluesky and other social media platforms> has published fiction in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and his short story chapbook Love Songs For Monsters. A tech journalist based in New York City, Anthony is also the co-host of the Original Content podcast and a two-time winner of The Dell Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing. His first story for Asimov’s began as tribute to one of his favorite genre tropes, the haunted spaceship, and to one of his favorite stories, Bruce Sterling’s “Twenty Evocations.”
“Cryptid or Your Money Back” by Misha Lenau
Misha was born in the USSR and fled the country with their parents when they were five. They’re queer, nonbinary, and disabled. They’ve worked in the games industry for over a decade, mostly as an engineer, occasionally as a writer. Their visual novel, Mission: It’s Complicated (Schell Games, 2020), is available for free on Steam and itch.io. Their last publication was “Bread and Circuits” (Asimov’s, November/December 2021), which you can also find for free read by the author. They’re occasionally on Bluesky @mishtryoshka.bsky.social.