Current Issue Highlights
July/August 2024
John Richard Trtek’s exciting July/August 2024 novelette thrusts the charming Monsieur Picot into “The Sixteenth Circumstance,” while Stephen Case brings enthralling intrigue to the “Sisters of the Flare.” You’ll also find out why R. Garcia y Robertson’s adventurers are “Untouchable”! Don’t miss this issue!
Alex Irvine spins the boys of summer around the Solar System in “You Know Me Al”; Mark D. Jacobsen attempts to lift “The Weight of Oceans”; Robert Morrell, Jr., who’s new to Asimov’s pens a wry novelette about “A Family Matter”; Genevieve Valentine, who’s also new to the magazine, depicts a terrifying New York City that’s “Future Perfect”; and our third new author, Kenneth Schneyer, portrays a shattering situation in “Tamaza’s Future and Mine.” A teen in our new tale from Leah Cypess discovers that her universe has been “Flipped”; Susan Palwick attempts to redeem a difficult and potentially deadly situation with “Yarns”; and James Van Pelt schools us in why it’s vitally important that “This Good Lesson Keep.”
Robert Silverberg’s Reflections investigates “The Vampires of Poland”; in On the Net, James Patrick Kelly spends time “Dancing About Architecture”; Peter Heck’s On Books considers works by Gregory Frost, Charles Stross, Karen Lorde, and others. Plus we’ll have an array of poetry you’re sure to enjoy.
NOVELLA
The Sixteenth Circumstance
by John Richard Trtek
Favoring handholds over harness, Monsieur Picot employed but a light touch to keep himself seated while contemplating the planetary limb of Aphalaon, whose mottled blue and ochre curve was overlaid with threads of white. To the Frenchman’s eye, it was a vision meant to be painted rather than merely scanned, but since none among his current crew were artists in that sense, he could only lean back and make do with this electronic rendition—and feel grateful that those pale obscurations were water clouds, for he had always found sleep difficult within the confines of an exoskin. READ MORE
NOVELETTES
Sisters of the Flare
by Stephen Case
I.
What I learned is that the substance of time is laid down, like the weave of a tapestry, and we are always only on the leading edge where the threads come together. Once the moment passes, the structure remains, and it remains unalterable. To change the position of a single thread is as impossible as changing the course of a single lonely star—and as futile.
Events in the past, the sisters theologicia would tell me, have an ontological weight as significant and unyielding as objects in space. They are, and they offer no more explanation or justification than a stone or a planetoid does.
Why the rain of darkness first came to Corvus. READ MORE
POETRY
What They Didn’t Do
by Mary Soon Lee
Fire weapons that warped space with a booming explosive crescendo.
Construct an interstellar highway through our neighborhood.
Invite us to join their galactic sisterhood. READ MORE
DEPARTMENTS
Editorial: The 2024 Dell Magazines Awards
by Sheila Williams
Florida provided sunny weather for the thirtieth presentation of the Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing. As usual, the awards were bestowed in Orlando at the annual International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts (ICFA). The award, which is co-sponsored by Dell Magazines and the International Association for Fantastic in the Arts, and supported by Western Colorado University’s Graduate Program in Creative Writing, was presented on March 16, 2024. The winner received a plaque and five hundred dollars. READ MORE
Reflections: The Vampires of Poland
by Robert Silverberg
C.M. Kornbluth (1923–1958) wrote some of the finest science fiction of the 1940s and 1950s, but because of his early death at the age of thirty-four, nearly seventy years ago, his work is not as well known in modern times as it ought to be. Which is unfortunate, because such stories as “The Little Black Bag,” “That Share of Glory,” “Two Dooms,” and “Shark Ship” are just as sharp and vigorous today as they were when they were written midway through the twentieth century ago. READ MORE
On Books
by Peter Heck
Blackgoose offers a new take on the popular “school for magic” fantasy subgenre, with a Native American young woman attending a dragon academy in an alternate-history nineteenth century. This books begins a series, “Nampesheweisit.”
Teenage Anequs lives with her family on the island of Masquapaug, or Nantucket, as we know it. One day she is gathering mussels on a nearby island when a dragon lands near her. There have been no dragons on the island for generations. It is clear the dragon is carrying an egg, so Anequs informs her family, and returns the next morning to find the egg waiting and the mother dragon gone. She takes the egg home and places it in the meetinghouse. When, surrounded by the whole tribe, the egg hatches, the baby dragon telepathically tells her its name, Kasaqua. That makes Anequs a Nampeshiweisit—her people’s term for someone partnered with a dragon. READ MORE
On the Net: Dancing About Architecture
by James Patrick Kelly
ekphrasis
Every once in a while, some wit will make a remark that passes almost immediately from droll insight to celebrated maxim. Consider for example: Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. Who first said it? George Carlin? Elvis Costello? Miles Davis? The origins of this observation are murky, although Costello attributes it to the multitalented Martin Mull en. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Mull, who reportedly uttered it in 1979, according to the Detroit Free Press. However, there is an instance of a similar comment in the February 9, 1918, issue of The New Republic https://freakonomics.com/2010/12/quotes-uncovered-dancing-about-architecture: “Strictly considered, writing about music is as illogical as singing about economics.” READ MORE