Current Issue Highlights
March/April 2025
Our March/April 2025 issue is bursting with fiction. We have three exciting novellas stuffed into our pages. Kristine Kathryn Rusch opens the issue with a thrilling story about “Weather Duty”; T.R. Napper brings us an intense tale about a rogue AI in “The Hidden God”; and Nancy Kress bookends the issue with Part 1 of a giant novella that exposes the terrifying consequences of coexistence with “Quantum Ghosts”!
Ray Nayler reveals the true horror behind “The Demon of Metrazol”; Rob Chilson attempts to resolve “The Mystery of My Death”; new author Anthony Ha gives us “A Brief History of the Afterlife”; new to Asimov’s author Samantha Murray spins the bittersweet tale of “My Heart a Streak of Light Across the Sky”; and new author Donald McCarthy shocks us with truths about “Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon.” Zohar Jacobs returns to our pages with a tense story about what it means to be “On the Night Shift,” and Misha Lenau makes good on the promise of “Cryptid or Your Money Back.”
Robert Silverberg’s Reflections explains “The Naming of Names”; James Patrick Kelly’s On the Net considers “Spaceships of the Mind”; and Norman Spinrad’s On Books muses about “Speculative Literature?” Plus we’ll have an array of poetry you’re sure to enjoy.
NOVELLAS
Weather Duty
by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Amala Navarro pulled one of the damp wipes from the dispenser above the counter and wiped the sweat off her face. She’d had to walk the last few blocks in the 110-degree heat because the light rail broke down for the fifth time this week. At least they’d managed to get the doors open. The last time, the doors stayed shut and rescuers had to smash their way in—taking nearly a dozen cars out of commission at a time when the city needed them most. READ MORE
Quantum Ghosts
by Nancy Kress
Part I
“This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.”
—Plato
* * *
PROLOGUE
The motorcade was late. Security, Robert Dayson thought. You couldn’t have too much security, not since the bombings in Atlanta and Portland and Austin. Not with so many fringe groups so threatening about . . . everything. “The Unrest” the media were calling it, a term that seemed to Dayson unfortunately mild, as if country-wide seething dissatisfaction were no more than a bad night’s sleep. No, you couldn’t have too much security. READ MORE
POETRY
After the Chemicals Decay
by Claire McNerney
Flowers returning to the land—
beyond rusted landfill, greener, southward.
Here, night breezes whisper, and
DEPARTMENTS
Editorial: Magnifique! Redux
by Sheila Williams
My September/October 2024 editorial “Magnifique!” contains a doozy of an error. I was unclear about the provenance of the Korshak art collection and assumed that Erle Korshak started the collection. His son, Stephen, sent me a gracious correction, which I am happily printing below. On the one hand, I’m very sorry I didn’t do more research and perpetuated this historical misinformation. On the other hand, I’m delighted to set the record straight and to have an opportunity to publish more work from Stephen’s wonderful collection! READ MORE
Reflections: The Naming of Names
by Robert Silverberg
Science fiction fans, like jazz aficionados, like to call their favorites by their first names. In the jazz world, “Miles” or “Louis” or “Wynton” brings instant recognition. In our own microcosm, it’s never a problem identifying “Isaac” or “Harlan” or “Ursula.” But there’s one little complication for science fiction people when it comes to this first-name business. A lot of our best-known writers have nicknames, and prefer to go by them. READ MORE
On Books: Speculative Literature?
by Norman Spinrad
It is easy enough to define speculative fiction as fiction that speculates in the imaginary possible within the known rules of mass and energy. But what makes some fiction literature and other fiction not?
Fiction that has continually been read for long enough? Fiction that has been declared as literature by critics who declare they are important enough to say so, at least by themselves? Such as me? After all, I’ve been a critic of speculative fiction for half a century. READ MORE
On the Net: Spacecraft of the Mind
by James Patrick Kelly
then and now
* * *
When I was a kid, my dad built us a treehouse. It was about ten feet off the ground and had three rickety walls and half a roof. There was a window with no glass in one of the walls beneath which we drew dials and switches. The window looked back at our house, but when I peered through it, I dreamed of adventures in outer space. My plywood spacecraft was powered by an imagination that I had supercharged with all the science fiction books and shows I could find. I spent many happy hours at its control console. READ MORE