Current Issue Highlights
Two blockbuster novellas bookend our March/April 2026 issue! For Kevin J. Anderson & Rick Wilber’s colonists, living on an alien planet hasn’t been easier than the generation voyage there, and life is about to get weirder when they meet “The Ghosts of Goldilocks”! And weird doesn’t begin to describe Paul di Filippo & Preston Grassman’s “Quest for the Corpus Mundi”! You won’t want to miss these suspenseful tales.
Michael Libling’s delightfully odd novelette reveals the truth about some UFOs and the value of “The Placemat at Baldy’s Diner”; two young people dedicate their lives to space travel in James Van Pelt’s “A Fierce Need”; a young woman takes on murderers and tyranny in R. Garcia y Robertson’s “Satan’s Slave”; and broadcasts bring hope in Gu Shi’s first story for Asimov’s. “Antarctic Radio” was translated from Chinese by Andy Dudak. Octavia Cade brutally terrorizes us with a prescription for “How to Live with Polar Bears”; a woman determined to see what could have been receives some lessons in David Ebenbach’s “How Else”; and Stephen Case’s investigator encounters an eerie religious mystery in “The High Shrines.”
Robert Silverberg’s Reflections muses on “The End of an Era”; James Patrick Kelly’s On the Net alerts us to some, “Impending Dooms”; Peter Heck’s On Books reviews works by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Cadwell Turnbull, Harry Turtledove, Katherine Kerr, Gregory Frost, and others; plus we’ll have an array of poetry.
You’ll find our March/April 2026 issue on sale at newsstands on February 8, 2025. Or subscribe to Asimov’s—in paper format or our own downloadable varieties—by visiting us online at www.asimovs.com. We’re also available individually or by subscription via Amazon.com’s Kindle Unlimited, BarnesandNoble.com’s Nook, and Magzter.com/magazines!
SHORT STORY
by Kevin J. Anderson & Rick Wilber
Home sweet home.
The ever-present pall of volcanic ash lingered in the air, adding an orange undertone to the dreary gray skies. Gando wore the usual outdoor mask, so that the sour ash smell wouldn’t make his lungs burn.
He looked toward the first in a row of greenhouses and shook his head in worry. An odd, undocumented blight had afflicted some of the strawberry plants.
Bending down under the greenhouse’s polymer covering, he rubbed the gray stain on the leaves with his calloused fingers. He frowned, then uprooted the entire plant. This wasn’t good. He hoped he’d gotten it in time.
Emerging from under the polymer tarp, he flung the tainted strawberry plant far from the greenhouses. “Ella!” he called, “we need to keep watch on number three.”
by Octavia Cade
I have a fascination for polar bears. They have always struck me as a particularly terrible way to die.
If you’re eaten by a polar bear, there’s a good chance that you’ll be eaten alive, because the human body just doesn’t constitute enough of a threat to permanently disable before the consumption begins.
I could say the same about bull sharks or a pack of wild dogs, but it’s the bears that hold my attention.
I think it’s because there’s so much room in them for metaphor.
DEPARTMENTS
by Sheila Williams
I’m writing this March/April 2026 editorial in November of 2025. Over the past year we’ve lost four contributors. I’d like to memorialize them before more time gets away.
We published ten stories by Timothy Robert Sullivan (June 9, 1948–November 10, 2024). His first story, “The Comedian,” appeared in our June 1982 issue, and his last tale, “Anomaly Station,” was published in December 2014. “Anomaly Station” may have been my favorite Tim Sullivan story, but his first tale left a lasting impression. “The Comedian” was chilling, disturbing, and decidedly not humorous. Yet, Tim was one of the funniest people I’ve ever known. He was quick witted, and when he lived in Philadelphia, we had a number of adventures. Perhaps the most memorable was riding in his car’s passenger seat. The floor had rusted out in places, and I had nothing but a hole beneath my feet! Tim helped Robert A. Collins found the International Conference on the Fantastic. READ MORE
by Robert Silverberg
Among the trendy things in the science-fiction world of the 1970s was what was known as the “shared world” anthology, in which the editor of the book would propose a theme and a miscellaneous group of writers wrote stories based on it. Sometimes they worked consecutively, each one devising his or her story on the basis of what the others had written before, and sometimes each took a whack at the theme without knowing what the others had written. READ MORE
by Peter Heck
Moreno-Garcia’s latest follows three women’s encounters with the supernatural at different points in history.
The story begins in 1998, when Minerva Contreras is a student at Stoneridge, a small Massachusetts college. She is doing a senior thesis on Beatrice Tremblay, a Depression-era graduate of the college who had a career writing horror stories, including a novel apparently based on the mysterious disappearance of Tremblay’s college roommate, Ginny Somerset. READ MORE
by James Patrick Kelly
In 45 bce, the Roman orator and philosopher Cicero wrote a parable now known as the Sword of Damocles. In the tale a fatuous courtier named Damocles continually flatters Dionysius, an unhappy king who rules over the Sicilian city of Syracuse. Dionysius is rich and powerful and enjoys all the best in life—at least as Damocles sees it. Annoyed, the king challenges Damocles to sit on his throne and experience all the pleasures of kingship. Damocles gladly accepts only to discover to his chagrin that a sword with a killing blade dangles over the seat of power, suspended only by a single strand of horsehair. Yes, this is where the saying “hanging by a thread” comes from. Cicero’s point back then was that those in power, despite all the adulation and perks, must constantly live in fear of losing everything. Over the last two thousand years, the moral of the story has shifted to a more generalized fear of impending doom. The Sword of Damocles symbolizes a situation where something really, really bad could happen pretty much at any time. READ MORE