Current Issue Highlights
We are featuring “Hot”—an almost novel-length tale in our May/June 2026 issue! Well-known historical and science fiction novelist, Cecelia Holland’s first story for Asimov’s drops us into an over-heated suburban society on the verge of a climate apocalypse and leaps into breathtaking action. This story of survival and resilience is a novella you won’t want to miss.
A.M. Dellamonica plunges us into the Yukon wilds where an unusual cast of characters do their best to survive a “Failed Attempt at Predation”; Dale Bailey describes a different sort of trauma in “Sophie Simpson’s Whizz-Bang Day at World War I”; the timeline in Steve Rasnic Tem’s “The Sky Above, the Sea Below” revolves from an Earth facing climate change to life on Mars; new to Asimov’s author Zhou Wen brings fresh meaning to the question of “Who am I this time?” in “The Girl Who Stole Life.” The tale was translated from Chinese by Xueting C. Ni. Betsy Aoki creates a complex dance of interactions in a story about space travel, colonization, and “The Language of Machines”; Stephanie Feldman’s story of an escape artist and a medium invites us “Half Inside the Spirit Box”; and Greg Egan’s tale considers conspiracy theories and a simple biological molecule in “Alpha Gal.”
Robert Silverberg’s Reflections takes a spin on a “Round-Robin”; Meet “Tomorrow’s Bots” in James Patrick Kelly’s On the Net; Kelly Lagor’s Thought Experiment looks at “Iterations in and of Planet of the Apes” and Kelly Jenning’s On Books reviews works by R.F. Kuang, Robert Lanza and Nancy Kress, Mira Grant, Adam Oyebanji, Jo Walton, and others; plus we have an array of poetry.
You’ll find our May/June 2026 issue on sale at newsstands on April 8, 2026. 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 Greg Egan
Elena woke, aching, itching, queasy. She stumbled out of the bedroom without turning on the lights and made it to the toilet in time to relieve the pressure in her bowels, but no sooner was that done than she was vomiting.
She knelt by the toilet bowl, shivering, empty but still wretched. The tiles against her knees were torture, but as she struggled to her feet every other joint and muscle in her body protested just as loudly. In the bathroom, as she rinsed her mouth out, she squinted into the mirror, and realized that she was peering through barely open eyelids, not as a response to brightness but from the swelling around her eyes squeezing them shut.
Her throat was constricted, too; each inhalation was like sucking molasses through a straw. She made her way back to the bedroom. Daniel had already woken and turned on a lamp, but now he rose and approached her, horrified.
“What’s happening?” he asked.
“Call an ambulance.” Elena wasn’t sure if her words were even audible, but Daniel got the meaning straightaway and grabbed his phone. “Some kind of allergic reaction,” he guessed, as the operator quizzed him. “No, we don’t have an EpiPen. Nothing like this has ever happened before.”
Elena sat on the bed, gasping. Her arms were covered in red blotches. She was beginning to feel light-headed and vertiginous, as if she was perpetually toppling over, even though she could see that she was perfectly still.
by Cecelia Holland
Francie scraped half-eaten cake into the garbage and plunged the plate furiously into the kitchen sink. It was her birthday, and she shouldn’t have to wash dishes. Down the hall, she could hear her stepmother yelling at her brother.
“I want that lawn mowed now!”
“It’s hot out there,” Lawrence yelled back. “I’ll get heat stroke.”
“Do what I tell you!” Suellen shouted.
A door slammed. A moment later, through the kitchen window, she saw Lawrence dashing toward the driveway.
”Hey,” Francie said, aloud, although he couldn’t hear her. He had promised to take her out for a driving lesson. She had an appointment on Wednesday to get her driver’s license and she wanted to nail that. He hopped into his car and shot backward down the driveway out of sight.
Suellen stormed into the kitchen, carrying another stack of dishes. Her hair was coiled in a bun on top of her head; she was made up like a movie star. “You kids are so spoiled.” She put the dishes on the counter. “After you’re done here, you’re going to help me fold laundry.”
Francie clenched her teeth. It was her birthday. Suellen went into the dining room and came back with yet more plates from the birthday party lunch, heaped with rib bones, corncobs, bits of potato salad and bread. “Do a good job,” she said. “I don’t want to have to clean up after you.” She stalked out.
DEPARTMENTS
Asimov’s Science Fiction: A Reader’s Perspective
by Piet Nel
For Asimov’s Science Fiction, it is the age of milestones. With the January/February issue of 2024, Sheila Williams surpassed Gardner Dozois’s tenure of nineteen years at the helm, to become this magazine’s longest serving editor. The September/October issue of 2025 was the five hundredth physical issue, even though the official numbers are out of step due to the “double issue” publication schedule. And, of course, the magazine will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary with the March/April issue of 2027.
I wasn’t a reader from the very beginning—and yet, I remember seeing the very first issue on a newsstand, with its red cover and portrait of Ol’ Muttonchops. READ MORE
Reflections: The End of An Era
by Robert Silverberg
I canceled my fax service the other day. It had dawned on me—belatedly, very belatedly—that I was paying AT&T, my telephone service out here in California, forty-seven dollars a month for something I hadn’t used in—well, at least several years, perhaps more. READ MORE
by Kelly Jennings
Along with a lot of other people, I really enjoyed Babel (Harper Voyager, 2022) by R.F. Kuang. I haven’t really liked Kuang’s other novels (a minority position), so I approached her new novel, Katabasis (Harper Voyager, August 2025), with some wariness. As it turns out, the novel is an engaging page-turner that is also occasionally bleakly hilarious. READ MORE
by James Patrick Kelly
The future is way behind schedule, at least according to the Big Three science fiction writers whom I grew up reading. Those would be Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and Isaac Asimov. You see, while the timeline of Henlein’s famous Future History series imagines the first Moon landing (1976) a little later than in reality, he thought we would have spread throughout the Solar System by now. His Future History stories, mostly written during the 1940s, imagines that triumphant humanity would have established a thriving city on the Moon and colonies on Mars and Venus by 2026 fictiontime. (Noted without comment: his Future History novella “If This Goes On” (1940) forecasts the presidency in the early 2000s of a populist, anti-intellectual, and anti-science politician who appeals to racists and fundamentalist Christians.) READ MORE