September 2016
Jack Skillingstead’s September 2016 novelette takes us on a terrifying journey across universes. Pursued by malevolent forces, a brilliant mathematician struggles to clean up “The Whole Mess.” Failure means destruction and subjugation. The penalty for success could be worse.
New York Times best selling author, Carrie Vaughn exposes the debilitating consequences space travel holds for some in “The Mind Is Its Own Place”; appearing in Asimov’s with her first professional sale, Tegan Moore shines a light on some dark and twisted relationships in “Epitome”; Human and Alien intelligence slowly learn to communicate in Rich Larson’s poignant excavation of “All that Robot . . .”; World Fantasy Award winner Ian R. MacLeod introduces us to the enigmatic “Visitor from Taured”; Peter Wood runs us around in some vicious, yet funny and perhaps all too recognizable, “Academic Circles”; and Robert Reed tells the old tale of migration and the promised land—this time with aliens—in “Dome on the Prairie.”
Robert Silverberg’s hilarious Reflections column reveals why it’s not a good idea to exclaim, “‘Darn,’ He Smiled”; Peter Heck reviews works by Charlie Jane Anders, Laura Anne Gilman, Fred Chappell, and others; plus we’ll have an array of poetry and other features you’re sure to enjoy.
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Novelettes
by Carrie Vaughn
Professional fingers pried open Mitchell’s left eyelid, and white light blinded him. The process repeated on the right. He winced and turned his head to escape. The grip released him.
“Lieutenant Greenau?” READ MORE
by Jack Skillingstead
The kid in the duck-hunting hat reached across my desk with a folded sheet of yellow graph paper in his fingers. “I think you will find this interesting, Professor Dunn.”
I took the paper and opened it. READ MORE
Poetry
by Robert Frazier
Before lipid-exchanged imaging or DNA tagging or MRIs
Before Galvani or the De Humani Corporis Fabrica of 1543
READ MORE
Departments
by Sheila Williams
Our thirtieth annual Readers’ Awards’ celebration was held on May 14, 2016, at the Lockwood Restaurant in Chicago, Illinois. Although she couldn’t accept her award for best novella in person, Kristine Kathryn Rusch sent along an acceptance speech that read, in part, “I am so very honored to win the Asimov’s Readers’ Choice Award for ‘Inhuman Garbage.’ READ MORE
by Robert Silverberg
When I was learning my craft as a science fiction writer, more than sixty years ago, there were two particularly ferocious critics to whom I paid very close attention: Damon Knight and James Blish. They were both skilled writers themselves, with a special area of excellence in the short story form. But they also wrote formidable reviews in which they shredded the work of their peers with uninhibited gusto and keen, cold insight. READ MORE
by Peter Heck
From the editor of the online SF site io9, here’s a novel that plays with familiar SF and fantasy tropes and ends up feeling quite original.
Anders centers her plot around two young characters living in suburban Boston, in a world similar in many ways to ours. Patricia Delfine is a young witch who can talk to animals. READ MORE
by Erwin S. Strauss
I’m taking the month of September off from the con circuit to rest up from the Kansas City WorldCon; but our own Sheila Williams will be at Can-Con. Other good cons for Asimovians are BuboniCon and FenCon. Plan now for social weekends with your favorite SF authors, editors, artists, and fellow fans. READ MORE