“The Invisible Bone” by Stephanie Feldman – 3.8
Asimov's, September/October 2026 On New Year's Eve, fifteen-year-old Kee announces at family dinner that she plans to take the Year Walk, an old ritual in which a person circles the…
“The Great Game” by Lois Metzger – 3.6
Asimov's, September/October 2026 Cindy, a matter-of-fact biodiversity newsletter editor living alone in the West Village, receives a cryptic text from an unknown number the night before her life changes: an…
“Forever and Again” by Leah Cypess – 3.7
Asimov's, September/October 2026 Mira is heading into the subway on an ordinary morning when a stranger tells her she is going to be murdered today, and that he intends to…
“Oliana’s Skull” by Robert Reed – 2.9
Asimov's, July/August 2026 Mineas Bad grows up a gifted athlete in the City of Saints, a mortal metropolis on the shore of the Sea of Giants inside the Great Ship,…
“The Hydrological Cycle of Souls, or the Assembler of Scattered Creations” by Minister Faust
Asimov's, July/August 2026 A bus full of kidnapped schoolgirls nose-dives into a reservoir in rural Senegal, and the three gunmen at the front find themselves trapped in rising water while…
“Seeking” by Gregory Marlow – 4.0
Asimov's, July/August 2026 Jacob's phone battery dies at 3:12 a.m. while he watches footage of an alien ship hovering above Shanghai, one of thirty-two massive vessels that have settled over…
“Last Train to Gertrude Stein” by Sandra McDonald – 3.7
Asimov's, July/August 2026 Claudine is over a thousand years old, an immortal who dies and is reborn again and again in the marshes along the Seine, waking each time in…
“Roma Delenda Est” by Alan Smale – 3.4
Asimov's, July/August 2026 An aging Archimedes, kidnapped from newly-fallen Syracuse, is dragged into Hannibal's war camp in Italy in 212 BC. Hannibal has no interest in siege engines—his is a…
“Gumchew” by Zack Be – 3.5
Asimov's, July/August 2026 Harlan Bah drives his elderly father, Simeon, to a Fed-Corp clinic in a frozen Center City to finally get "gummed" — a childhood-standard neurogel brain implant that…
Brother Adalbert’s Last Shift by Karol Lagodzki – 3.7
In a domed underground city called New Chicago, built after the surface became uninhabitable, Brother Adalbert spends his final day as caretaker of a single ancient oak tree enshrined in…