“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…
“Magical Girl Eater” by Angela Liu – 3.0
Uncanny, July/August 2026 Kelly, the story's narrator, is one of four young women — alongside Annie, Mako, and Lin — who begin fighting crime as self-styled Magical Girls, first as…