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Asimov's Science Fiction, September/October 2026
September/October 2026 Vol. 50 Nos. 9 & 10
NOVELETTES
Visiting Skins by Christopher Ruz & Rich Larson
Night Caller from Outer Space by Dale Bailey
Forever and Again by Leah Cypess
The Case of the Lost Busker by David Ira Cleary
The Weight of a Heart by Tegan Moore
The Wages of Saints by Eric Del Carlo
We Shall Be Monsters by Esther M. Friesner
SHORT STORIES
This World is a World of Dew by Andrea Kriz
The Great Game by Lois Metzger
The Invisible Bone by Stephanie Feldman
Embers by Lawrence C. Connolly
POETRY
Curiosities Found on Captain Nemo’s Nightstand by Gretchen Tessmer
Why We Give by Andy Dibble
Roadside Geology of Hell by Jennifer Crow
Every Atom of Your Flesh is as Dear by Marisca Pichette
DEPARTMENTS
Editorial: Fortieth Annual Readers’ Awards’ Results by Emily Hockaday
Reflections: Starting Out by Robert Silverberg
On the Net: I, Chatbot by James Patrick Kelly
Thought Experiment: The Haunting of the Nostromo by Kelly Lagor
On Books by Peter Heck
Next Issue
NOVELETTES
Visiting Skins by Christopher Ruz & Rich Larson
Night Caller from Outer Space by Dale Bailey
Forever and Again by Leah Cypess
The Case of the Lost Busker by David Ira Cleary
The Weight of a Heart by Tegan Moore
The Wages of Saints by Eric Del Carlo
We Shall Be Monsters by Esther M. Friesner
SHORT STORIES
This World is a World of Dew by Andrea Kriz
The Great Game by Lois Metzger
The Invisible Bone by Stephanie Feldman
Embers by Lawrence C. Connolly
POETRY
Curiosities Found on Captain Nemo’s Nightstand by Gretchen Tessmer
Why We Give by Andy Dibble
Roadside Geology of Hell by Jennifer Crow
Every Atom of Your Flesh is as Dear by Marisca Pichette
DEPARTMENTS
Editorial: Fortieth Annual Readers’ Awards’ Results by Emily Hockaday
Reflections: Starting Out by Robert Silverberg
On the Net: I, Chatbot by James Patrick Kelly
Thought Experiment: The Haunting of the Nostromo by Kelly Lagor
On Books by Peter Heck
Next Issue
209 pages, ebook
Published September 1, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 22, 2026
Check out the full video review HERE
(Novelette) Visiting Skins by Christopher Ruz and Rich Larson - 4/5 - In Visiting Skins, we get a version of a common trope in scifi horror, that of alien plant invaders taking over humans, and stealing or duplicating their bodies. Similar to Invasions of the Body Snatcher or Day of the Triffids.
In this story, a group of friends returns to their parent’s remote cabin to help each other through the one-year anniversary of the loss of one of their friends, at that same cabin. In the woods behind the house they sit around a fire and talk about their loss, what could have been done to stop it. A year before one of the friends got drunk and stumbled into the woods and down a steep drop off, never to be found. A year later they return to the scene and head back into the woods, only to find strange fungal impressions in a cave.
This was an entertaining story, but derivative of many other works on the same topic. Nevertheless, it was well told and the plot and characters were engaging. The story was fast paced, and I enjoyed it.
Scifi horror feel in this slightly spooky issue.
(Short Story) This World Is A World of Dew by Andrea Kriz - 5/5 - This is a great hard scifi story that engages in the concepts of biomedical science, religion, and a post-nuclear apocalypse world. We follow the character of the head Transcriber, a priest-like position in a religion, as she describes the text written from God, in the form of mutations in DNA. In this world, a nuclear apocalypse has left the remnants of humanity turning to religion in the form of Science Institutes that survived the destruction. The equipment of decoding and transcribing DNA has been left behind, with instructions. Transcribers process the DNA of living things and people to determine if they have been cast out by God. If they are shown to have mutations, they are put to death.
Here, we have a student of the Transcriber asking heretical questions and presenting other explanations, explanations that may alter the understanding and devotion of its adherents.
A great overall story with a fantastic premise and the interesting setting of a religious cult spread around leftover scientific institutions and mutations in DNA. Along with a compelling character arc for the main character, that of the head priest.
If you like the movie Beneath the Planet of the Apes, where a religious cult worships an atom bomb, this story has similar vibes.
(Novelette) Night Caller From Outer Space by Dale Bailey - 4/5 - In the aftermath of an alien abduction, Ezra is returning to his job as a radio DJ after three months of silence. Set in the late 1950s, Dan Bailey immerses the reader in the world of a radio host and tells a fantastic character story. Ezra's wife, Abby, was abducted by aliens during a car drive home with the two of them. Ezra was powerless to stop it. This story is telling the aftermath of that event and how Ezra deals with grief, and the relationships of his friends and co-workers around him. It is a very character driven story, but retains elements of science fiction from the 50s and 60s with tales of flying saucers and alien abductions.
It's a great overall story and has, perhaps, a small tinge of horror, mainly from the implication of an alien abduction.
(Short Story) The Great Game by Lois Metzger - 3/5 - In this story Cindy meets a group of girls playing the board game Sorry!. They need a "fourth" for their group. Cindy sees the number four repeated in her life, and sees this as a sign she needs to join the group. The three she meets up with become obsessed with calling Cindy in the night, at 4am, and talking through their life problems. Cindy starts to become suspicious of the three. This story involves some spiritual horror and an entity.
This isn't a story I would characterize as science fiction, much more horror fantasy. It was well paced and kept me reading, but not an altogether great story.
(Novelette) Forever And Again by Leah Cypress - 3/5 - In this story a character stuck in a time loop meets a man, and he explains to her that she will be murdered, and there is nothing he can do to stop it. He is aware of the time loop, while she is not, and he has tried to stop her from being murdered over two hundred times. This time, rather than trying to stop the murder, he wants to try and solve it.
I enjoyed this story but wasn't overly impressed by it. As the story progresses we learn that our main character is the inventor of a device causing the time loop. She is using it to save humanity from itself by getting humanity stuck in a time loop, an implausible and somewhat silly premise, giving humanity time to figure out its problems.
(Short Story) The Invisible Bone by Stephanie Feldman - 3/5 - This was a horror story with little in the way of science fiction. It is mostly a ghost story about a mythological scandinavian creature called a myling. A myling is the ghost of an unwanted child that has been forced to roam the world until it can convince someone to give it a proper burial. In this story, the myling was the result of an unwanted pregnancy.
It wasn't a bad story, and I did like it, but it did not have any element of science fiction in it.
(Novelette) The Case of the Lost Busker by David Ira Cleary - 2/5 - This is a noir crime story of a private detective with a missing person case to solve. The speculative element here is that the main character is a cat. Cats are able to talk and live their lives as humans do, and live equally among humans. This cat PI typically only takes on cases with crimes involving other cats, but this time, a cat's human has gone missing. The behavior of the cats are very cat-like just applied to intelligence cats in an interesting way.
I didn't particularly care for this story as I don't like cats that much. I'm not a cat person. And this type of story has been done before many times with either cats or dogs and giving them intelligence and agency in a human world. And I've seen it done with a noir crime theme before as well, so there was nothing new here. But if you like cats and noir mysterious you might like this story.
(Short Story) Embers by Lawrence C. Connolly - 3/5 - In Connolly's Embers, a character named Kid is driving his Mustang down the highway when he passes a cadillac that had rammed into a pole. Its driver, a woman, is walking down the road and looking for help. Kid gives her a ride to her friend Amber's home. When they get there, there is a sort of party going on with all sorts of interesting characters, a doctor in a lab coat, a woman wearing horn-rimmed glasses, and others.
This was a very Twilight Zone feeling story, and Connolly has written a couple stories for Rod Serling's Twilight Zone magazine, not the show. Not a bad story overall, and continuing with the slightly spooky theme and Twilight Zone feel of the overall issue.
(Novelette) The Weight of a Heart by Tegan Moore - 3/5 - A teenage girl, living a difficult life and taking medication for insomnia, is seen as the bad kid in the family. She smokes pot and gets into trouble, her parents are divorced. She lives with her grandparents and spends her time in her room, lost in writing anime fanfiction. She witnesses the death of her grandpa, lying in his bed and moaning, and does nothing. He later dies from a diabetic coma. She is racked with guilt and grief and has to cope with these feelings throughout the story, during which she has strange hallucinations and is unable to find comfort in the family around her.
The story weaves in elements of Egyptian mythology in the strange apparitions she sees, but this story is completely lacking in science fiction. Perhaps a bit of horror/fantasy, but nothing in the way of scifi.
A well told character focused story, but lacking the scifi in this scifi magazine. Asimov’s speculative fiction magazine
(Novelette) The Wages of Saints by Eric Del Carlo - 3/5 - In this story the overall issue returns to a more science fiction brand of story. A pair of clerics visit the main character and ask him to confirm, as a witness, the miracles performed by Honrah. Honrah is being considered for sainthood and must have performed two miracles. The main character tells the story of when he witnessed the first miracle to the clerics. It began when him and Honrah, as friends, volunteered to aid a planet beset by a plague. The plague takes the form of an odd illness that causes people to see and be able to converse with the dead.
Not a bad story overall and one that features many different intelligent alien species.
(Novelette) We Shall Be Monsters by Esther M. Friesner - 4/5 - In this horror story we get a re-telling of Frankenstein from the perspective of Victor Frankenstein's wife. This happens after the events of the creature being brought back to life. The creature has returned to enact his revenge on Victor, starting with murdering his wife, Elizabeth. Elizabeth is able to persuade the creature not to kill her by entering into a deal with him. She will help create him another bride (his first bride was killed), and he will help her escape her situation at home. She is not happy as Victor's wife, and has her own monsters to run from.
The story is told in a 19th century style of writing that I felt was immersive to the story. It was well written and I enjoyed the plot and the character of Elizabeth.
This is the final story of the issue and ends it as a callback to a classic horror monster.
(Novelette) Visiting Skins by Christopher Ruz and Rich Larson - 4/5 - In Visiting Skins, we get a version of a common trope in scifi horror, that of alien plant invaders taking over humans, and stealing or duplicating their bodies. Similar to Invasions of the Body Snatcher or Day of the Triffids.
In this story, a group of friends returns to their parent’s remote cabin to help each other through the one-year anniversary of the loss of one of their friends, at that same cabin. In the woods behind the house they sit around a fire and talk about their loss, what could have been done to stop it. A year before one of the friends got drunk and stumbled into the woods and down a steep drop off, never to be found. A year later they return to the scene and head back into the woods, only to find strange fungal impressions in a cave.
This was an entertaining story, but derivative of many other works on the same topic. Nevertheless, it was well told and the plot and characters were engaging. The story was fast paced, and I enjoyed it.
Scifi horror feel in this slightly spooky issue.
(Short Story) This World Is A World of Dew by Andrea Kriz - 5/5 - This is a great hard scifi story that engages in the concepts of biomedical science, religion, and a post-nuclear apocalypse world. We follow the character of the head Transcriber, a priest-like position in a religion, as she describes the text written from God, in the form of mutations in DNA. In this world, a nuclear apocalypse has left the remnants of humanity turning to religion in the form of Science Institutes that survived the destruction. The equipment of decoding and transcribing DNA has been left behind, with instructions. Transcribers process the DNA of living things and people to determine if they have been cast out by God. If they are shown to have mutations, they are put to death.
Here, we have a student of the Transcriber asking heretical questions and presenting other explanations, explanations that may alter the understanding and devotion of its adherents.
A great overall story with a fantastic premise and the interesting setting of a religious cult spread around leftover scientific institutions and mutations in DNA. Along with a compelling character arc for the main character, that of the head priest.
If you like the movie Beneath the Planet of the Apes, where a religious cult worships an atom bomb, this story has similar vibes.
(Novelette) Night Caller From Outer Space by Dale Bailey - 4/5 - In the aftermath of an alien abduction, Ezra is returning to his job as a radio DJ after three months of silence. Set in the late 1950s, Dan Bailey immerses the reader in the world of a radio host and tells a fantastic character story. Ezra's wife, Abby, was abducted by aliens during a car drive home with the two of them. Ezra was powerless to stop it. This story is telling the aftermath of that event and how Ezra deals with grief, and the relationships of his friends and co-workers around him. It is a very character driven story, but retains elements of science fiction from the 50s and 60s with tales of flying saucers and alien abductions.
It's a great overall story and has, perhaps, a small tinge of horror, mainly from the implication of an alien abduction.
(Short Story) The Great Game by Lois Metzger - 3/5 - In this story Cindy meets a group of girls playing the board game Sorry!. They need a "fourth" for their group. Cindy sees the number four repeated in her life, and sees this as a sign she needs to join the group. The three she meets up with become obsessed with calling Cindy in the night, at 4am, and talking through their life problems. Cindy starts to become suspicious of the three. This story involves some spiritual horror and an entity.
This isn't a story I would characterize as science fiction, much more horror fantasy. It was well paced and kept me reading, but not an altogether great story.
(Novelette) Forever And Again by Leah Cypress - 3/5 - In this story a character stuck in a time loop meets a man, and he explains to her that she will be murdered, and there is nothing he can do to stop it. He is aware of the time loop, while she is not, and he has tried to stop her from being murdered over two hundred times. This time, rather than trying to stop the murder, he wants to try and solve it.
I enjoyed this story but wasn't overly impressed by it. As the story progresses we learn that our main character is the inventor of a device causing the time loop. She is using it to save humanity from itself by getting humanity stuck in a time loop, an implausible and somewhat silly premise, giving humanity time to figure out its problems.
(Short Story) The Invisible Bone by Stephanie Feldman - 3/5 - This was a horror story with little in the way of science fiction. It is mostly a ghost story about a mythological scandinavian creature called a myling. A myling is the ghost of an unwanted child that has been forced to roam the world until it can convince someone to give it a proper burial. In this story, the myling was the result of an unwanted pregnancy.
It wasn't a bad story, and I did like it, but it did not have any element of science fiction in it.
(Novelette) The Case of the Lost Busker by David Ira Cleary - 2/5 - This is a noir crime story of a private detective with a missing person case to solve. The speculative element here is that the main character is a cat. Cats are able to talk and live their lives as humans do, and live equally among humans. This cat PI typically only takes on cases with crimes involving other cats, but this time, a cat's human has gone missing. The behavior of the cats are very cat-like just applied to intelligence cats in an interesting way.
I didn't particularly care for this story as I don't like cats that much. I'm not a cat person. And this type of story has been done before many times with either cats or dogs and giving them intelligence and agency in a human world. And I've seen it done with a noir crime theme before as well, so there was nothing new here. But if you like cats and noir mysterious you might like this story.
(Short Story) Embers by Lawrence C. Connolly - 3/5 - In Connolly's Embers, a character named Kid is driving his Mustang down the highway when he passes a cadillac that had rammed into a pole. Its driver, a woman, is walking down the road and looking for help. Kid gives her a ride to her friend Amber's home. When they get there, there is a sort of party going on with all sorts of interesting characters, a doctor in a lab coat, a woman wearing horn-rimmed glasses, and others.
This was a very Twilight Zone feeling story, and Connolly has written a couple stories for Rod Serling's Twilight Zone magazine, not the show. Not a bad story overall, and continuing with the slightly spooky theme and Twilight Zone feel of the overall issue.
(Novelette) The Weight of a Heart by Tegan Moore - 3/5 - A teenage girl, living a difficult life and taking medication for insomnia, is seen as the bad kid in the family. She smokes pot and gets into trouble, her parents are divorced. She lives with her grandparents and spends her time in her room, lost in writing anime fanfiction. She witnesses the death of her grandpa, lying in his bed and moaning, and does nothing. He later dies from a diabetic coma. She is racked with guilt and grief and has to cope with these feelings throughout the story, during which she has strange hallucinations and is unable to find comfort in the family around her.
The story weaves in elements of Egyptian mythology in the strange apparitions she sees, but this story is completely lacking in science fiction. Perhaps a bit of horror/fantasy, but nothing in the way of scifi.
A well told character focused story, but lacking the scifi in this scifi magazine. Asimov’s speculative fiction magazine
(Novelette) The Wages of Saints by Eric Del Carlo - 3/5 - In this story the overall issue returns to a more science fiction brand of story. A pair of clerics visit the main character and ask him to confirm, as a witness, the miracles performed by Honrah. Honrah is being considered for sainthood and must have performed two miracles. The main character tells the story of when he witnessed the first miracle to the clerics. It began when him and Honrah, as friends, volunteered to aid a planet beset by a plague. The plague takes the form of an odd illness that causes people to see and be able to converse with the dead.
Not a bad story overall and one that features many different intelligent alien species.
(Novelette) We Shall Be Monsters by Esther M. Friesner - 4/5 - In this horror story we get a re-telling of Frankenstein from the perspective of Victor Frankenstein's wife. This happens after the events of the creature being brought back to life. The creature has returned to enact his revenge on Victor, starting with murdering his wife, Elizabeth. Elizabeth is able to persuade the creature not to kill her by entering into a deal with him. She will help create him another bride (his first bride was killed), and he will help her escape her situation at home. She is not happy as Victor's wife, and has her own monsters to run from.
The story is told in a 19th century style of writing that I felt was immersive to the story. It was well written and I enjoyed the plot and the character of Elizabeth.
This is the final story of the issue and ends it as a callback to a classic horror monster.
September 23, 2026
When Aloe went missing a year ago in the woods behind an abandoned housing development it affected his friends in different ways. Tom decides to clear the air by having a reunion there but things start to go badly awry when a double of Aloe appears, followed closely by doubles of the rest of them. It appears Tom wasn’t completely honest about what happened last year in “Visiting Skins” by Christopher Ruz & Rich Larson. Creepy and chilling. In a post-apocalyptic world where automatic gene sequencers survived but what they measure did not, a cult approach to genetic purity goes badly wrong in “The World Is A World Of Dew” by Andrea Kriz. Easy Ez does the night shift on radio KNWC in 1957 when he hears a crackly call from what he suspects is his wife, which he is convinced was abducted by aliens the previous year. In “Night Caller From Outer Space” Dale Bailey maintains the rage for UFO conspiracy theorists with a poignant and chilling tale. When Cindy finds herself invited as a fourth for “The Great Game”, Sorry! she finds herself being subtly manipulated and starts to suspect evil doings in Lois Metzger’s story, while the inventor of the loopinator finds herself in a time loop that sees her murdered every day. The bigger problem is that the solution may be even worse in “Forever And Again” by Leah Cypess. In a dark night storm the Kid rescues Scarlet from a wrecked car and drives her to an old mansion. There he finds Amber and her life-like paintings. So life-like. “Embers” by Lawrence C. Connolly is dreamlike horror. A troubled teen, dosed with antidepressants, feels she might have saved her grandfather if only she’d acted. With a dysfunctional family surrounding her she drifts into a world of Egyptian gods and guilt and “The Weight Of A Heart” in Tegan Moore’s tale. University students Sho and Honrah leave on a sabbatical to Rakoja, where a plague of people conversing with the dead has broken out. Told by Sho many years after, elders from Honrah’s sect wish to hear of the miracle Sho witnessed to evaluate Honrah’s candidacy for canonisation in “The Wages Of Saints” by Eric Del Carlo. Esther Friesner reimagines the most famous work of Mary Shelley with “We Shall Be Monsters”, with a much more satisfying ending to my mind. Very good issue.
September 29, 2026
Here are my favorite stories from this issue.
Visiting Skins by Christopher Ruz & Rich Larson
If PKD wrote the screenplay to Picnic At Hanging Rock.
It’ll all work out at the end.
Night Caller from Outer Space by Dale Bailey
An overnight radio DJ tries to get his act together after his wife is abducted by aliens. The four am phone calls on the request line aren’t helping. Pairs well with the film Pontypool.
Forever and Again by Leah Cypess
Every time that wheel turn 'round, bound to cover just a little more ground, but when do you jump off?
The Case of the Lost Busker by David Ira Cleary
A cat PI in a quasi kitteh noir tries to find missing humans.
Hiss Me Deadly?
The Weight of a Heart by Tegan Moore
Weird scenes inside the hallways after the death of the family patriarch. A trouble teen thinks she is seeing things. The reader suspects she is not. How heavy is the feather?
The Wages of Saints by Eric Del Carlo
A saint of circumstance evokes a very private, personal miracle known only to himself.
We Shall Be Monsters by Esther M. Friesner
A Frankenstein raises another from the dead. Will resurrection with love rather than hubris lead to a better end this time?
This World is a World of Dew by Andrea Kriz
Would you rather deal with a God who judges or random, uncaring nature?
I can't walk you out in the morning dew today.
The Great Game by Lois Metzger
A woman joins three others as the fourth on game night. Unfortunately, the number four is considered unlucky in Japan. Sorry!
The Invisible Bone by Stephanie Feldman @sbfeldman.bsky.social
Carrying a burden for someone you love is always difficult, but on New Year’s Eve especially so.
Embers by Lawrence C. Connolly
Grey Gardens meets the House of Usher in this lovely little horror story set in the Rust Belt of Pennsylvania.
Visiting Skins by Christopher Ruz & Rich Larson
If PKD wrote the screenplay to Picnic At Hanging Rock.
It’ll all work out at the end.
Night Caller from Outer Space by Dale Bailey
An overnight radio DJ tries to get his act together after his wife is abducted by aliens. The four am phone calls on the request line aren’t helping. Pairs well with the film Pontypool.
Forever and Again by Leah Cypess
Every time that wheel turn 'round, bound to cover just a little more ground, but when do you jump off?
The Case of the Lost Busker by David Ira Cleary
A cat PI in a quasi kitteh noir tries to find missing humans.
Hiss Me Deadly?
The Weight of a Heart by Tegan Moore
Weird scenes inside the hallways after the death of the family patriarch. A trouble teen thinks she is seeing things. The reader suspects she is not. How heavy is the feather?
The Wages of Saints by Eric Del Carlo
A saint of circumstance evokes a very private, personal miracle known only to himself.
We Shall Be Monsters by Esther M. Friesner
A Frankenstein raises another from the dead. Will resurrection with love rather than hubris lead to a better end this time?
This World is a World of Dew by Andrea Kriz
Would you rather deal with a God who judges or random, uncaring nature?
I can't walk you out in the morning dew today.
The Great Game by Lois Metzger
A woman joins three others as the fourth on game night. Unfortunately, the number four is considered unlucky in Japan. Sorry!
The Invisible Bone by Stephanie Feldman @sbfeldman.bsky.social
Carrying a burden for someone you love is always difficult, but on New Year’s Eve especially so.
Embers by Lawrence C. Connolly
Grey Gardens meets the House of Usher in this lovely little horror story set in the Rust Belt of Pennsylvania.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews