Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, September/October 2020

3.6/5 ( ratings)

Asimov’s slightly spooky September/October 2020 may not be as terrifying as the real-world Covid-19, but it’s full of entertaining and absorbing fiction. As I write this, it’s March and I’m working from home in my New York City apartment. I hope you’re all safe and healthy, and I’m so glad that our wonderful authors have provided all of us with hours of reading pleasure. Our cover story by Robert Reed imagines a far future where humans send their bodies home to Earth and uplifted creatures tend to “The Ossuary Passenger.” In her thrilling new novella, Kristine Kathryn Rusch plunges us into the “Maelstrom.” Don’t miss it!

Jason Sanford scales great heights to offer us a fearful encounter among “The Eight Thousanders”; new to Asimov’s, Y.M. Pang brings us the deeply unsettling “Mangy White Dog”; in his first Asimov’s tale, Ian Tregillis reveals what happens “When God Sits in Your Lap”; Cadwell Turnbull returns with “The Shock of Birth”; Gregory Frost takes us “Traveling On”; Rich Larson imagines “The Conceptual Shark”; Michael Libling freaks us out as we view “Robyn in Her Shiny Blue Coffin”; Leah Cypess captures a ghostly tale in “A Sideways Slant of Light”; “A Vengeful Revenant” visits M. Bennardo; while intrigue on the Moon occurs in Gray Rinehart’s “Flareshack”; and we happily find ourselves “Escaping Real Time”; with R. Garcia y Robertson.

Robert Silverberg’s Reflections ponders “The Road Not Taken”; James Patrick Kelly’s On the Net reconsiders “What Information Wants”; plus Peter Heck’s On Books opines on works by Ken Liu, Lois McMaster Bujold, Cadwell Turnbull, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and others.