RanaldCloustonAs a mail subscriber to #AsimovsScienceFiction magazine, I get a vote in their 2025 reader's awards. It was fun to go back and re-read my favourite stories for the year to decide my rankings:
Best Novella:
1. Quantum Ghosts, #NancyKress
2. The Chronolithographer's Assistant, #SuzannePalmer
3. Spare Parts for the Mind, #GregEgan
Best Novelette:
1. Most Things, #RichLarson
2. On the Night Shift, #ZoharJacobs
3. The Fight Goes On, #HarryTurtledove
Best Short Story:
1. Catch a Tiger in the Snow, #RayNayler
2. Lolo's Last Run, #EMKerkman
3. Woolly, #CarrieVaughn
Best Poem:
1. I Try to Explain the Concept of Teeth to My Alien Roommate, #RachelLinton
Best Cover:
1. July/August, #MaurizioManzieri (attached image)
- My subscription started after the Jan/Feb issue, so that got snubbed.
- For all that print #SciFi magazines are now extremely marginal commercially and culturally, this one at least still attracts some pretty great material (mixed in, admittedly, with some so-so stuff) including by veteran greats of the genre - Kress and Turtledove are still producing amazing work in their mid-late 70s!
- I found the Novella section hardest to trim down to 3, with narrow cuts for stories by T.R. Napper, Ted Kosmatka, and John Kessel.
- It was a great year for pets in SF stories, or maybe as a dog- and cat-lover I'm just sucker for them. I found a place in my heart for Lolo, Magritte, Goobler the miniature woolly mammoth, Sponge, and of course, the tiger in the snow!
Paul Semel
Paul Semel
Michael Hanscom
Thoraiya
