The best edition of #AsimovsScienceFiction magazine since I started my subscription a year ago? Great variety of #SciFi subgenres, from a remarkable surrealist piece by K. A. Teryna (translated by Alex Shvartsman)*, to the text of a children's 'nonfiction' book about UFOs by Will Ludwigsen**. My other favourites were a very funny satirical alien invasion story by Alexander Jablokov, and a moving story by William Preston which continues the magazine's recent mini-trend of exploring the lives of the future's pet dogs.

* "I was riding the metro in the morning when I vomited sparrows. They say one should always look on the bright side. Well, I could now describe in detail what a person who threw up a flock of sparrows onto the ground feels like. Except I don't think anyone would want to know those details."
** "Adults don't build forts in the woods. Nor do they make helmets from the bottoms of plastic soda bottles so their stuffed animals will be safe from falling Skylab debris. Nor do they make their own comic books or mix every flavour at the soda dispenser to see if one of the mixtures will explode. In other words, they're effectively dead and too boring for aliens to travel thousands of light-years to visit."

@bookstodon #bookstodon

As 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!