The March/April 2017 Asimov’s Science Fiction is the magazine’s 40th Anniversary issue. I can still remember buying the second issue off the racks in Ottawa back in 1977. I vividly remember Isaac’s editorial, which cheerfully encouraged young readers to write science fiction, and how much it inspired me to try my hand at it myself.
I borrowed my parent’s typewriter, banged out a story, and mailed it in a few weeks later, dreams of being an SF writer in my head. I’m sure Asimov’s then editor, George Scithers, was cursing Asimov as he worked through the crush of submissions. I still have his personal rejection letter, which gently critiqued my plot, characters, and spelling. When I met George at the 2002 World Fantasy Convention in Minneapolis, I was finally able to thank him for his kindness to me a quarter-century earlier.
The double-sized March/April issue of Asimov’s is packed with intriguing stuff, including brand new fiction by Damien Broderick, Will McIntosh, Bill Johnson & Gregory Frost, Ian R. MacLeod, Suzanne Palmer, Sarah Pinsker, Dale Bailey, Rich Larson, Terry Bisson, and others. Here’s Sheila’s full description from the website:
March/April 2017 is our official fortieth anniversary! The exciting cover story is by Asimov’s Readers’ Award-winner Suzanne Palmer. In her tense new tale, a human-created artificial intelligence — left grieving and lonely on a distant planet — may annihilate an alien lifeform over a terrible misunderstanding. Don’t miss “Number Thirty-Nine Skink”!
Alan Smale flies us to another universe for an alternate view of “Kitty Hawk”; Ian MacLeod reveals the brutal “Wisdom of the Group”; We’ve come to expect that Damien Broderick will play with a myriad of motifs in his tales and certainly delivers in “Tao Zero”; Terry Bisson offers a wry explanation for why “We Regret the Error”; We find some twisted love in Rich Larson’s “Cupido”; while Will McIntosh provides us with another story of love gone wrong in “Soulmates.com”; “A Singular Event in the Fourth Dimension” is a charming Asimov’s debut for new writer Andrea M. Pawley; Sarah Pinsker will break your heart with “The Ones Who Know Where They Are Going”; Ian Creasey lets us know that it will only get worse “After the Atrocity”; with “The Invasion of the Saucer-Men” Dale Bailey treats us to another of his works inspired by fifties SF movie titles; Gregory Norman Bossert lets us know who’s a “Goner”; and we’ll learn why “Three Can Keep a Secret” from a mysterious con artist in Bill Johnson & Gregory Frost’s new novelette.
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