May/June 2017 Asimov’s Science Fiction Now on Sale
Asimov’s Science Fiction is celebrating its 40th Anniversary Year in 2017, and in her editorial this issue Sheila Williams reflects on the many milestones and anniversaries she’s had during her 35 years with the magazine.
Alas, the magazines’ fifteenth anniversary was not a happy occasion. Isaac died on April 6, 1992, leaving all of us heartbroken. He’d told me several times before he died that one major reason he’d founded the magazine was to give new writers a welcoming place to break into science fiction. He also expressed his deeply held wish that the magazine continue long after his death. While the following year wasn’t a special anniversary year, it was a happier one. In March 1993, Rick Wilber and I announced the creation of what would become known as the Dell Magazine Award. This award, which goes to the best SF or fantasy story by a full-time college student, seeks to further Isaac’s legacy of supporting emerging authors. Later that year, I hit another important milestone — the birth of my first daughter, Irene.
I don’t remember if we held a twentieth anniversary celebration for the magazine in 1997, but I do remember that the magazine hit a grand slam at the Hugos. Asimov’s stories picked up the award in all three short fiction categories, and Gardner Dozois won one of his many Hugos for best editor. The twenty-fifth anniversary is another blur, partly because my second daughter, Juliet, was born in early July….
2017 is shaping up as a very good year, as well. As I write this, we are formulating plans for a fortieth anniversary celebration on April 13. It will be held in New York City at the Housing Works Bookstore Café on 126 Crosby Street. Although this issue doesn’t go on sale until April 25, I hope that many of you will have heard the word via social media and will have commemorated the occasion with us. Later in the year, Prime Books will be publishing Asimov’s Science Fiction: A Decade of Hugo & Nebula Award Winning Stories, 2005 to 2015 in conjunction with our anniversary year. In addition to many of the authors who appeared in our Thirtieth Anniversary Anthology, this book contains stories by Sarah Pinsker, David Levine, Karen Joy Fowler, Elizabeth Bear, Vylar Kaftan, Will McIntosh, and others. We hope to have a book signing in place in NYC to celebrate the launch of the book. Please keep up with us on social media to learn more about our plans.
Indeed, Derek Kunsken wrote about his adventurous trip to New York for Asimov’s fortieth anniversary celebration here.
