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(SF Surfer Humor; Delbert & Zep) A
high-tech billionaire schemes to steal magic bubbles from Atlantis but
surfers Del and Zep get in the way.
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A Singular Event in the Fourth Dimension by Andrea M. Pawley Time: 15m (ShortStory)
Issue: Asimov's 03.04|17
(SF) Olive’s parents are having a baby
soon, and she fears they won’t need an android daughter after that.
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(SF Adventure) Revali and Kemen are on
a 36-year mission to be the first people to view the Milky Way from well
above the galactic plane. Their mission is scientific, but also symbolic, and
it’s the latter that’s problematic.
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(Near-Future SF) Violet’s duplication
machine makes it easier to interrogate the world’s most famous terrorist, but
they need so many copies of him, she’s had to duplicate herself to keep up
with the workload.
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(SF Thriller) After terrorists spring
her from cryo-prison, talented hacker Girasol goes into cyberspace to help
them target the rich businessman who put her in prison in the first place.
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An Incident In the Literary Life of Nathan Arkwright
by Allen M. Steele Time: 22m (ShortStory)
Issue: Asimov's 09.10|17
(SF; Arkwright) Bored at a science
fiction convention, famous author Nathan Arkwright lets a couple of fans take
him out to dinner. They seemed normal enough—at least to start with.
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And No Torment Shall Touch Them by James Patrick Kelly Time: 20m (ShortStory) Issue: Asimov's 11.12|17
(Near-Future SF) Before Nonno died, he
had himself downloaded. Now he manages to attend his own funeral, causing
chaos in his family.
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(Near-Future SF) Teen-age Annie has
become an environmental fanatic, and she’s driving her parents crazy.
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(Space Opera; Transcendental) In which
Xi arrives at the space elevator on planet Terminal and we learn all about
his history.
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Blow, Winds, and Crack Your Cheeks by John Alfred Taylor Time: 13m (ShortStory)
Issue: Asimov's 01.02|17
(Climate SF) As a hurricane bears
down, a retired couple visit their beloved Fire Island cottage for what may
be the last time.
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(Climate SF) Caer brings an abandoned
robot back to his hideout in the flooded part of town and tries to prepare
for attack by the raiders who dumped it.
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(Near-Future SF) Dave drops out of
school when he gets hooked on a drug that lets you experience being other
people.
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(Dystopia) Sophie explains the events
that led to her fall from grace—that is, how she accumulated enough “unlike”
votes to be forced out of college.
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(SF) C.J. brings his dying daughter to
Ariosto to see Crimson Birds, an art installation that includes a vast flock
of artificial birds.
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(Near-Future SF) Marcel
surreptitiously sprays people with pheromones to make them fall in love with
his clients. He’s not supposed to get attached to them himself.
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(Historical Fantasy) Ricardo needs to
hide out in a small, western town for a few days, where he meets Doc
Holliday. Doc figures out he’s a vampire, but for some reason chooses not to
expose him.
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(SF Dystopia) Brad has a cushy job
inside the Seattle Exclusive Zone, and he’s not eager to participate in a
game where a car takes you to an unknown destination, but the company is
making everyone play. But is it even a game?
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(Horror) Dick likes to visit the
supermarket and chat with the ghosts who hang out there, but lately Satan
keeps barging in and ruining it for him.
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(Planetary SF) After taking fifty
years to reach planet Kendavala, colonists are disappointed to find strict
regulations on where they can settle. But is anyone actually going to enforce
those rules?
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(Mainstream) A homeless woman fends
off unwelcome help from a stranger, even though she seems to be deathly ill.
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(Modern Fantasy) An intelligent
birdcage narrates the story of a young runaway, a lonely old lady, and a
missing bird.
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(Near-Future SF) Teenage Char is
fascinated by space travel, even though pilots have to give up their bodies
to make it work.
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(SF Horror) Even in retirement, Pete
can’t stop being a film critic, albeit just on his web site. He’s intrigued
when some strangers want to pay him to critique their work in progress.
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(SF Adventure Humor; The Family) With
the death of Crown Princess Rylla of Callisto, things in the Jovan system are
about to get nasty, and at 18, Cole is ready to be right in the middle of it.
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How Sere Picked Up Her Laundry by Alexander Jablokov Time: 1h:04m (Novella)
Issue: Asimov's 07.08|17
(SF Mystery) A struggling private
investigator in a city full of alien refugees, Sere risks her life seeking
connections between some mysterious aliens and an exterminator who blew
himself up.
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I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land by Connie Willis
Time: 1h:01m (Novella) Issue: Asimov's 11.12|17
(Urban Fantasy) A novelist finds a
bookstore in New York that sells “the rarest of rare books.” These books look
pretty ordinary, for the most part, and there sure do seem to be a lot of
them.
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(Alternate History; Moe Berg) It’s
1940. Moe Berg heads to Dublin to do a deal that might help the US get the
Japanese out of San Diego before the armistice signed after the Nazis
captured England falls apart.
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(Retro-SF Humor) In the 1950s,
teenagers had to be ready to repel alien invasions at any moment, and as a
football star, Hank knew he had to be a leader. But it was all so
inconvenient.
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(Alternate History) Wilbur Wright dies
in a crash just weeks before the historic flight, and his sister Katharine
steps in to take his place.
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Love and Death and the Star that Shall Not Be Named: Kom's Story
by James Gunn Time: 16m (ShortStory)
Issue: Asimov's 11.12|17
(SF Adventure; Transcendental) Kom
violates the taboos of his own species and visits the sun that shall not be
named, finding it something of a disappointment. But the alien he finds there
changes him forever.
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(Alternate History) Charles Manson
spends ten years in prison and doesn’t start his cult until 1977 instead of
1967.
|
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(Post-Apocalypse) Amali’s family are
refugees on an artificial floating island, but she risks all of their safety
when she defends a genetically engineered girl who arrives unexpectedly.
|
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(Hard SF) Long after the loss of its
crew, Kade-5 continues its mission of terraforming the planet. It finds
something interesting, but whom can it tell?
|
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(Exploration SF) A child on a
spaceship worries that the first five planets they've found weren’t
habitable, and the sixth isn’t looking good.
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(Near-Future SF) Barry investigates
self-driving trucks that are being hijacked, although he has more than a
little sympathy for the unemployed truckers who he imagines are behind it.
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(Time Travel) The narrator revisits
the past hoping either to change it, understand it, or at least make peace
with it.
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(Modern Fantasy) Ten-year-old Polly
wishes she could see fairies like her friend Isabelle can. She wishes a lot
of things. Not all wishes should come true.
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(SF Thriller) Joan survived a
terrorist attack, thanks to a security officer’s advice on the radio. A man
who kept giving advice fifteen minutes after he was dead.
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Riding the Blue Line With Jack Kerouac by Sandra McDonald Time: 09m (ShortStory)
Issue: Asimov's 09.10|17
(Horror) Around 1990, the narrator
drives a train on the subway line where ghosts of people (famous and
otherwise) hang out and sometimes talk to him.
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(SF) The space station’s high-speed
transit system has a glitch: occasionally it swaps passengers from alternate
realities.
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(Near-Future SF) Daniel, a lonely grad
student in Athens, Georgia, meets the girl of his dreams through an online
matching service. Now if he can just get her to meet in person . . .
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Squamous and Eldritch Get a Yard Sale Bargain
by Tim McDaniel
Time: 10m (ShortStory) Issue: Asimov's 09.10|17
(Horror) Squamous goes to buy a copy
of a dangerous demonic book, but someone else has beaten him to it.
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(Climate SF) Keely inherits an
advanced robot from her eccentric aunt.
|
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(Multiverse) A research group mapping
possible timelines focuses on one man who appears to be the same in all
possible timelines.
|
|
(Planetary SF; Coyote) A scientific
team tagging “boids” in the wilderness on Coyote copes with equipment that’s
falling apart, a drunken leader, and the man-eating, flightless birds
themselves.
|
|
(SF) Someone has attacked New York and
MIT, and 16-year-old Shipton is caught in the middle of it.
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(Near-Future SF) Brendan needs to be
in Italy in a few days to be best man at his brother’s wedding. He needs to
do something to keep his face from being green though.
|
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(Historical Fantasy) A fair comes to a
small German town around the start of the 20th Century. The “elongated man”
exhibit features a giant who supposedly has slept through the ages and can
tell the future.
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(Horror) As kids, Lila and Beth had
adventures exploring mysterious houses with strange rooms and scary
occupants. Forty years later, Beth tries to discover whatever happened to
those houses—and to her friend.
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The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine by Greg Egan Time: 40m (Novelette)
Issue: Asimov's 11.12|17
(Dystopia) Dan loses his job and goes
looking for something that hasn’t already been automated away. There’s not
much, and what he does find is rather strange.
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The Escape of the Adastra: Asha's Story by James Gunn Time: 19m (ShortStory)
Issue: Asimov's 05.06|17
(Generation Ship) Aliens captured the
Adastra years ago, but Asha and her boyfriend have a plan to escape and get a
warning back to Earth.
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|
(Native American Modern Fantasy)
Callum can talk with native American dwarf spirits, but will they make his
problems on the reservation better or worse?
|
|
(Space Opera; Transcendental) Jan and
his siblings work on a secret base near Jupiter, where they plan to attempt
to terraform Ganymede.
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|
(SF Adventure Humor; The Family) In
3V, Amanda is a proud space princess, but in the real world she’s a
17-year-old high school dropout who lives with her mom. Slavers are after
her, and some parts of the 3V world are more real than they ought to be.
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|
(Near-Future SF) Ethan gets an AI
reconstruction of his dead wife. He can’t touch her, but just being able to
see each other and talk should be enough. Right?
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|
(Historical Fantasy) On the train from
Moscow to exile in Dzhambul, Lina Stern is visited by three younger versions
of herself.
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|
(Near-Future SF) At age 11, Teddy has
the best life, with great hardware and software toys. Those toys let his
parents keep him under tight control, but he doesn’t mind until he finds
something he really wants to do.
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The Ones Who Know Where They Are Going by Sarah Pinsker Time: 05m (ShortStory)
Issue: Asimov's 03.04|17
(Fantasy) You have lain in your cell
long enough to forget how to walk. Then you see sunlight and realize someone
has left the door open.
|
|
(SF Thriller) Injuries from an ambush
force the narrator out of regular service and into mercenary work, but it
bothers her that she doesn’t know why she was attacked in the first place.
|
|
(Space Opera; Diving Universe) The
narrator leads a team salvaging long-lost technology from a graveyard of
starships, whose stardrives still disrupt the surrounding space in dangerous
ways.
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|
(Far-Future SF; Great Ship) To secure
a deal with a world ruled by what appear to be intelligent rivers, the Great
Ship sends three representatives on a long, sub-light-speed mission. By the
time they get there, things don’t look so rosy.
|
|
(Near-future SF) Samuel’s trading
group makes a fortune from their predictions. Something troubling happened in
the gestalt this morning, though, and he needs to find out what it meant.
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Three Can Keep a Secret... by Bill Johnson and Gregory Frost Time: 31m (Novelette) Issue: Asimov's 03.04|17
(SF Thriller) A resourceful assassin
from Earth comes to an unnamed planet on a mission to double-cross someone.
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|
(Time Travel) James’s sleepwalking
therapist tells him his episodes are caused by someone from the future trying
to contact him. But about what?
|
|
(Portal Fantasy Humor) To distract
themselves from their boring world of magic and quests, Mirk and her friends
play an exciting game about people who live in suburbs, drive cars, and work
in cubicles.
|
|
(SF; Transcendental) Riley finds
himself in a place with no light and no sound, and he can’t even feel his
body. He tries to remember how he got there.
|
|
(Near-Future SF) The narrator visits a
reserve in Northern Canada where they’re experimenting with resurrected
mammoths.
|
|
(Slipstream) A man who just stole the
universe hides in Howard’s apartment, interrupting his attempt to propose to
his girlfriend. Then it gets weird.
|
|
(SF Humor) A pattern of retractions in
the media reveals something bad is going on.
|
|
(Military SF; Transcendental) Tordor’s
species produces warriors by brutal training starting from a young age. He’s
very successful, but he dreams of changing the system.
|
|
(Generation Ship) The ship lost most
of its historical records some years back, and the narrator tries to use
music to maintain a connection with distant Earth.
|
|
(SF) Regina and Ilkay take an annual
holiday together in Istanbul, renting “blank” bodies for the occasion.
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(Alternate History) A German commander
in 1944 supervises the roundup of a group of gypsies in Hungary.
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Wednesday, January 3, 2018
2017 Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine
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