World Fantasy- and Stoker-Award finalist Michael Blumlein makes his Asimov’s debut in our August issue with the tender, witty, and beautifully written “California Burning.” In it, a man, eager to bury his recently passed father, finds the task is much more difficult than he’d expected. Along the way, he also discovers that his father wasn’t quite who he seemed, and that dealing with the aftermath of a parent’s death is a much riskier and difficult affair when that parent may not have been from this Earth . . .

Damien Broderick, swiftly becoming one of the most prolific and dynamic writers in Asimov’s (with more to come), contributes a fine novelette, “The Qualia Engine,” in which a group of terribly intelligent Children of Wonder must not only advance the state of their van Vogtian super-science, but also deal with the more complex problem of puberty; Steven Popkes returns with a clever and poignant tale of Neanderthals come to live alongside humans with somewhat mixed results in “Two Boys”; Robert Reed returns to bring us the baroque and whimsical story of a few “Creatures of Well-Defined Habits”; if you already hate to fly, Kristine Kathryn Rusch doesn’t help matters by adding a little “Turbulence” to your trip; Campbell Award winner Mary Robinette Kowal makes her Asimov’s debut with “The Consciousness Problem”; and Derek Zumsteg considers the problems of black holes and astronaut food within confined spaces in “Blue.”

Robert Silverberg, in Reflections, continues the tour through his own foreign editions in “Adventures in the Far Future II”; James Patrick Kelly’s On the Net explores the unusual world of science fiction fandom awards in “And the Winner is”; Peter Heck brings us “On Books”; plus an array of poetry you’re sure to enjoy. Look for our August issue on sale at your newsstand on June 23, 2009. Or you can subscribe to Asimov’s—in classy and elegant paper format or new-fangled downloadable varieties, by visiting us online at www.asimovs.com. We’re also available on Amazon.com’s Kindle!