Hugo and Nebula winner (not to mention NASA scientist) Geoffrey A. Landis returns, after too long an absence, with his latest hard SF story, “Marya and the Pirate.” In it, we find a resourceful space-hijacker tangled up (for better and worse) with an innocent—though no less resourceful—crewwoman on the very ship he’s trying to boost. Popular Coyote-series scribe Allen M. Steele recounts “The Jekyll Island Horror,” a tale of an eldritch, well, horror from shores unknown menacing the coddled landed gentry of the titular isle; Hugo winner Robert Reed raises “The Good Hand,” a taut story of former allies become enemies, and an imaginary film we’re sure many cineastes would kill to see; new talent Felicity Shoulders, in her second story for us, “Conditional Love,” in which a doctor at a rather unorthodox children’s clinic sanctions an even more unorthodox adoption; Carol Emshwiller takes us deep into the “Wilds” where a desperate woman on the lam with her ill-gotten gains must escape the intentions of a rather unusual mountain man—our money’s on the mountain man; Chris Roberson reimagines the adventure pulps through his Celestial Empire universe, not to mention the origins of a very familiar hero, in “Wonder House”; and Steve Rasnic Tem travels the interstellar spaceways to deliver “A Letter from the Emperor” with unexpected consequences for the recipients.

Robert Silverberg plumbs the silt-strewn depths off the coast of ancient Greece in search of “The Antikythera Computer” in Reflections; James Patrick Kelly, in On the Net, plaintively cries out, “Dude, Where’s My Hovercar?”; Paul Di Filippo brings us “On Books”; plus an array of poetry you’re sure to enjoy.

Look for our January issue on sale at your newsstand on November 10, 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!