Editorial
Fortieth Annual Readers’ Awards’ Results
by Emily Hockaday
While I hit my fifteenth anniversary with Asimov’s, our annual readers’ award is celebrating its fortieth! Award season is one of my favorite times of the year. I enjoy gleefully tracking votes as they roll in, tabulating results, and receiving feedback from you, our readers!
In this spirit, I’m going to continue Sheila’s tradition of sharing some of the comments we received here at Asimov’s. Feel free to include your thoughts on the stories next year when you vote.
Starting us off is Austin Chapman, of South Carolina, who says: “I think I gave out more five-star ratings this year than ever before! Asimov’s had a great year in 2025, requiring some tough choices in every category. Special mention should go to Ray Nayler’s ‘Catch a Tiger in the Snow,’ which I think is a perfect story and could easily make it into a best-of-the-decade awards ballot.” I know a lot of our readers find the final choices to be quite tough. And clearly Austin wasn’t the only fan of “Catch a Tiger in the Snow,” based on the results. Although it looks like folks were torn between this and his other short “The Demon of Metrazol,” which placed right on its heels.
Piet Nel—whose guest editorial we saw in the May/June 2026 issue—sends the following comments from South Africa: “I’m usually a lazy reader who takes a day or two to finish a novella. But in 2025, the novellas were my favorite category, and I gobbled up the ones by Suzanne Palmer and John Kessel in one sitting. And did I mention the excellent contributions spread all across the other categories? Space does not permit. Thanks to Sheila (not forgetting Emily) for continuing to bring us the best fiction from both veterans and newcomers.” Coincidentally, another Piet mentions enjoying Suzanne Palmer’s “The Chronolithographer’s Assistant.” Piet Hoekstra from the Netherlands says, “Time travel, a life influenced, and the description of a trade I hardly knew gave me a lot of pleasure.” Other stories caught Piet Hoekstra’s eye too: “The story by Rick Wilber was very moving and let me think about life. The novellas in the last few years by Trtek are something new and I hope to see more by him.” I hope both Piets continue to enjoy novellas going forward—because I have a bunch lined up from the likes of John Richard Trtek, Elizabeth Bear, Andy Dudak, Leah Cypess, Allen M. Steele, Ian Creasey, and more!
Alan Lipton of Virginia says, “For me, this year’s competition was a tight race for both novelettes and poems. Novelettes expand on the author’s idea, while poems are concise word pictures. I sink into and savor a great novelette. A great poem is a snapshot that leaves an echo of wonder. Also, a special shout-out to Allen M. Steele in 2025, whose Lemuria 7 stories are excellent as stand-alones, even when the next episode carries it forward. Not an easy trick for a writer in any genre—and he’s been doing it for years.” (As a lifelong poetry fan, I commend Alan on his description of what makes a great poem!) First-time voter Shauna McKain-Storey of Oregon agrees, saying, “There were great poems and novelettes this year—those were the categories that I found most difficult to decide. Some of the fonts and/or backgrounds made poems difficult to read, so I hope more thought is given to that in future. I found it disturbing that so few covers seemed to be made by actual artists (who or what is Shutterstock?).” Thank you, Shauna, for voting and for your comments! I agree that some of the print behind the poems were problematic—we are currently switching printers (in the future when this prints, we’ll have switched) due to uneven ink levels, among other things. We’re also being more careful about background images. And you bring up a good point about the covers—all the Shutterstock images we choose are created by actual artists. I’ll strive to make sure their names are printed going forward.
Philip and Jill Barringer of Arizona liked a tale that was just a hair shy of making the finalist list. They tell us, “As with every year, it is hard to narrow down the selections to three. We did have a favorite story of the year—Zohar Jacobs’ ‘On the Night Shift.’ It checked off all our boxes: cli-fi, space travel, and a race against the clock. Terrific story!” Ignacio Viglizzo, who we heard from last year, sends his thoughts from Argentina: “Thanks to all the staff for another great year! It’s my fifth year of reading the magazine from cover to cover, although I’m a subscriber since 1997.” Thanks for your support over the years, Ignacio!
Bert Carreon from Florida gives the succinct shout out, “Ted Kosmatka is awesome.” We agree, Bert! Muhammad Sajjad from Pakistan didn’t call out specific titles, saying they were all “too excellent.” David Hook from California apparently agrees, commenting “Very hard choices like always, especially on short story. My thanks for all the hard work and wishing Sheilaa full recovery.” Sheila is thinking of you readers and the readers’ award, too! She was asking me who won before we’d finished tallying the votes.
You’re reading this in the September/October issue, so that means there’s just one volume left before voting commences for our forty-first year of reader polling. Start marking your favorites now—we love hearing from you.