Authors in This Issue
“The Ghosts of Goldilocks” by Kevin J. Anderson & Rick Wilber
Kevin J. Anderson is the author of many novels in the Dune universe with Brian Herbert, as well as his original Saga of Seven Suns space opera and the Terra Incognita fantasy trilogy. He has edited numerous anthologies, written comics and graphic novels, and even the lyrics for three rock albums. Rick Wilber is the author of a half-dozen novels and collections and more than seventy short stories, novelettes, or novellas, many of which first appeared in this magazine. The father of an adult son with Down syndrome, he often features characters with Down syndrome in his stories. You can find Rick on Facebook as Rick.Wilber and on Threads, Instagram, and Bluesky as wilbersfwriter. He’s also on his website as RickWilber.net. This is the duo’s third story together for Asimov’s. They are both lecturers at Western Colorado University, and during many hours of mountain driving together to reach the campus for summer residency, they plotted the grand story of the desperate generation ship the Hind and its troubled journey to Goldilocks, a supposedly warm and welcoming new planet that was, instead, barely tolerable. In this story, the surviving colonists are still struggling to build a home on a world that’s fighting against them.
“Satan’s Slave” by R. Garcia y Robertson
R. Garcia y Robertson tells us that when he started to write a story about a future enslaved person set in the first week of July, which is also when the Declaration of Independence was adopted and the Civil War was decided, he felt that he needed to mix fact with fiction. Rod says, “I try to make the history in my stories as true as I can, because science fiction is where we are most free to use the past to talk about the future.”
“Quest for the Corpus Mundi” by Preston Grassman & Paul Di Filippo
Preston Grassmann is a Shirley Jackson Award finalist. His recent books include the BSFA nominated Multiverses: An Anthology of Alternate Realities (Titan, 2023), and the Bram Stoker Award longlisted The Mad Butterfly’s Ball (PS, 2024), coedited with Chris Kelso. His latest work has appeared in Weird Tales, Nature, Strange Horizons, Interzone, and Reports from the Deep End, a tribute to J.G. Ballard. His collaboration with co-author and friend, Paul Di Filippo, War in the Linear Heavens, was published by PS in 2025. Paul hopes the universe allows him to continue writing until at least 2027, so that he can celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of his first sale in 1977. He has contracted with Spatterlight Books to write a novel set in the world of Jack Vance’s Big Planet, but the publication date is not yet fixed. After living for thirty-one years at one location in Providence, he has since racked up fifteen years at his new residence, only a block away from the granite marker commemorating Lovecraft’s birthplace. He shares that space happily with his partner Deborah, a black cocker spaniel named Moxie, and a calico cat named Sally. Paul hopes readers enjoy this story coauthored with the talented Preston Grassmann, whom he has never met in meatspace, but who is nonetheless a good friend. In the tale that follows, the two authors take us on a grand scale adventure in the tradition of Jack Vance, revealing the surreal dreams (and nightmares) of a living world and those who attempt to save it.
“How to Live With Polar Bears” by Octavia Cade
Octavia Cade is a speculative fiction writer from New Zealand. She has a PhD in science communication, and her academic work most often looks at how science, particularly biology, is used in fiction. Octavia attended Clarion West 2016, and is currently the Robert Burns Fellow at the University of Otago, where she’s writing a novel about algal blooms and a short monograph on how New Zealand speculative fiction looks at ecological invasion. You can find her on Bluesky at @octavia-cade. Octavia has a horror of bears, despite never having met one, and explores the many ways bear encounters can go very, very wrong.
“A Fierce Need” by James Van Pelt
James Van Pelt <website: jamesvanpelt.com, Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/james.vanpelt.14, and books site at https://fairwoodpress.com/james-van-pelt-collection.html> retired after a full career teaching high school English in western Colorado, and now writes full time. His fiction has made numerous appearances in most of the major science fiction and fantasy magazines. The American Library Association recognized his first collection of stories, Strangers and Beggars, as a Best Book for Young Adults. The next, The Last of the O-Forms and Other Stories, includes the Nebula finalist title story, and was a finalist for the Colorado Blue Spruce Young Adult Book Award, while The Radio Magician and Other Stories received the Colorado Book Award. His most recent, the huge The Best of James Van Pelt, is available in both hardback and paperback. His new story for Asimov’s follows two friends from childhood and their efforts to reach the stars.
“The Placemat at Baldy’s Diner” by Michael Libling
Michael Libling is a World Fantasy Award finalist whose short fiction has appeared in F&SF, SciFiction, Realms of Fantasy, Amazing Stories, and various anthologies, Year’s Bests among them. This story marks his sixth appearance in Asimov’s, his last being “Trial by Harry” in the May/June 2025 issue. Michael is also the author of two novels: the fantasy noir Hollywood North (ChiZine/Open Road Media) and the horror/thriller The Serial Killer’s Son Takes a Wife (WordFire Press). A long-time resident of Montreal’s West Island, the author’s day jobs have included talk radio host (specializing in trivia), newspaper columnist (more trivia), and ad agency creative director (total trivia). He loiters online at www.michaellibling.com, as well as Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, X, and BlueSky. Michael also claims to frequent a certain eatery just off the Interstate, fifty miles northwest of Boston, where he invites you to join him for the coffee.
“The High Shrines” by Stephen Case
Stephen Case is an author and historian who has published fiction in Asimov’s, Analog, and Clarkesworld and nonfiction in Physics Today, Aeon, and American Scientist. His most recent books are Creatures of Reason: John Herschel and the Invention of Science (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024) and The Cambridge Companion to John Herschel (Cambridge University Press, 2024). You can find him online at www.stephenrcase.com and stephenrcase.bsky.social or in real life teaching undergraduates or writing in his attic. In his latest piece for Asimov’s, an investigator in search of a missing asteroid looks for clues in an ancient monastery but finds a much deeper mystery.
“Antarctic Radio” by Gu Shi (Translated by Andy Dudak)
Gu Shi is a Chinese speculative fiction writer and a senior urban planner. She is the author of two short story collections, Möbius Continuum and 2181 Overture. Her fiction has won major awards in China, and she was a Hugo Award finalist for best novelette in 2024. The author’s stories have appeared in English translation in the collections Sinophagia (2024), The Climate Action Almanac (2024), Book of Beijing (2023), Sinopticon (2021), The Way Spring Arrives (2021), Broken Stars (2019), and Current Futures (2019) as well as Clarkesworld magazine. Her stories have also been translated into German, Italian, Japanese, Romanian, and other languages. Gu Shi’s story in this issue is about a beacon of hope in a dangerous world of rising seas.