eMagazines

Once again, we've somehow managed to cram an unbelievable amount of fiction into our annual October/November double issue. Not one, but two outstanding novellas jostle for room between the magazine's covers (or vie for pixles as the case may be). Multiple award winner Kij Johnson treats us to a remarkable feat of engineering on a hostile alien planet and introduces us to "The Man Who Bridged the Mist." The story's evocative images are sure to linger on long after you reach Empire's Farside for t... more info>>

Andrea Cort, Adam-Troy Castro's prickly but effective troubleshooter, returns to lead off our November issue in "With Unclean Hands," wherein she faces a particularly thorny interspecies problem for which her own past is uniquely relevant. But being especially well qualified does not mean a person will find a task easy. . . . Our science fact article comes from Richard B. Robinson, a researcher on the frontiers of a field that was new to me: "Repairing a Broken Heart: Beyond Electronic Pacemaker... more info>>

We've racked up stories of games and place for your enjoyment this month. David Edgerley Gates fires the break shot with "Slip Knot," a tale of New York City mob wars in the 1950s in which an epic game of pool sets up a dramatic encounter. And Detective Sergeant Cyrus Auburn returns in John H. Dirckx's "Meltdown," in which an explosion interrupts that most sacred of American occasions, the neighborhood Super Bowl party. Meanwhile, Nancy Pauline Simpson vividly evokes the Jim Crow South in "The ... more info>>

In preparation for pre-holiday cheer, our November issue is packed to the brim with family matters. The holiday season, when families gather, isn't far off, and our November issue is packed to the brim with dangerous family dynamics. In Kristine Kathryn Rusch's "Local Knowledge" and Brendan DuBois's "The Tardy Guest," suspense grows as the stories' protagonists try to get to the bottom of crimes that may ensnare their relatives in sinister situations. And the mother in Trina Corey's haunting tal... more info>>

Espionage and skulduggery are afoot in our September issue. At "The Observation Post," a new novelette by the always popular and multiple Hugo-Award-winning author Allen M. Steele, dangerous secrets of the Cuban Missle Crisis are unwittingly uncovered. The disruptive consequences of these secrets will continue to play out in our own precarious era. Additional perils can be found in distinguished author Alan Walls's novelette about British and American agents who must race against time to determi... more info>>

2011's September/October double issue is as close as it's possible to get to the true 70th anniversary of EQMM's debut in "Fall 1941." We honor the occasion with some special features: a classic cover photo, an article by Steve Steinbock about past anniversary issues, and a letter to readers from editor Janet Hutchings. With our founding editors, Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee, caught hard at work in our reprinted cover photo, it's fitting that so many of the characters in this issue face w... more info>>

We didn't set out to create a "seasonal" package for our October issue, but we just happened to have a couple of pieces on hand that felt as if they wanted to be there. One of them is our lead novelette, "Of Night," by newcomer Janet C. Johnston. It looks, at least at first glance, like a ghost story; but the farther into it you get, the more it looks like good, solid, imaginative science fiction. Could it be both? Similarly, Carl Frederick's "The Lycanthropic Principle" seems to have feet solid... more info>>

Some people treat crime like a game--but to win that game, you need an air-tight plan and the stomach to see it through. Just ask Yarnell, protagonist of R. T. Lawton's Holiday Burglar series, who makes a s-l-o-w getaway this month in "Labor Day." Of course, you also need to know what game you're in--as retired engineer Clete Dowski discovers in John C. Boland's "Swimming in Fog" (excerpted here): invited to join what looks like a victimless con, he stumbles into a deadlier game. And in any game... more info>>

Our August lead story gives you the chance to revisit Magipoor with science fiction Grand Master, Robert Silverberg. While all may not be going well, at "The End of the Line," you'll find it's the same evocative world that inspired the author's blockbuster bestseller. In our cover story by Lisa Goldstein, Elizabethen spies, Arab scholars, and Japanese homunculus reveal why "Paradise Is a Walled Garden." Will Ludwigsen returns to our pages with an off-beat tale about the adventures of the "Wonde... more info>>

Our September issue offers an uncommonly wide variety of stories, including two unusual novelettes: one by a well-established Analog favorite; and one by a writer new to these pages and almost new to science fiction writing, but promising to attract plenty of attention. You already know you can count on Carl Frederick to come up with some of the strangest, most original ideas around, and he's certainly done it again in "Helix of Friends." (I'll leave you to speculate on what the title means.) G... more info>>

Several of our stories this month deal with a particular aspect of human nature, the propensity to bond with others, and they test how strong those bonds may be in the disruptive presence of crime. In Doug Allyn's "Thicker than Blood," the fate of four men explicitly hinges on the strength of the bonds they formed growing up together in a group home for boys. For Jas. R. Petrin's loan shark Leo "Skig" Skorzeny, on the other hand, such bonds may be a liability: He is as tough as they come on coll... more info>>

EQMM's August issue presents a new face to the world with a cover design fresh off our art director's desk; read more about our cover history in "The Changing Face of EQMM." History claims nearly half of our fiction pages this month, too, starting with the first in a series of stories by Steven Saylor that follows a very young Gordianus the Finder (hero of Saylor's popular novels) on travels to the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. "The Monumental Gaul" finds Gordianus, in around 90 BC, visiti... more info>>

Our Summer Double Issue this year yields a rich crop indeed of the dangerous and deadly. The seeds for "Politics Makes Dead Bedfellows" by Brad Crowther were planted last May when the story was named the winner of the Black Orchid Novella Award. Kevin Mims makes his debut to or pages with "Effleman the Psychic." We also welcome Michael Mallory, who chronicles actors bringing the glamour of tinsel-town to the tourists in "The Real Celebrities". For many, summer is also the season for travel. Da... more info>>

July is an issue full of firsts. A novelette from famed Dr. Who television writer and Hugo-fiction-finalist Paul Cornell marks his first appearance in Asimov's. "The Copenhagen Interpretation" warps time and space and history in a thrilling tale of espionage and life and death gambits that would leave James Bond gasping for breath. Masterful fantasy author Theodora Goss makes her inaugural visit to Asimov's with an SF tale about "Pug" and a group of Victorian-era girls who all have a very specia... more info>>

Our July/August double issue takes full advantage of its extra spaciousness to bring you an extra-wide variety of fiction, fact, and special features. Kristine Kathryn Rusch leads off with another novella in her "Retrieval Artist" series, though this one is "off to the side" of what you've seen before, focusing not on a Retrieval Artist but on something new and different. Richard A. Lovett appears twice, with a novelette, "Jak and the Beanstalk," bringing a decidedly novel twist to an idea famil... more info>>

EQMM's year-long 70th-anniversary celebration continues in July with Keith Alan Deutsch's "An Enduring Publishing Legacy," a history of the links between EQMM and the famous Black Mask. To complement the article, David Dean's "Tomorrow's Dead," in our Black Mask department, is a dazzling example of the Black Mask-style story: including nonstop action and a conflicted hero. It's 2007 Readers Award winner Dean's first foray into noir fiction. But just in case your idea of escape from the heat in ... more info>>

One of the pleasures of fiction is the opportunity to peek into worlds that we otherwise would never know. In our June issue, K. J. Egan's "Work Lovers" is set within the secrets and arcana of a judge's chambers; John C. Boland's "Marley's Revolution" is set among the suspicions and heightened tensions of revolutionary cells; and Elaine Viets's "Main Squeeze" is set within the highly regulated life of a rehab center. Fricis Svaars finds himself a society of one, in William Burton McCormick's "Bl... more info>>

With wind in its sails and a salty sea breeze, our June issue cruises in with a great crew of crime writers whose fictional sleuths are strong on teamwork. . . . Start with the "The Chatelaine Bag," a Carpenter-Quincannon case from MWA Grand Masters Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini, in which the 1890s P.I.s must ferret out the thief who ruined San Francisco's society event of the season; then check out Clark Howard's "Crystal Death," in which two DEA agents race the clock to find a Chicago drug d... more info>>

Our June issue has a Vincent Di Fate cover to herald the beginning of a new serial by Edward M. Lerner: It's set in a near future with energy problems that make ours seem tame, thanks largely to some additional difficulties provided by terrorists--and if that's not trouble enough, Earth itself is under threat from an incoming massive object. Humans have a knack for turning threats into opportunities, but they also have a knack for turning opportunities into new threats--so things rapidly get bo... more info>>

June's blockbuster cover story is a novella from John W. Campbell Award-winning author Mary Robinette Kowal. Follow homicide detectives Scott Huang and his AI partner Metta as they attempt to prevent another murder. The stakes are high and the detectives have to move fast if they're going to save something that may be even more precious than life. You're sure to be captivated by Metta, who can customize her interface for each officer, but who chooses to be a certain silver screen starlet for Hua... more info>>

Not everyone is cut out to be a smooth operator, as the stories in our annual Humor Issue demonstrate. In Mithran Somasundrum's story "The Calculator," a socially inept genius from the U.K. disappears in Bangkok, while in Janet E. Irvin's story "Pawns," a carnival outcast absconds with the ancient, and restless, bones of King Kardu (excerpted here). B. K. Stevens's underemployed academic Leah Abrams finds herself leading a therapy group of people with harmless addictions--harmless, until one mem... more info>>

This month in EQMM, we reveal the winners of the 2010 Readers Award--and maybe you'll discover your favorites there this year! A winner of multiple past Readers Awards, Clark Howard, returns with the story of a high-ranking mobster whose friend in the police department sees an opportunity to "turn" him when his daughter is arrested for DWI ("Turning Leo"). 2006 Readers Award winner Leigh Lundin contributes a snappy short-short about a small-town bowling alley's unlikely hero ("English"); and the... more info>>

There's a bit of a Steampunk feel to our colossal April/May double issue. A journey of discovery is related in Alexander Jablokov's complex and compelling cover story about a pair of intrepid twins. On "The Day the Wires Came Down," this enchanting twosome uncovered a few remarkable secrets about the overhead tramlines that crisscrossed the upper reaches of their city. The darker side of the Steam Age is explored in Christopher Barzak's surreal look at life in "Smoke City." A young woman awaits... more info>>

We're all born into a world in which everything is new and confusing, and we have to try to figure out how it all fits together and how it works and how it affects us. Most of us have help: as Alfred Korzybski said, man is a time-binding animal, and we can build on the accumulated experience and knowledge of all our forebears. For some, though, it's not nearly so simple. Consider, for example, Erik Acharius Bateson, the young man at the heart of "Tower of Worlds," Rajnar Vajra's lead novella (wi... more info>>

Our March/April double issue is packed with stories by your favorite authors, from A llyn to Z eltserman and everyone in between! Doug Allyn's "A Penny for the Boatman" is a romantic thriller set in northern Michigan, where a boat builder becomes entangled with a beautiful customer, while Dave Zeltserman's "The Mentor" is an ironic tale of a young writer who befriends a dangerous idol. Don't miss the stunning impossible-crime case "The Long Way Down," from Edward D. Hoch's archives, or the did-h... more info>>