Asimov’s, July/August 2026
“A Flame in the Dark” by Sam W. Pisciotta
“Gumchew” by Zack Be
“Roma Delenda Est” by Alan Smale
“Last Train to Gertrude Stein” by Sandra McDonald
“Brother Adalbert’s Last Shift” by Karol Lagodzki
“Seeking” by Gregory Marlow
“Oliana’s Skull” by Robert Reed
“The Translation of the Sirens” by Matthew De Abaitua
“The Hydrological Cycle of Souls, or the Assembler of Scattered Creations” by Minister Faust
“Better the Devil You Know” by Allen M. Steele
Reviewed by Mina
This month’s issue is a mix of alternative history, other worlds and time travel—something for every taste.
“A Flame in the Dark” by Sam W. Pisciotta reminded me of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, but with the narrator being a woman. What I particularly liked is that the author writes in the language and style you would expect for that time.
Annette has accompanied her husband Gabriel to the Americas and she is a fellow scientist. She revels in her freedom, in not having to wear a corset, both figurative and real. Annette and her husband experiment with dissonance and accidentally open a portal to another dimension which lets through monstrous creatures.
Gabriel becomes lost on the other side of the portal and Annette goes looking for him. She is helped by a local tribe and by a visitor from the future.
My favourite quote is: “The oppressed and the oppressor. I have known both roles, and neither is healthy.”
In “Gumchew” by Zack Be, Philip Marlowe meets SF. A private investigator is following a human-hyena hybrid to prove insurance fraud. He is helped by a literal cat woman.
The tale asks questions about identity—if you undergo mental or physical mods, are you still yourself? Does it really matter if you live your life to the full and remember to be glad you’re alive? It’s a little simplistic but fun.
I enjoyed “Roma Delenda Est” by Alan Smale which I really had not expected. I am not a fan of tales recounting military campaigns and wholesale slaughter. But Smale writes a compelling story looking at “what if Hannibal had attacked Rome and won.” The narrator in this alternative history is a weary Greek philosopher captured to become tutor to Hannibal’s thuggish son. He also helps Hannibal with strategic matters and building war machines.
It is the narrator’s intelligent voice and dry humour that gives this tale its hold on the reader. I particularly enjoyed the line: “Haspar may have the emotional development of a small rock, but in fact he does have virtues.”
“Last Train to Gertrude Stein” by Sandra McDonald is intriguing. I must admit to being biased because I love this author and she does not disappoint in this tale.
Claudine has lived many lives—coming back again and again to the river and marshes where she first died. She is now a thousand years old, having just lost another much-loved husband. She was first killed, along with her lover, by the Vikings. She begins to get confused with memories from various lives blending together. She muses that God has brought her back so many times: “for reasons so divinely private that he never shares them with her. Moses at least got commandments, the lucky man.”
Claudine meets another who has lived through many lives, his death also linked to water. And we begin to understand the reason behind her many incarnations as we suspect she may be nearing her final destination.
“Brother Adalbert’s Last Shift” by Karol Lagodzki is a sorrowful tale that ends with a glimmer of hope. Imagine an underground world where everyone knows when they will die. The main character remembers his life as he lives his last hours. His final calling is to work in the Hall of Trees.
It was a decent tale but needed a little more world building to be truly satisfying. I learned the word exophonic though from the introduction.
“Seeking” by Gregory Marlow is about addiction. The main character is so obsessed with getting his next hit that the arrival of alien spaceships barely registers for him. It’s depressing from beginning to end. Not least because the drug pusher may have a better grasp of what the aliens want than the shreds of the lost child left in the addict.
“Oliana’s Skull” by Robert Reed is set in the Great Ship. I am not a fan of this universe that has spawned countless stories, but that’s just me.
This story follows the fates of two people, Mineas and Landie, after an accidental death. Both choose different paths: Mineas remains resolutely mortal in a city he loves; Landie chooses a long life elsewhere with fanatical fervour. Immortals stroll in and out of the story.
My problem in this universe is that it’s difficult to really care about any character in it; Mineas is the closest I have come. There’s just too much expounding and not enough organic growth in these tales.
“The Translation of the Sirens” by Matthew De Abaitua tells of the recording of siren song made by a stretcher bearer and a priest during WWI. There is much speculation about whether the siren song is prophetic or just predators reeling in their prey. It’s written in the style of a (bad) scholarly paper including, unfortunately, the reader’s desire for it to end. It would have worked better at half the length.
“The Hydrological Cycle of Souls, or the Assembler of Scattered Creations” by Minister Faust is a mouthful of a title (the author really needed to have chosen one of the two options). But it’s well written. It takes the idea of re-greening the desert, pushing current science just a little bit further, and mixes it with geopolitics.
Niang, Senegalese but educated in the US, is the Geoscaping Lead for the greening project. Along the way she learns that she knows very little about the plight of the poor and uneducated, and even less about tradition and sacred, psychedelic drugs. It’s not a comfortable read.
“Better the Devil You Know” by Allen M. Steele is a tale about time travel. I enjoyed words like “chrononaut” and “chronospace hygiene.” Timeships being named after Shakespeare characters was also fun.
The story was a sober look at not being allowed to change the past because of temporal ripple effects in the multiverse. If you follow this concept to its disturbing end, that means letting a mass murderer get away with his crime. We watch as a team of chrononauts try to stop a rogue chrononaut from changing history on a cruise ship. We meet the madman who sets a time bomb and another madman who is a disaster tourist and doesn’t care if he changes history. We also meet the courageous chrononauts who do everything they can to stop a time paradox.
The tale is multi-layered, hopping between the present and recent past in a way that increases tension (but doesn’t get confusing for the reader). A skillful job, with a predictable but nice little twist at the end.