I'm not going to talk (much) about the stories in this issue.

Recently arriving in my mailbox, this issue opens with an editorial by Sheila Williams titled "Age Diversity in Asimov's". She explains and defends her choices for stories in the magazine. I don't think this editorial would have appeared if she were not receiving complaints. I have been unhappy with the story selections in recent years - in a magazine I started reading casually about 35 years ago and more seriously in the early 80's when Shawna McCarthy became editor followed soon by Gardner Dozois. I became a subscriber in the early 80's and kept my subscription to the present - I have seen ups and downs, but my subscription will be ending this year. I still find stories in Asimov's that I like - I just find too many that I don't want to read in it. Overall the editorial made me a little sad. Three years ago I almost did not renew my subscription but decided to give it a few more years. I believe in the genre and supporting print magazines. I've never enjoyed Analog on a regular basis in modern times. I've relied on Asimov's and to a lesser extent on The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction to find stories and writers, new and old, to entertain and delight me, sometimes with that "sense of wonder" and other times with interesting ideas and storytelling.

Of the stories in this issue, some were OK to pretty good. I liked Ted Kosmatka's opening novelette well enough but it left me unsatisfied at the end. A young woman, Caitlin, is a number cruncher who is hired to help with the making of a President. She looks for patterns in data. She's a miner. She's good at predicting things but notes places were things aren't what she would expect. But is this science fiction or something close? I really don't think so. It's just fiction. Some might call it slipstream fiction - a story with a touch of strange to it. An X File conspiracy type maybe. Who knows? I would gripe that this isn't a science fiction story and I'd prefer to read science fiction in the magazine. Sheila Williams would disagree with me because as she says in her editorial: "Stories can be set anywhere and anytime. They can be told via hard SF or social science SF, fantasy or horror, slipstream or magical realism."

I think this is one of those deaths by a thousand tiny cuts things. Asimov's has finally lost my interest.

I don't feel a need to critique the stories here. Most are pretty good (one is really good) and a couple flopped for me - which is to be expected as not every story works for everyone. Despite this month's editorial, this issue featured more of the types of stories I enjoy reading. The stories I liked best in this issue were "A Little Bigotry" by R. Neube, "New Earth" by James Gunn and "I Married a Monster from Outer Space" by Dale Bailey.

Robert Silverberg's column is almost always interesting. I'm going to miss that. ( )