Q&A With Lois Metzger

Lois Metzger makes her Asimov’s debut in our September/October issue with “The Great Game,” a fantastic science fiction story about “the damaging nature of false friendships, the healing nature of true friendships.” Get to know Lois in this informative Q&A, where we discuss her Queens upbringing, her connection to Samuel Delany, her advice for upcoming writers, and the board game that inspired “The Great Game”!

Asimov’s Editor: How did this story germinate? Was there a spark of inspiration, or did it come to you slowly?
Lois Metzger: Both a spark and very slowly! I’ve always been fascinated by friendships—the ones that last forever, the ones that feel doomed from the start. Only recently it came to me that a story about toxic friendships, the kind that entice you and you keep coming back for more even while you know you should stay away, might work best as science fiction. But I’ve been thinking about this story for years—the damaging nature of false friendships, the healing nature of true friendships.

AE:  Do you particularly relate to any of the characters in this story?
LM: Yes, which surprised me.  My main character is Cindy, a name I never use in fiction because my middle name is Cynthia (too close). Cindy was a kind of placeholder in early drafts, until one of the other characters called her “Cin,” which rhymes with “sin”—that felt right and so the name stuck. (Full disclosure: like Cindy, I own Birko-Flor Birkenstocks.) Also, one of the other characters blurts things out without thinking and then realizes she’s said too much.  That happens to me more often than I’d like.

AE: How did the title for this piece come to you?
LM: Titles are tricky for me. Usually, I go through several before making a final decision, but in this case “The Great Game” was the first and only one. In the story, the characters play the board game Sorry! and I had a 1950s version of the game in a big rectangular box next to me the whole time I was working on it. There it sat, day after day, Sorry! Parker Brothers’ Trade-Mark Name for Its Slide Pursuit Game. Above the Sorry!, in unique, elegant, roundish sans-serif lettering, was the simple and confident declaration: The Great Game. Only later I found out the Parker Brothers considered this their masterpiece, even more so than Monopoly. Also, the title fits in terms of how the characters play mind games with one another.

Photo of the original lettering of The Great Game on Lois’s Sorry board (credit: Lois Metzger)

AE: What is your history with Asimov’s?
LM: This is my first story in Asimov’s. Very proud! And grateful to the awesome Sheila Williams for accepting it.

AE: Are there any themes that you find yourself returning to throughout your writing? If yes, what and why?
LM: Mind manipulation—how do you get someone to do something they don’t want to do? In my fiction, I always have my main characters fall under the influence of forces internal or external (or both) and then act very much out of character. Nice people become not so nice. Easy-going people become ultra-controlling. I like seeing this dynamic up close, how people lose themselves—sometimes it takes weeks or months, other times in what feels like an instant. Then they have to find their way back—to themselves or to something better.

AE:  How did you break into writing?
LM:  Many years ago, as an undergraduate at the University at Buffalo, I had Samuel R. Delany for a writing teacher.  He told me about the Clarion Writer’s Workshop in East Lansing, Michigan, and that summer I met Kate Wilhelm and Damon Knight.  (Besides Chip, Kate, and Damon, the other Clarion teachers were Gene Wolfe, Joe Haldeman, and Roger Zelazny. How great a line-up is that?)  Kate was editing an anthology of stories by Clarion students—my first science-fiction sale.  Since then, I’ve written a bunch of young-adult novels and a couple of nonfiction books for middle-school readers—but for short stories I always seem to come back to science fiction.

Nice people become not so nice. Easy-going people become ultra-controlling. I like seeing this dynamic up close, how people lose themselves—sometimes it takes weeks or months, other times in what feels like an instant. Then they have to find their way back—to themselves or to something better.

AE:  What inspired you to start writing?
LM:  J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories.  I wanted to write that tenth story.

AE:  What other projects are you currently working on?
LM:  My most recent novel, The Danger Ebbs and Flows, is about a “mini-cult,” a small group of people, maybe a half dozen or a dozen, that behaves exactly like a “regular” cult, the ones we hear about, with hundreds or many hundreds of thousands of members.  Kaye, the 15-year-old narrator, lives with her mother in a Queens, New York City apartment; money’s tight, and they rent out a spare room to a man who turns out to be a cult leader.  Kaye is smart and savvy, thinks she’s not the “type” to join a cult, and learns the hard way she is no match for this guy.  (And along the way she discovers there is no “type”: anyone can fall victim to a cult, if they are at a particularly vulnerable moment in their lives and cross paths with a master manipulator.)

AE:  Do you have any advice for up-and-coming writers?
LM:  Something told to me decades ago I repeat to myself almost every day: “There’s always a way.”  No matter how hopeless it may seem to express what you want to say, it can be done. 

AE: What is something we should know about your writing that we haven’t thought to ask?
LM: I grew up in Queens, in different neighborhoods in Flushing, Kew Gardens, Kew Gardens Hills, and Forest Hills. I found all those places unbearably boring and nothing to write home about, so to speak. Now Queens is a very different borough, a lot of fun, diverse, vibrant. But when I write for young adults, I return to that older version of Queens, to a fictional neighborhood I call Belle Heights (“Belle” from Bell Boulevard and “Heights” from Jackson Heights). Belle Heights, uninspiring and nondescript, provides the perfect contrast to what the characters have to go through.

AE:  How can our readers follow you and your writing?
LM:  Please check out my website: www.loismetzger.com also https://x.com/MetzgerLois and https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063451545925 (Facebook page).

Lois Metzger is the author of five novels for young adults, including A Trick of the Light, named an ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults and a Bank Street College Best Children’s Book of the Year. She has also written two nonfiction books about the Holocaust for middle-school readers and edited five books of original stories, and her short stories have appeared in anthologies all over the world. You can find her online at loismetzger.com and on Facebook and @MetzgerLois on X. In her first story for Asimov’s, she writes about how exciting life is when you make new friends, especially when they seem so glamorous and fun-loving and—well, friendly.

Q&A With Esther Friesner

Esther Friesner treats us to an amusing and insightful discussion on her relationship with Asimov’s, writer’s block, the role of humor in SF, and more! Don’t miss her latest story, “We Shall Be Monsters” in our Sept/Oct issue, on sale now!

Strange to admit, but while “We Shall Be Monsters” is based on Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein, the story did not come to me after a re-reading of her novel. News reports of true monsters’ work were the painful spark leading me to reconsider Elizabeth’s role and make her more than merely a monster’s victim.

Finding the title was easy: It comes from the Creature’s own lips when he speaks of the mate he desires and demands.

Thinking of Asimov’s for this story was easy as well. It’s the magazine to which I made my first professional SFnal sale, “Write When You Get Work,” in September 1982. Asimov’s also published my first Nebula Award-winning short story, “Death and the Librarian,” in 1995.

I am not a warrior in the physically fit, trained, bullets-and-blades-bearing sense, but the themes that seem to draw me back are things that will always anger me to the heart. I can’t let them pass unchallenged, even if my only way to fight is writing about injustice, victimization, exploiting the helpless. Maybe someone with more power than I will read my words and realize that here’s something they can combat. Maybe they will do so. Maybe they will gather others to help. Maybe this can become the small start of a great change.

 All I can do is keep on writing.

(Funny thing: Most of my reputation as an author comes from writing SFnal humor. But do you know what? Humor is a great way to get readers thinking about serious matters.)

Ah, writer’s block! Don’t hate me for not having it. I can, do, and enjoy working on more than one project at a time, so when one won’t cooperate, I turn to another.

My parents inspired me to start writing by always reading to me and also by telling me stories. Soon I was drawing pictures, making up my own stories about them, and getting Mom to write down what I dictated. Writing started out as play for me. Not a bad way to begin!

If I could choose one SFnal universe to live in, it would be Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. It’s got everything and then some, plus a lot of fascinating people to share it with. (Or hide from, depending on circumstances.)

I write more than one thing at a time and the same goes for what I’m reading right now. This includes:

The graphic novel version of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time

Will in the World, a Shakespeare biography

Lots of manga, like The Apothecary Diaries, Breakfast with My Two-Tailed Cat, A Bride’s Story, Akane Banashi, Blue Period and more.

A volume on eugenics from 1900 that turned up among books belonging to my husband’s grandparents! (“Does no one in your family ever get rid of any books, Esther?” Wellll . . .) I’m regarding it as an opportunity to time-travel safely and with snacks.

I recently finished a re-read of Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. More marvelous time-travel to 1920s Paris in the company of iconic writers and artists as the human beings they were.

Now as for a few bits of my advice to you up-and-coming writers, no matter how cheesy it sounds, I encourage you not to give up. Never, no matter the rejections or the less-than-supportive people you may know, or just plain being physically tired. Remember why you began to write and what motivated you to want to see your work set before an audience. (The two are not the same.)

There is a catch: Not giving up on your writing should include continuing to learn how to improve it. If a piece of your work receives criticism from any source, consider what you’re being told. Don’t accept or ignore it wholesale. There might be something there for you to use productively.

Remember courtesy. Always be polite to editors. If you could see their full work-load, your jaw would drop through the floor. Writers who receive a rejection and then take it upon themselves to contact the editor to argue about it do not do themselves any favors.

And respect the Submission Guidelines.

Thank you.

Multiple Nebula Award winner Esther Friesner has published over forty novels, more than two hundred short stories, and has edited eleven anthologies including the Chicks in Chainmail series for Baen Books. She is also the author of the Princesses of Myth YA series for Random House.

Q&A with Gregory Marlow

First time Asimov’s writer Gregory Marlow brings “Seeking” to our [July/August edition]! Read this interview for the behind-the-scenes details!

Asimov‘s Editor: How did this story germinate? Was there a spark of inspiration, or did it come to you slowly? 
Gregory Marlow: Almost a decade ago, my cousin lived with my wife and me while he was in opiate addiction recovery. Despite all three of our efforts, he relapsed, and we watched him go through several phases of detoxing and seeking behavior. He eventually did get clean after a long jail sentence, but I was struck by how addiction overpowered all other wants and needs. Nothing was more important than the next high. The experience lived with me for a long time, until I finally read the classic Arthur C. Clarke book Childhood’s End. When the two clicked together, the story practically wrote itself. 

AE: What is your history with Asimov’s? 
GM: I’ve been a fan my whole adult life, but this is my first story published in Asimov’s. I have a second story coming in the near future that is completely unrelated to this one. 

AE: What made you think of Asimov’s for this story? 
GM: At its heart, Asimov’s publishes stories about people. Plot, world, language, all of those things are important, but the stories in Asimov’s are not about spaceships; they’re about people in spaceships. Although sometimes people make me angry, they seem to be who I keep writing about. I also have to confess that seeing my name in the same table of contents as Robert Silverberg was a pretty significant life goal of mine. 

AE: Who or what are your greatest influences and inspirations? 
GM: Did I mention Robert Silverberg? I’m also a huge fan of Kurt Vonnegut, Octavia Butler, Ursula K. Le Guin, Martha Wells, Christopher Moore, Mary Robinette Kowal, Sara Pinsker, and Nathan Ballingrud. I’m not sure if obsessively reading their work has rubbed off on me, but I hope it’s at least helped me refine my taste.
In my daily life, my wife inspires me to try to be a good person and to question the things I think I already understand. I’m still amazed I get to live my life with her.
My dog, Sadie, reminds me not to take cheese for granted. 

AE: Are there any themes that you find yourself returning to throughout your writing? If yes, what and why? 
GM: I keep coming back to people confined on a spaceship for a long journey. It could be months, years, or centuries, but it’s a great incubator for conflict, plot, and character. Every time I think I’ve said what I need to say about it, another idea pops into my head that I have to write down. 

AE: What inspired you to start writing? 
GM: My mom. She is a voracious reader and why I first fell in love with reading. She’s also one of the first people who told me that someone out there might want to read something I wrote, too. Beverly Cleary’s book, Dear Mr. Henshaw, added fuel to the flame, and I tried to write my first novel when I was in the fifth grade. I do not have plans to publish that one. 

AE: What other projects are you currently working on? 
GM: I just finished a first draft of a novel that, if I’m being honest with myself, is mostly a fan fiction about my dog, Sadie, going on adventures in space. I’m an adult, and I can do what I want. I had a blast writing it, so maybe a few people will enjoy reading it when it’s finished. I hope to clean it up and start sending it out in the fall. 

AE: What SFnal prediction would you like to see come true? 
GM: Teleportation. Steven Gould’s Jumper books hooked me on the trope, but it’s even more appealing since I’m always late to everything. 

AE: What are you reading right now? 
GM: I just finished two books that I can’t stop recommending; I’m being pretty obnoxious about it, honestly. The River has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar packed so much heart and emotion into 100 pages. The writing is intimidatingly lovely. It felt like a story I should already know by heart, but was getting to read for the first time. The other is When We Were Real by Daryl Gregory. I want a whole novel for every character in that book. It managed to be both fun and whimsical while still sending me into an existential crisis. 

 AE: What other careers have you had, and how have they affected your writing?
GM: I’m an associate professor at East Tennessee State University, where I teach animation. I’ve also worked as a freelance animator for video games for over 20 years. So I guess writing is my third job, but they all feel like different slices of the same pie to me. I create things, and I help other people create things. I like the process of an idea becoming something someone else can experience. Plus, being a teacher has given me the presumptuous impression that people actually want to hear what I have to say. So when I get a free moment, I make up stories about robots and spaceships and send them out into the world. I am eternally humbled that this story landed on Sheila Williams’ desk and she liked it. She is an absolute legend! 

 AE: How can our readers follow you and your writing? (IE: Social media handles, website URL…) 
GM: I have several social media accounts, but honestly, I’m detoxing from them as much as possible (yeah, I like puns). Probably the best way to find me is on my website, GregMarlow.com. I live vicariously through my dog, Sadie’s Instagram @lickinfaces. Occasionally, I will post some publishing news on my personal Instagram @gbmarlow. But Sadie is way cuter than I am. 

Gregory Marlow (He/Him) is an associate professor, animator, and writer living in East Tennessee with his wife, Amanda, and dog, Sadie. He has animated on over a dozen video game titles, and some of his short fiction publications include PodCastle, Strange Horizons, Flash Fiction Online, and The LeVar Burton Reads podcast. Find him online at gregmarlow.com. Gregory’s first story for Asimov’s is a love letter to Arthur C. Clarke about the unyielding grip of addiction during a world-changing first contact event.

Q&A with Robert Reed

Long-time Asimov’s writer Robert Reed answers questions in this interview about his new work “Oliana’s Skull” in our [July/August issue].

Asimov’s Editor: What is the story behind this piece? 
Robert Reed: An earlier story of mine—“The Neighbor”—had a chapter set in this seaside city. I wanted to go back and explore the hills and neighborhood, and the giants living in the adjacent sea.

AE: Is this story part of a larger universe, or is it stand-alone? 
RR: This is a Great Ship story. So yes, the universe is big, broad, and hopefully deeper than most.

AE: What made you think of Asimov’s for this story? 
RR: I thought you’d buy it. That’s the first reason why I send anything anywhere.

AE: What is your history with Asimov’s? 
RR: Now and again, my work has been published in your magazine. Someone’s keeping a running tally. Not me. But last I heard, nobody was close to my title total.

AE: What is your process?
RR: I start each project with a clear idea of where I’m going. And when my characters tell me that I’m wrong, I listen to them. Oliana, for example. She delivered a nice surprise in the end.

AE: What inspired you to start writing? 
RR: It was the 1970s, and I was a child who thought writing would bring easy money.

AE: What other projects are you currently working on? 
RR: More Great Ship stories, plus once a year, I write 12-13 little stories wrapped inside my “Retrograde” universe.

The author tells us, “Most of my recent work is focused on my dear old friend, the Great Ship. Some GS stories appear in established magazines. Asimov’s, for example. Others get sent straight up to Kindle. A story called “The Neighbor” was one of those self-published efforts. My favorite chapter takes my protagonist to a habitat where mortal humans live on one side of a deep, narrow sea, while the other shoreline is jammed with immortals from a multitude of species. An intriguing setting, and later, wanting to learn more about the realm, I decided to write a second novelette. “Oliana’s Skull” was always set on the mortal shoreline. At the beginning, I was convinced that the second city and those giant aquatic aliens would be allowed their own chapters. But alas, there wasn’t room. Millions of watery brains and tens of thousands of years of history . . . that’s more than enough terrain as it is.”

Imagine a City 

In this blog post, Karol Lagodzki explores dystopia and the themes behind his first work with Asimov’s in our [July/August issue], “Brother Adalbert’s Last Shift”.

By Karol Lagodzki 

Imagine a city. It is empty of movement. There are no cars in the streets, no pedestrians scurrying to avoid them. Storefronts pronounce their contents, but you know—though not how you know it—that they are a lie. Silence makes your head ring. 

Your eye falls on one specific building, and you have no idea why this particular one—its façade is brown and windows square just like any other structure’s—has called out to you. It is sterile and dead. 

Then your ear registers the trilling of birdsong.  

Dissonance. A conflict between the images and sounds on the page. A subversion of the reader’s expectations. But that’s only one kind of incongruity.  

Writers and readers of dystopia are drawn to the genre in part because more than any other it presents an opportunity to examine dissonances, especially cognitive dissonance, on a vast scale. It is also no accident that dystopian societies in literature and film tend not to be democratic. A distinct lack of freedom, challenges to self-determination, and unequal power dynamics are the genre’s core features.  

Many works of dystopian fiction engage directly with systemic oppression. One only needs to consider such masterpieces as Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale or George Orwell’s 1984. Their worlds are quite clearly dystopian: each is a “bad place.”  

Atwood’s world incorporates active resistance. Orwell’s less so, or at least not as overtly. But one can imagine that Big Brother had at some point faced threats to its rule which, by the titular year, have been vanquished. In 1984, reactions to oppression and inequality consist mainly of accommodation to which cognitive dissonance, or “doublethink,” is central. As someone who came of age in Poland in the 1980s, I recognize Orwell’s world as my own, both then and again now, but also know that that there are reasons to remain hopeful. My story in the July/August 2026 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction, “Brother Adalbert’s Last Shift,” is intended to be closer to 1984 than to The Handmaid’s Tale in its portrayal of reactions to autocracy. 

Adalbert’s contemporaries take the systems of control that dictate their lives, down to their very duration, for granted. Few if any dwellers of New Chicago will look forward to dying at their assigned premature time, but they do not rebel. They have accepted the premise that their deaths serve the common good, that they support the perceived necessity of population control in the context of finite and sharply limited resources.  

“Brother Adalbert’s Last Shift” is several things at once—a love story, a piece of environmentalist fiction, dystopian science fiction—but I hope that the readers pause to ask themselves some of the questions extant behind the curtain. 

How did we get here? 

Who is in charge? 

Is everyone’s lifespan subject to rationing, or are some people exempt? 

Is this society as egalitarian as it seems? 

Why do the living not mourn the dead more openly? 

What happens next? 

Imagine the answers to these questions as you imagined the city at the beginning of this post. What do you see? Your answers may differ from those others may give, though there is likely to be some commonality between all of us. We are all here, reading science fiction, after all. 

Here’s what my imagination tells me, though I can’t say that I had to strain it: the path that leads us to Adalbert’s world is indistinguishable from our observable reality. No imagination necessary, not really. That’s not to say that complete environmental devastation and totalitarianism are inevitable, but objects in motion stay in motion absent intervention (thanks, Mr. Newton), and our world is aimed at Adalbert’s unless we do something about it. 

It is still possible to avoid Gilead or Oceania. This is where our imaginations get to do the work.  

Imagine that being hopeful is rational and that nihilism doesn’t make any of us more interesting or sexier at parties. Imagine that the little thing you do today, such as getting out of bed or writing this blog post, can help stop some glaciers from melting. Imagine that your vote matters, because it most definitely does.  

And most of all imagine that you and your life have intrinsic incalculable value regardless of whether you work sixty hours a week to add to the GDP, choose to care for your family, or spend all day reading sci-fi and pondering. Because you and it most definitely do, and don’t let anyone tell you any different. 

Karol Lagodzki <BlueSky: @klagodzki.bsky.social, Instagram and Threads: @karol_lagodzki, Website: klagodzki.com>, a native of Poland, is an exophonic, English-language author of fiction. His stories have appeared in Invisible City, Storm Cellar, NUNUM, Streetlight Magazine, and elsewhere, and he has won Panel Magazine’s Ruritania Prize for Short Fiction. His first full-length book, Controlled Conversations, a story of perseverance under an authoritarian regime, was a finalist for the 2025 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel. Karol lives halfway down a Southern Indiana ravine with his wonderful family, a scurry of squirrels, a passel of possums, a gaze of raccoons, a descent of woodpeckers, and a large dog. His Asimov’s debut, “Brother Adalbert’s Last Shift,” strives to find hope in a seemingly hopeless world.

Changing Times

By Alan Smale 

Learn all about Alan Smale’s approach to historical fiction in this thoughtful essay, and find out why Alan believes that historical fiction falls perfectly under the umbrella of speculative fiction. In our July/August issue, Alan whisks readers back to Ancient Rome in “Roma Delenda Est,” his latest story!

Sometimes I think I love history way too much to be a science fiction writer.  

Then I head off to a science fiction convention—which could be anything from a Comic Con-sized extravaganza, to a Worldcon or World Fantasy Convention, to one of my favorite regional cons like Balticon, Capclave, Philcon, or Ravencon—and see once again just how popular the history-related panels and presentations are. Even when the topics are purely historical, they still seem to find a welcome home in the SF community. (Although, if those panel topics happen to include some kind of speculative element, whether it’s alternate history, historical fantasy, time travel, or whatever else, so much the better.) Many of my SF-writer friends have written at least some SF or fantasy set in the past. In fact, I can think of only a couple who have never done so. 

Though, turning this around, even straight-up historical fiction is speculative to some degree, isn’t it? Hist.fic authors tend to reimagine or recast known historical events in a different light, filling in the gaps in our knowledge, or providing a so-called “secret history” of what was really going on behind the scenes. It’s almost impossible to write hist-fic without projecting or inventing the thoughts and motivations of history’s heroes, villains, and supporting cast. There’ll be some interpolations or extrapolations, invented elements about historical personalities, fictional characters moving in that historical landscape, or other meditations on the hidden levers and stressors on history because, let’s face it, we all want to know What Was Really Going On back then. One of the joys of watching “The Crown” on TV was the feeling you were getting a glimpse into the real day-to-day lives of the royals; however accurate or otherwise the portrayals might have been, they certainly seemed all too believable. And, staying with TV, the “Rome” series helped people understand the non-Judeo-Christian mindset of the people who lived in that era, while providing compelling and believable characterizations of Julius Caesar, Mark Anthony, and many others. Along, of course, with those fictional rogues Titus Pullo and Lucius Vorenus, everyman Roman soldiers whose life trajectories just happened to intertwine with those of the rich and powerful. 

Alternate history takes this one step—or, sometimes, ten steps—further and posits a different history altogether; the creation of a whole new timeline that begins somewhere along our own recorded history. Rigorous, hardcore alternate history will alter one single historical fact, and then work through the consequences of that change in the coming weeks, decades, or millennia. Such a divergence point “should be plausible, definite, small in itself, and massive in consequence” (Tom Shippey, medievalist and critic). 

But, why do that? Why alter history? Isn’t the history we have just fine? 

My answer: because alternate history holds up a mirror to our real, known history. When you’re writing or reading alternate history, you’re constantly getting echoes and reverberations from the real history. Our own historical timeline is always present in the back of your mind, however hazily, and gives the story added depth and resonance. I love that. 

Or, as John Kessel puts it (far better than I just did): “‘To me the power of alternate history is its essential irony—the distance between what we know really happened and what we assume to have happened in our invented alternate world.” Also John: “I want a counterfactual to illuminate some element of real history. I want it to make a comment on history, or the real people it is about.” 

Yup. Absolutely. What he said. 

I find a lot of the better-written alternate histories very credible. Honestly, there are a billion places (probably more) where a rather small change in our real, recorded history could have rippled and echoed down through the centuries with major consequences for our current national boundaries, power structures, political systems, technological systems . . . all the systems.  

I don’t think you can study history for long without realizing just how contingent it is. How breathtakingly random some events seem, or how strongly they depend on the decision of one person, at one particular time. How often then-current affairs shot off in a completely different direction than the people alive at the time thought they were going to. In your own lives, how often have chance meetings or minor decisions had mighty consequences for you? Most people’s lives are positively riddled with such events.  

Sure, some key historical movements are more-or-less inevitable, or at least hard to butterfly away. Many social, economic, and technical revolutions have such a huge amount of momentum behind them that it’s tough to conceive of a single reasonable change that would head them off at the pass. Given the starting conditions, it’s hard to envision a nineteenth-century United States / North America that didn’t throw capital into railroads, leading to the subsequent opening up of the west. Not much can derail that development (sorry). But, whether a given military battle was won or lost—a surprising number of which have a sensitive dependence on the weather that day, or on relatively minor actions taken by one or another army commander, captain, or corporal; or exactly where national boundaries fell, can certainly feel somewhat arbitrary. Even among historically undistinguished or “invisible” characters, who is born and who dies has a significant knock-on effect to all their potential descendants and to everyone who knows those descendants. The consequences of those changes must surely magnify year by year to become immense. 

When you’re writing or reading alternate history, you’re constantly getting echoes and reverberations from the real history. Our own historical timeline is always present in the back of your mind, however hazily, and gives the story added depth and resonance. I love that.

I don’t love the Great Man Theory, despite having depicted several rather prominent historical characters in my own alternate history stories (Benjamin Franklin, Julius Caesar, Katherine Wright, Genghis Khan, Charles Darwin, Guy Fawkes…). But it surely must be clear that the gain or loss of one individual, whether they’re a Hitler or a midwife, a Catherine the Great or the chauffeurs who happened to be driving Archduke Franz Ferdidnand’s, or Princess Diana’s, cars on their respective fateful days, might have had impressive effects on the march of history.  

Which, after what seems like eons, brings us to “Roma Delenda Est,” my alt.hist tale in the July/August issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. 

Aficionados of classical history will straightaway recognize the similarity of this title to “Carthago Delenda Est!” (“Carthage must be destroyed!”), that infamous phrase that Cato the Elder would bellow out in Senate meetings of the Roman Republic in the second century BC. He was attempting—in a very repetitive and boring way—to convince his senatorial colleagues to commit to what we now know as the third Punic War, and finally crush the city-state of Carthage in the western Mediterranean, which (at least in Cato’s mind) was a continuing threat to Rome. (Honestly, I think Rome may have launched the Third Punic War just to shut him up.) Some readers will realize immediately that this is a story where matters between Rome and Carthage might go differently . . . which would undoubtedly have led to a twenty-first century world very different from the one we currently live in. 

Why did this idea appeal to me? Well, a while back I wrote a half-million-word trilogy called Clash of Eagles (Penguin Random House/Del Rey 2015-2017) where the Roman Empire survives in its classical form until the thirteenth century and is moving into North America at just the time when the indigenous Haudenosaunee Confederation and Mississippian Cultures were both at their height. Even though I still think about the Roman Empire every day (don’t we all?), I figured it was time to reverse that karma, and write another set of books where the Roman Empire never comes into its power after all. A series that investigates the fourth-century AD Mediterranean world that might have developed if the Romans had been crushed in the Second Punic War, if Hannibal really had come to the gates of Rome around 210 BC. The books have Hypatia of Alexandria as their protagonist in an Egypt still under the control of the Ptolemaic Dynasty, with a militaristic and aggressive Carthage to the west and a strong Persia to the east, “barbarians” (not really, but a conglomerate of warring Germanic and Gothic cultures) to the North, and no Roman Empire anywhere to be seen. 

Those books exist. As a collection they’re called A Million Burning Scrolls, and (full disclosure) they haven’t sold as yet. But, in the process of writing those, I got interested in how this world might have come about. What really happened six hundred years before the events of Scrolls? Who was the historical Hannibal, and how could he and his army have prevailed against the power of Rome? Many historical pundits believe that, for all Hannibal’s undoubted genius as a general and his epic crossing of the Alps (with elephants, for Ba’al’s sake), his military venture was always doomed to fail.  

I happen to think otherwise. You’ll have noticed by now that I have distinctly mixed feelings about “historical inevitability.” 

There’s a category of alt.hist stories that occur at the nexus point, meaning they follow the course of events through the actual point of divergence where everything changes. “Roma Delenda Est” is one such. And in writing it, I got all kinds of echoes and counterpoints and thought-provoking concepts mirroring in from our real history, which I hope deepen the impact for the reader. . . . 

. . . Which is all very heavy and high concept and woo, but to tell the truth I was also looking to write something a little more lighthearted and comedic than some of my more recent stories. 

Hence “Roma Delenda Est,” with its cranky and acerbic narrator, and somewhat quirky view of his world and his situation. I had a blast writing it, and in the process realized that it would be fun to incorporate more humor in my next tales, on top of what I fully hope are plausible political situations, realistic backgrounds, and interesting characters. So, I probably will. 

Anyway, the TL;DR is that I love playing with historical situations and characters, I love twisting the timeline around in fun and interesting ways, and even though I absolutely consider myself a science fiction writer and reader, I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving speculative history, in all its weird and wonderful forms. 

Alternate history enthusiast and two-time Sidewise Award-winner Alan Smale <www.alansmale.com, www.facebook.com/alan.smale, bsky.app/profile/alansmale.bsky.social, twitter.com/AlanSmale, www.linkedin.com/in/alansmale> is the author of the Clash of Eagles trilogy, featuring a Roman invasion of Mississippian America, and the Cold War alternate space race series Apollo Rising. His previous tales for Asimov’s have explored the wilds of Mongolia and deepest, darkest England, the windy dunes of Kitty Hawk, and the bloody Colosseum in Caracalla’s Rome. In his latest tale he kidnaps us into the great Carthaginian general Hannibal’s war camp in Italy in 212 BC.

Q&A with Stephanie Feldman

Stephanie Feldman returns to Asimov’s with “Half Inside the Spirit Box”, in our [May/June issue, on sale now!] Read this Q&A to learn more about her inspiration for the story and her creative process.

Asimov’s editor: How did this story germinate? Was there a spark of inspiration, or did it come to you slowly?
Stephanie Feldman: I’ve been curious about the relationship between early-twentieth century mediums and their investigators for many years now. Those seances seem so theatrical and goofy, but also atmospheric and fraught with grief and longing. I intended to write about the gendered, and sexualized, power dynamic between the mostly female mediums and mostly male debunkers. When I sat down to write, though, it turned into something different, about a Houdini-esque figure and his psychological battle and emotional kinship with his subject, Madame Livermore. My Winston Montecarlo departs from Houdini in a significant way—Houdini changed his name, but never hid his past.

AE: Do you particularly relate to any of the characters in this story?
SF: I think I was drawn to these characters for all the ways they’re different from me. Montecarlo and Livermore are both gifted performers, savvy people-readers, and wily operators. I’m okay with a microphone, but I’m not really trying to whip an audience into a frenzy or run a scheme. I enjoyed imagining it, though.

AE: How did the title for this piece come to you?
SF: Most of my published work is titled with the main subject—like my novels The Angel of Losses and Saturnalia, and stories “The Getaway” and “The Sorcerer’s Test.” I tell myself it’s a motif in my body of work, but really it’s because I struggle with crafting titles. I’m trying to get more exciting. For a while, this was called “The Handcuff King Jumps”—had to get a verb in there—but then I settled on the image of the spirit box, one of Madame Livermore’s seance tools. The title isn’t just about box, but the trapped, in-between space the characters find themselves in, both literally and figuratively. There’s an implied action: they’re either going all the way in, or breaking free.

AE: What made you think of Asimov’s for this story?
SF: I love Asimov’s historical speculative stories. I don’t usually set stories in the past, but when I was done with this, I immediately thought of Asimov’s.

AE: What is your history with Asimov’s?
SF: My first short story sale was to Asimov’s—“The Witch of Osborne Park” (there’s that title formula again), published in 2018. At the time, I felt like a novelist by nature, but I kept working on short fiction, and now that story will appear in my collection The Night Parade and Other Stories, coming in October. I love that Asimov’s is a genre flagship publication that embraces strange stories that straddle style and genre.

I’m a big fan of easy goals: 100 words, a couple sentences, 15 minutes. Building and maintaining momentum, a little bit at a time, is a great way to break through.

AE: How much or little do current events impact your writing?
SF: I want to grapple with current events—and I know I am, we all are, however consciously or directly or not—but it’s a puzzle. How do we depict a world shifting at such great speed? (Another reason why I love speculative worlds, which allow us to explore realism without accuracy.) Right now, current events are more directly affecting my organizing efforts. I cofounded Buried Creek Collective, a group dedicated to creative climate resilience, with nonfiction writer Sara Davis, and we’re launching our inaugural Climate Education for Writers Program in fall 2026. It’s a course for Philly-area writers of all genres, at all stages of the career, who want to address our changing world in their work, and includes instruction on environment and infrastructure, field trips to sites of local crisis and renewal, and meetings with experts. We believe that informed storytelling is essential for creating a better future as we adapt to a hotter, drier world.

AE: How do you deal with writers’ block?
SF: This year, I’m struggling a lot with focus. Breaking news and social media have finally destroyed my concentration. I’m excited about my latest project, I have ideas and plans, but I just can’t put down words. As my semester comes to an end, I’m going to try to get back to writing every day.  When I stick to that routine, I keep my head in the world of the story and block the doubting editor in my mind. I’m a big fan of easy goals: 100 words, a couple sentences, 15 minutes. Building and maintaining momentum, a little bit at a time, is a great way to break through.

AE: What are you reading right now?
SF: I’m currently reading James Morrow’s The Last Witchfinder. I love his imagination and voice. I just finished Lauren Groff’s Matrix, about a medieval abbess seeking power and freedom for her community of women, and for herself, and it was wonderful. This year, I also loved Theodore McCombs’ beautiful collection Uranians and Erin L. McCoy’s Underlake, about a flooded town that’s survived inside a reservoir.

AE: Do you have any advice for up-and-coming writers?
SF: I’ll join the chorus encouraging you to write a lot, read a lot, finish your drafts, and make friends with other writers. Recently, when I talk to students, I find myself reminding them that the writing life is long. It takes many words, drafts, and stories before you find some control over your craft, and even then, every new project poses its own problems to solve and struggles to endure. Settle in for the long game, don’t be too hard on yourself, and keep working. 

AE: Bonus Question: How can our readers follow you and your writing? (IE: Social media handles, website URL…)
SF: www.stephaniefeldman.com
Blue Sky: @sbfeldman
Instagram: @Stephanie.feldman

Stephanie Feldman is the author of the novels The Angel of Losses and Saturnalia, and the forthcoming collection The Night Parade and Other Stories. Her work has been named a Barnes & Noble Great New Writers Selection, a Crawford Fantasy Award winner, a Mythopoeic Award finalist, and a Locus Award finalist. She lives outside Philadelphia with her family.

Phytoremediation, Slow Healing, and the occasional Chopper Crash

A.M. Dellamonica returns to Asimov’s with “Failed Acts of Predation” in our [May/June issue, on sale now!] Here, they discuss phtyoremediation and how they bring together the elements of the story.

by A.M. Dellamonica

Something that’s flat-out incredible about my life is that I spend time in the orbit of working chemists, many of them genuine science rock stars. This is absolutely fantastic for me as an SF writer… they do the hard work of digging into the nature of reality, and in the process they drop science concepts I might never otherwise be exposed to, shiny little germs of possible story.

One such concept, phytoremediation, came my way about a year ago. 

Phytoremediation is a strategy for extracting pollutants from contaminated ecosystems by loading said systems with plants that, instead of dying, take up the toxins.

Cattails will do this, for example, which is a simple and yet completely miraculous fact. Here we have a swamp weed that can, over time—for phytoremediation, you must understand, is slow, the very opposite of a quick fix—can fill its roots and shoots with manganese, lead, and iron ore tailings, claiming them from soil that humans have casually worked to ruin. 

The second I learned about phytoremediation, I wanted to build a story around it, complete with cattails. As I read on, I learned about another hyperaccumulator, one that doesn’t grow up near the Arctic Circle, where “Failed Acts of Predation” is set: pycnandra.

Oh, these trees!

First of all they hyperaccumulate nickel, another heavy metal that can have significant toxic effects on the land, water, and living things around it.

Pycnandra are tropical; they grow naturally in New Caledonia. They can tolerate incredibly high nickel levels in soil. Their sap is a vivid silvery-green color… when cut, they bleed liquid metal. Go search some pictures… you’ll be impressed!

Back? They’re gorgeous, right?

Rhapsodizing about trees aside, you may notice that so far I haven’t said a single thing that isn’t a present-day biological fact. It’s the stuff of a straight up ecology article. Phytoremediation is the science part… and now I want to talk about how I go about putting in the fiction.

My fiction mashes things together: in this case, phytoremediation, talk pads for pets, autistic burnout, near-future supply-chain failures, and the terrifying economic transition we are currently making as a society, this sea change so much on everyone’s minds, as robots and AI become increasingly capable of doing certain kinds of work for us.

The science a writer chooses to highlight in worldbuilding also affects the pace of the story, the nature of its unfolding.

When I write, I draw disparate threads into a fabric into which I weave people (and wild cats and bears, in this case) knotting together a complicated series of love stories.

It’s a glide from things that do exist to things that may be possible: to set this story in the north, I had to imagine genetically engineered pycnandra trees. Silver sap on snow: an imaginary species created for the landscape of my childhood, an environment very different from New Caledonia. It’s scientific speculation with a big dash of the improbable. At the same time, it’s an aesthetic choice. I could just do the story with cattails… and yet I can’t.

The science a writer chooses to highlight in worldbuilding also affects the pace of the story, the nature of its unfolding. This may seem obvious, but slow-bake ecological remediation doesn’t lend itself to an action-adventure narrative. 

Okay, I know, there’s a bear attack. And… a slight helicopter crash. Maybe that’s how the world feels to me these days. But I still would argue this story is slow-paced. Am I wrong? We don’t always see our own work clearly. I think “Failed Acts of Predation” grows as slowly as the trees.

For pycnandra is not a tree that grows swiftly, and the downstream effect of that on “Failed Acts of Predation,”—its destiny, if you will—is to be a story about slow healing. In these much-troubled days, more than five years after the upheaval and losses of the Covid pandemic, I needed to write about a place where nickel hyperaccumulators are left to tend a wounded landscape for decades before the toxins can be extracted. That in turn populating that forest with characters who may be willing to spend a lifetime overwatching the recovery. Sedge, with his collection of robots and his adopted bobcat and his strengths and vulnerabilities, arises in that environment naturally. 

As I write this, I see that I have also perhaps imbued the story with a little bit of a fairy-tale feel, with its talking animals and accursed forest. Even though this is a science fiction story, there’s a sense in which it is also about a man in a lonely and inaccessible place. Perhaps not a prince in a tower but someone who, like so many of us, is hoping for some magic, to weather the transformation of the world and somehow become stronger while they wait for someone to arrive and touch them—to make a connection.

I hope you can find something like that within this story, and take it with you as you wander out in your own landscapes, be they haunted or, hopefully, at least occasionally enchanted.

A.M. Dellamonica’s first novel, Indigo Springs, won the Sunburst Award, and their fourth, A Daughter of No Nation, won the 2016 Prix Aurora for Best Novel. They have published stories in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, Reactor, and elsewhere, along with poetry, pop culture essays, and even the 2021 play Dressed as People,which they co-wrote with Kelly Robson and Amal El-Mohtar. Their newest novels, Gamechanger and Dealbreaker, were released under the name L.X. Beckett and are solar punk adventures that imagine humanity surviving climate change and creating a post-carbon economy. The author’s newest story for Asimov’s drops us into the Yukon wilds with a burned-out chemist stuck at a phytoremediation site. His only company? An AI, a comatose pilot, and a lynx cub nursing an injury. All four of them are just trying to survive the things trying to take them down.

A Space Opera Satire

In this post, Donald McCarthy talks about the process of writing “Unspeakable Knowns”, in our [May/June issue, on sale now!], and how he determined the tone to take.

By Donald McCarthy

“Unspeakable Knowns” has a few origins; this is a tale where I pieced together various strands, some of which I originally envisioned as separate stories. The most important strand relates to the title. During the Iraq War, Donald Rumsfeld had a habit of discussing “known knowns” and “known unknowns,” along with the dreaded “unknown unknowns.”

Since all wars involve censorship, I thought there should be another phrase added: “unspeakable knowns.” This phrase would refer to the events that occur in war that we know happen but do not speak about. It could be about a president with a lack of a plan. It could be about a genocide. It could be a statement as simple as “I think our side is the wrong side.”

These are ideas and observations that often go unspoken out of fear during times of conflict. The phrase “unspeakable knowns,” and the story in general, can be “about” almost any war, although it is most influenced by the Iraq War, which I grew up during, Vietnam, and Gaza. The war in Iran had not yet begun when I wrote this tale, although it sure fits in well. Unspeakable knowns exist throughout history, sadly; so, too, do con men like the narrator of this story, someone for whom lying in favor of war is as natural as breathing.

The next strand of the story came from its tone: a satire.

To make the point I wanted to make, I did not think a lecturing tone would work. A character telling you “it’s bad to lie to your people about war” while other characters nod along seems neither engaging nor illuminating. I needed tension and an edge; I needed to see the lies in action, to challenge them by diving into them. If I did that, perhaps I could better expose how truths are twisted and wars born.

Now, you could argue, probably accurately, that no single story can change the way humanity views war. But you know what? Hope springs eternal, so here I am anyway. I was therefore left with a decision on how to make the point I desired; two scenarios hit me as optimal. One would be to approach it as horror, a genre I’ve written a lot in. The other would be to approach it as satire, which is a genre I had long wanted to try out but so far hadn’t. Perhaps, then, this could be the opportunity.

How to find the right satirical angle would be the next conundrum. I could go bonkers, like The Onion does. But I settled on a slightly grimmer form of satire, one influenced by a 1970 Italian anti-fascist film called Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion. I first watched the movie during the pandemic and then one year used it in my International Short Stories class, wherein I always show a foreign film once during the semester (if you’re wondering, the other film I use some years is the excellent and still timely State of Siege).

Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion concerns a fascist police captain who murders his lover. He leaves plenty of clues that it was him, but because the state cannot punish a police captain, increasingly ridiculous excuses have to be made for clear signs of guilt. It is a funny and eerie film. If you haven’t seen the movie, give it a watch. I took it as inspiration while getting into the headspace of this story’s morally vacant narrator.

I needed tension and an edge; I needed to see the lies in action, to challenge them by diving into them.

Of course, the genre of the story is not just satire. It’s space opera, too. How did that strand come about? After all, I could have written a satire about Henry Kissinger or Donald Rumsfeld. Or I could have written one about the United States going to war with a fictional or unnamed country, such as occurred in the satirical film In the Loop.

Opting for science fiction, however, allowed me room to develop my own personal geopolitical crisis and allowed me to explore not just the United States’ war crimes but many other countries’, as well. The lies my narrator tells wouldn’t sound all that different from Joseph Goebbels, y’know?

Plus, my passion plays a part. I love political space opera, and I’m always itching to write some. The science fiction and fantasy I enjoy usually deals with power and politics. Whether it was watching Babylon 5 in middle school (I was a weird kid) or reading A Song of Ice and Fire and Foundation in high school or having The Word for World is Forest assigned in grad school (what a great class that one was!), political speculative fiction has always called to me.

So, with those various strands, I put together this story. I did not write the entire piece in order. I sometimes just wrote the back-and-forth dialogue between the narrator and the reporters, later cutting any that I didn’t find effective enough. There were even a few lines I found very funny that I had to cut simply because they didn’t push the narrative forwards or veered towards more general political satire as opposed to the targeted look at war propaganda I was going for; I guess that’s where the phrase “killing your darlings” comes from. 

I wrote the horrific monologue about bombing hospitals before I knew who the narrator would deliver it to (later, I had to tweak it once I realized who’d be on the receiving end).

Then, I stitched the scenes together. I had a buddy read the result, and he told me which parts didn’t work and which areas made him start to lose interest. In terms of critiquing, there’s nothing better than having a writing friend you trust who tells you when they’re confused and, most importantly, bored. Someone has to tell you when you’re bloviating too much!

It turned out the beginning especially went on for too long. There were too many unnecessary political details in an area already bursting with exposition. So lots of cutting needed to be done.

Lastly, I read the piece a couple times more, and then I let it escape. I’m happy to report it found a home at Asimov’s. There’s no place cooler to have your space opera tale.

I hope you enjoy the story. Unfortunately, I suspect you’ll see the narrator again. No, not in another story of mine, not necessarily. You’ll see him on the television or on your phone. He’ll tell you all wars are terrible except for this current one. This one is necessary. There won’t be mistakes like in the past. This war will be an honor to fight, and your support, your unquestioning support for it, is necessary.

This time, the killing will be justified. Just take his word for it. And, no, he doesn’t have time to take questions.

End note: Some nonfiction books I read that inspired me in terms of the political content of this story were Kill Anything That Moves by Nick Turse, To Start a War by Robert Draper, and The Hell of Good Intentions by Stephen J. Walt.

Donald McCarthy is an author from Long Island, New York. He’s published short fiction with Asimov’s, Mythaxis Magazine, James Gunn’s Ad Astra, Pseudopod, The CreepyPodcast, The Grey Rooms, and more. His non-fiction has appeared at Salon, Undark Magazine, The Huffington Post, Nightmare Magazine, and more. A full list of his publications can be found at http://www.donaldmccarthy.com. Donald’s latest work for Asimov’s explores the doublespeak and obfuscations people will go to in order to justify war. Our story’s protagonist will say anything, no matter how contradictory, to sell a war.

Q&A With Dale Bailey

Learn all about the historical research and inspiration that Dale Bailey used to write “Sophie Simpson’s Whizz-Bang Day at World War I,” his latest story for Asimov’s, now in our May/June issue, on sale now!

Asimov’s Editor: What is the story behind this piece?
Dale Bailey: “Sophie Simpson’s Whizz-Bang Day at World War I” developed as I was researching another story with World War I connections. During that process, I stumbled across a World War I museum for middle-grade students that included a tour of a model trench. I couldn’t help noticing that the model trench in question looked wholly sanitized compared to the reality of the trenches and trench warfare in World War I. The juxtaposition of the two struck me, and I started wondering what a school outing to the real war might look like.

AE: How did this story germinate? Did it come to you slowly?
DB: The story came fairly swiftly after that initial idea, though it developed in ways I hadn’t expected: not as a purely (or even remotely!) science fiction story, but as the surreal account of a single young girl’s experience in the trenches—an experience that grows out of and in response to the painful realities of her everyday life. I drew also on the work of the trench poets and the marching songs of WWI, from which the chapter headings and Sophie’s marching song are directly drawn.

AE: How did the title for this piece come to you?
DB: Allied soldiers called a certain kind of high-velocity German shells whizz-bangs because of the sound they made. The term stuck with me; paired with Sophie’s alliterative name it seemed to capture an element of the story’s dark absurdism. Probably the title came first. I find they often do.

AE: What is your process? Do you ever suffer from writers’ block?
DB: Writers’ block is my natural state of being. The process, such as it is, is intended to defeat it. As I said, the title often—indeed usually—comes first, and then it’s a matter of figuring out what it means, which I do by jotting down scraps of dialogue and fragments of scenes and whatever evocative phrases come to me. Usually I’ll find the story through that process. Something—a line or a bit of a scene or a character—will capture my imagination, and I’ll find that I’ve started writing the story.
I stumble along like this until I have the shape of it. But it’s a slow and halting process, primarily involving frustration. I usually start by hand in a notebook. It has to be a casebound notebook, preferably a specific notebook manufactured by Éccolo—which they recently stopped making. This is a problem. When I realized it was happening, I bought a case of them. I’ll probably stop writing when I run through them… I ultimately move to the laptop, but if I get stuck, it’s back to the notebook. I’m superstitious about pens, too. And other things…

AE: If you could choose one SFnal universe to live in, what universe would it be, and why?
DB: I think we already live in a SFnal universe, and I’m not entirely comfortable in it. I was hoping for flying cars. I got the surveillance state instead.

AE: What are you reading right now?
DB: I’ve just finished What We Can Know by Ian McEwan and A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan. I’m about halfway through The Candy House, also by Egan. I also have Red Mars on my bedside table and Night Side of the River, a collection of Jeanette Winterson’s ghost stories, and King Tyrant, Mark Witton’s study of the T. Rex. I pick up them up as the spirit moves me.

AE: What is your history with Asimov’s?
DB: I started reading Asimov’s all the way back in the days when it was called Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine—in its infancy, when I wasn’t far removed from infancy myself. I started submitting stories when I was, what, a teenager? It took me a while to break through: my first Asimov’s sale was in 2012.

AE: What other projects are you currently working on?
DB: I have a novel coming out from PS Publishing—Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, about an alternate Manhattan Project wherein Oppenheimer meets . . . well you do the math. . . . Also another story in inventory in Asimov’s and one coming out later this year in Reactor. As for what I’m working on—I subscribe to the steam-kettle theory of art. Talking too much about it lets off the pressure . . .

AE: How can our readers follow you and your writing?
DB: My website is dalebailey.com. I have a Facebook page, but I don’t look at it but once or twice a year. Messenger is good, though. I don’t really do social media, I’m afraid.

Dale Bailey is the author of five novels and three collections of short fiction, including This Island Earth: 8 Features from the Drive-In (2023), In the Night Wood (2018), and the forthcoming Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. His short story “Death and Suffrage” was adapted for Showtime’s Masters of Horror television series. He has won the Shirley Jackson Award and the International Horror Guild Award, and has been a finalist for the World Fantasy, the Nebula, and the Bram Stoker awards. He teaches creative writing in Lenoir-Rhyne University’s MFA in Creative Writing program.