Current Issue Highlights
January/February 2026
This issue’s opening salvo of 2026 stories continues right on into a furious fusillade of fiction next issue, including:
“Sin Eaters,” by Mark W. Tiedemann: how do you investigate—let alone prosecute—a crime when the societal standards violated are so alien that we can hardly recognize them?; A slick interstellar heist ( . . . or is it?) in “The Starworthy Slip,” by AC Koch; a particle-scaled solar fable in “Iron Star Swing” by Kate Orman; a sweet burgeoning romance that mingles with a perspective on a deep geological timescale to reveal something else entirely, in Peter Medeiros’ “A Future Full of Glaciers”; a salvage crew that thinks they’ve found signs of intelligent life only to realize that the life may have anticipated them more keenly then they’d like, in Geoffrey Hart’s “Monkey Trap”; a look at the realities of building permanent settlements on the Moon, in “Homes Away From Home,” our Fact Article for the issue, by Michael W. Carroll; and more, from Doug Franklin, Howard V. Hendrix, Theodora Suttcliffe, Sean Monaghan, Matt McHugh, and others, plus, of course, all our regular columns, including an additional Guest Alternate View from Richard A. Lovett on AI and conspiracy theories (sadly, ever more relevant by the day); as well as our annual Index and Analytical Laboratory ballot.
NOVELETTE
Sin Eaters
by Mark W. Tiedemann
Pollard listened for the signal that the tactical units were in place. The van around him felt close, as if every molecule had paused in sympathetic imitation of all the held breaths. He stared at the array of screens displaying the exits from the three-story mass of dingy brick. Color was muted in the early morning overcast.
Movement snagged his attention on the top left-hand screen. A pale cat, emerging from behind a discarded door, searched its surroundings, obviously sensing the threat gathering around its home. It darted off, and Pollard returned to the other screens. READ MORE
The Origami Man
by Doug Franklin
Something about the water ahead of us was off. The waves were subdued, as if weighted by a blanket that absorbed the afternoon rain with no rebounding spikes. An oil spill, maybe, or a ghost net. Nothing we wanted to troll through, so I wheeled Arctic Rose ten degrees to port and grabbed the binoculars from the dashboard clutter.
An object floated in the middle of the preternaturally still patch of water. At first I thought it was a sea otter, then a bird of some sort. It looked like a raven, through the haze of rain, but what was a raven doing this far out from land? Then the sea otter dove, and the raven took flight, leaving behind a low rounded shape that looked unpleasantly like a human body. READ MORE
POETRY
The Bones They Left
by Shanley Poole
DEPARTMENTS
Editorial: The State of the Union
by Trevor Quachri
Yes, it’s true: Analog has new owners. Let’s talk about what that means, both for the magazine and for you, the reader. Of course any publication that has been around as long as Astounding/Analog is bound to have changed hands many times—heck, this likely isn’t even the first time we’ve gotten new ownership in the memory of some longtime readers: William Clayton, Street & Smith, Condé Nast, Davis Publications, Dell Magazines, and now Must Read Books have all been stewards of Analog at some point. READ MORE
Alternate View: Intelligent Computation to Improve aLIGO
by John G. Cramer
This AV column is about possible sensitivity improvements to the existing aLIGO gravitational wave detector. The designs were produced by the clever use of machine learning, intelligent computation, and cutting-edge parameter search procedures. These new designs can be used for making relatively minor changes that would greatly improve the sensitivity of the LIGO detector and other similar facilities. We will begin with a brief review of the history of the LIGO project itself. READ MORE
Reference Library
by Sean CW Korsgaard
Happy New Year, dear Analog readers, one and all.
In my last column, I spent a lot of time looking back at some of the predictions and trends in the first quarter of the 21st century, yet I feel I only barely touched on maybe the most important change within the genre: the rise and boom in independent publishing. What better theme for my first Reference Library column of the next quarter century than to highlight that scene in modern speculative fiction? READ MORE