Current Issue Highlights
September/October 2026
A simple courier job turns out to be more than a crew of mercs had bargained for—literally, in “The User Manual” by Tony Ballantyne; a coming of age ceremony has more personal stakes than anyone realizes for one participant, in “Beggar’s Mounted” from Eric Del Carlo; an alien superstructure does its best to keep its secrets in “Septo’s Taj” from R.R. Corvi; a burglary leads a pair of Detective Inspectors to a much bigger and weirder crime in “The Light of Darian” by Sean McMullen; an automaton with larceny on its mind gets down to business in “Career Considerations for Starship Burglars” by Hans Enge Wenger; some harsh youths learn a harsh lesson in “Robo Bashers” from Harri Hemlock, plus the next installment in Kelly Lagor’s “Warm Pond” fact series, and much more, from Adam-Troy Castro, Jay Werkheiser, and others!
NOVELETTE
Beggars Mounted
by Eric Del Carlo
Stir the Pot. Stir the Pot! So the call rings out across the floating estates. These, the glimmering realms of the aristocracy, the sumptuous abodes strung as pearls on a necklace along the edge of the auroral splendor of deep-space phenomena, the fantastical light show of the Pot, all those gases and dust, all that burning wonder so impossibly pleasing: because the rich must always have beachfront property.
Kim arrived at the appointed hour. The shuttle’s interior was silent and betrayed no sense of motion; such utter stillness was expensive. He did not know they had docked until the doors parted. He had come with the other wranglers. They were a motley lot, picked by lottery and randomly assigned to the privileged youth who this day must prove themselves by diving into the Pot to capture and ride a Beast. READ MORE
The Light of Darian
by Sean McMullen
Had it not been for the burglary, the authorities might never have even noticed the house. The intruder’s name was Hal Blake. He had been neat and systematic, bypassing the off-the-shelf security system with a valid code. For a few minutes he had apparently been disappointed, because he took nothing. The house just went through the motions of being lived in, rather than being a home, and there was nothing of obvious value to be seen. Then he collapsed. READ MORE
POETRY
Time Between the Wars
by Carol Dorf
DEPARTMENTS
Editorial: The Long Road
by Trevor Quachri
For the sake of looking something up for this column, I recently logged on to social media, where I was quickly met with a silly discussion that I’ve also seen bubble up a few times in the past: “Authors who don’t read books.” READ MORE
The Reference Library
by Sean CW Korsgaard
I pen this column in early March, as the first warm winds of spring have come, and with them, some of the best times of the year for writers and readers, as convention season kicks off, publishers start dropping some of their major releases for the year, and hopefully plenty of you have begun to make progress on an ambitious reading list for the year. READ MORE