Marching on, we find Cat Rambo, prolific semi-prozine contributor and up-and-coming talent, making her Asimov's debut with a charming and funny tale about an intergalactic shopkeeper who finds all four of his hands full as "Kallakak's Cousins" descend upon his threatened livelihood; Elizabeth Bear joins us again with an unsettling Lovecraft-inspired tale called "Shoggoths in Bloom," in which the words "stygian," "Cyclopian," and "shambling" are not used (we promise!); Ian Creasey plumbs the darker side of life when a loved one is lost for good in "This Is How It Feels"; Tom Purdom, whose "The Mists of Time" was one of our most popular stories with readers last year, returns with the exciting science-fiction adventure, complete with swashbuckling augmented humans, "Sepoy Fidelities"; Sue Burke, whose name ought to be familiar to fans of the poetry in Asimov's, makes her short fiction debut here with "Spiders," a poetic and evocative tale of familial relationships on a recently colonized world; and Carol Emshwiller returns in an American gothic style, with a tale of strange nomadic beings somehow both human and inhuman and their search for a permanent home--a home that can be found only by "The Master of the Road to Nowhere"!

In his "Reflections" column, Robert Silverberg trawls online flea-markets seeking peculiar "Space Junk for Sale"; James Patrick Kelly examines a mysterious sub-genre of SF called "Mundane" in On the Net; Peter Heck brings you "On Books"; plus an array of pleasant poetry by many of your favorite poets. Look for our March issue at your newsstand on January 29, 2008. Or you can subscribe to Asimov's--by mail or online, in varying formats, including downloadable forms, by going to our website, (www.asimovs.com)--and make sure that you don't miss any of the great stuff we have coming up!

brain-balming stories by Kate Wilhelm, Barry B. Longyear, Ian R. MacLeod, S.P. Somtow, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Neal Barrett, Jr., Kij Johnson, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Nancy Kress, Steven Utley, Catherine Wells, Jack Skillingstead, Robert Reed, and many others!

EDITORIAL: PANNING FOR GOLD by Sheila Williams
REFLECTIONS: SPACE JUNK FOR SALE by Robert Silverberg
SNOW ANGELS by Ruth Berman
ON THE NET: MUNDANE by James Patrick Kelly
FOLLOWING THE PHARMERS by BrianStableford
THE CAPACITY OF COLD by Roger Dutcher
KALLAKAK'S COUSINS by Cat Rambo
THE WORLD WITHIN THE WORLD by Steven Utley
SHOGGOTHS IN BLOOM by Elizabeth Bear
THIS IS HOW IT FEELS by Ian Creasey
MUSHROOM AGRICULTURE by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
SEPOY FIDELITIES by Tom Purdom
CLASSICS OF SCIENCE FICTION: "THE COLD EQUATIONS" by Jack O'Brien
SPIDERS by Sue Burke
MASTER OF THE ROAD TO NOWHERE by Carol Emshwiller
ON BOOKS by Peter Heck
SF CONVENTIONAL CALENDAR by Erwin S. Strauss
NEXT ISSUE

APRIL/MAY DOUBLE ISSUE
Our October/November issue is the one that seems to get the most attention and, frankly, the April/May issue is tired of being overlooked. We don't play favorites with our issues, but we sympathized with April/May's plight and have obliged it by loading it full of excellent SF stories sure to grab your attention from the very first pages. To this end, the ever-popular Kristine Kathryn Rusch returns to the futuristic milieu of her story "Diving into the Wreck" in a new novella--this time, a mysterious zone affected by alien technology must be plumbed by a crack team of professional "divers" who may well find that no training could ever have prepared them for ... "The Room of Lost Souls."

ALSO IN APRIL/MAY
This is, as you must already suspect, not all. We take great pleasure in offering, after too long an absence, the latest story by S.P. Somtow, a haunting, lyrical tale of a troubled cleric investigating "An Alien Heresy." Barry B. Longyear also returns with his clever rumination on the inevitable affects of aging upon the writer with "The Advocate"; Neal Barrett, Jr. offers a witty, wise, and, most importantly, weird tale about the end of the world in "Slidin'"; Kathleen Ann Goonan explores the consequences of a man's transformation into a "Memory Dog"; Merrie Haskell, making her Asimov's debut, posits that life might not be so easy under the employ of benevolent interstellar rulers in "An Almanac for Alien Invaders"; Catherine Wells' latest, "Ghost Town," presents the troublesome effects of time upon a recently returned space explorer; Robert Reed skulks around the neighborhood trying to get a subtle peek into the windows of "The House Left Empty"; one of science fiction's greatest, Kate Wilhelm, returns with a bittersweet story of young lovers destined to always be "Strangers When We Meet" the morning after; Nick Wolven makes his Asimov's debut with a moving tale examining the emotional difficulties faced in a completely customizable world in "An Art, like Everything Else"; and up-and-coming talent Matthew Johnson returns with an alternate history in which the tired, poor, huddled masses of the past must emigrate through time and adjust to a confusing new life in "Another Country."