My latest story for explorers of the nostalgic strange, “The Imaginative Youngster’s Handbook to UFOs,” appears in the January/February 2026 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction.
Have you ever gazed up into the infinite cosmos at night with your family and observed a light in the sky moving in a way it shouldn’t? Maybe the light stopped suddenly and then started again. Maybe it skittered across your field of vision like a bug across a forest pond. Or maybe it wobbled and danced as though you were its only audience.
Your mom or her boyfriend may have told you it was a weather balloon or a military aircraft, or perhaps they called it a “trick of the light.”
What if I told you that sometimes, perhaps even often, your mom and her boyfriend are wrong?
