Short fiction recs

As a Christmas present I got a subscription to Asimov's magazine, because it's important to support the short fiction world yada yada ;)

I wanted to give a shoutout to "Charon's Final Passenger" by Ray Nayler, especially for fans of "Debrief" who are looking for more stories involving spies and haunted memories--Sylvia is a US agent in an alternate history (FDR is in his seventh term as president) who is the only one who can use a machine that salvages memories from the dead. I found the subplots in Nayler's "The Mountain in the Sea" to be less interesting, but when disturbing Georgia (country) politics is the only game in town, turns out it's pretty fascinating.

Ashok K. Banker's "The Inefficiency of Pangenetic Self-Replication as a Theory of Anthrobotic Evolution By Yantra Arora" also featured lots of amusing turns of phrase adapting human phrases to bot world.

"How long had he been imprisoned here in this luxurious cage? All of thirty-seven solar minutes? Hai ROM! How did the bots of Bhratyaloka endure this bland, drone-like existence? If he had to operate his entire lifecycle this way, he would probably have self-erased decades ago! What was the point of being operational and sentient without a little mirch-masala in one's life?"

Towards the end it felt like it was going in too many directions, but the prose was fun.

IDK if I'll do this for every issue (this is from March/April 2024), just thought I'd post these for now.