Asimov's Science Fiction, June 1995

A woman in a gold robe confronts a group of reptilian aliens in a sleek spacecraft interior. The cover advertises James Patrick Kelly's "Think Like a Dinosaur" alongside stories by Geoffrey A. Landis and Pamela Sargent. By 1995, Asimov's Science Fiction had inherited the visual language of the pulp tradition—painted covers depicting dramatic encounters between humans and aliens, rendered in saturated color. Where 1930s pulp magazines sold adventure through vivid illustration on wood-fiber stock, 1990s science fiction magazines maintained that visual spectacle while shifting to glossy newsprint. The reptilian alien design, the spaceship corridors, and the heroine's defensive posture all signal the genre's core appeal: speculative encounters with the non-human, rendered in immediate, visceral imagery.