Asimov Press
Making sense of scientific progress.
Asimov Press is a publisher focused on the science and technologies that promote flourishing. We are an editorially-independent publishing team funded by Asimov, Inc., a genetic design company in Boston.
We publish three types of articles: essays, fiction, and moonshots. Essays contextualize scientific progress and explore the history of transformative technologies. Short fiction inspires readers to imagine plausible and positive futures. Moonshots are short essays that direct talent and spur readers to action; they aim to clearly lay out a problem and convince people why it matters.
Most of our work centers around biology and metascience—the systematic study of science itself. Our emphasis on biology is deliberate, for that is the field where progress seems the most rapid and where the potential to radically improve the world—from longevity to climate and animal welfare—is arguably the greatest.
A century ago, two young researchers extracted insulin from dogs and used the molecule to treat people with diabetes. In the 1950s, the U.S.D.A. bred screwworms, sterilized them with X-rays, and airdropped them over Texas to decimate invasive screwworm populations, which killed hundreds of thousands of cattle each year. The human insulin gene was cloned into bacteria in 1978. Dolly the Sheep was cloned in 1996.
For a long time, such stories were relatively rare. Now they seem to happen every month. Dozens of cell and gene therapies have been FDA-approved. Engineered microbes convert steel factory waste into ethanol. Some vaccines are designed on computers. And 95 percent of livestock in America are fed with genetically modified crops. Our food and medical systems are already reliant upon biotechnology. In a few decades, so too will just about everything else.
We are:
Builders: Asimov Press aims to build a vibrant, intellectual community of readers. Our goal is to create a thoughtful network of writers and readers, who, while interested in theory, are even more interested in how things work and what we can actually make happen.
Vigilant: While scientific progress can be used to do good in the world, it can also carry concomitant risks that we take seriously. Asimov Press has a moral imperative to guide readers and researchers to do the right things with these emerging capabilities.
Mechanistic: Science is not magic. Even the most inspiring outcomes in science have physical explanations. Our pieces are mechanistic, precise, and clear. They deeply explain how things work and why.
Fair: We are excited by the good that science can do for the world, but there are often better ways to accomplish the same goals. We are not here to evangelize. Our articles are charitable to, or steelman, alternative approaches.
Data-driven: Our articles do not rely on hype or hyperbole. They provide quantitative evidence, demonstrate probabilistic reasoning, and are assiduously fact-checked. When factual errors are found in an article, we update them with a correction.
Pitch Guide
Founded in 2023, Asimov Press publishes four Issues of a digital magazine per year.
We always welcome pitches from writers who can make sense of scientific progress, especially regarding biology’s impacts on climate, energy, security, agriculture, materials, and medicine, or in metascience. Our authors are typically researchers or policy experts with extensive knowledge in their field or journalists with a deep background in a scientific discipline.
On occasion, we reach out to writers with specific assignments. If you’d like to be added to our database of freelance journalists, please send a message to editors@asimov.com with your name and topics of interest. We are seeking stories with the following characteristics:
Clarity: An Asimov Press piece should be clear and accessible. Steven Pinker reminds us, “The better you know something, the less you remember about how hard it was to learn. The curse of knowledge is the single best explanation I know of why good people write bad prose.” We want to avoid the curse of knowledge and publish pieces that are capable of simplifying complicated ideas while remaining rigorous and well-reasoned. Like all good writing, an Asimov Press piece shows rather than tells.
Steelmanned: Our pieces strive to be mechanistic, clearly explaining how things work. They do not rely on hype or hyperbole and are charitable to alternative approaches that achieve the same ends. In other words, they clearly answer the question: “Is this technology really the best way to solve this problem?”
Fact-checking: We fact check every article. Writers should provide references, sources, data, or charts to support claims.
Your pitch should contain enough information that the commissioning editors have a sense of where the story will go and what evidence you have to support your claims. It should clearly convey the problem and approaches to solve it. A good pitch answers the questions: What will readers take away from the piece? Why is this important and timely? Why are you in a unique position to tell this story?
We want evidence-backed stories driven by a sense of urgency and wonder. We don’t want desultory explorations of a topic, pieces that respond to discrete papers or news, or PR for your company.
Please send pitches and other questions to editors@asimov.com. Include “PITCH” in the email’s subject line, and include the full pitch within the body of the e-mail.
Article Formats
Essays: We strive to publish “timeless” essays that inspire readers and deeply explore a technology, place, or person. All essays should have a specific angle or thesis. They should outline the central characters, clearly describe key challenges, and articulate how science — or other means — are being used to solve them. These articles shed light on how hard-won progress can be, and in so doing, help us better appreciate how far humanity has come. We pay $1,500 for essays under 2,500 words and $2,000 for longer pieces.
Examples of essays we’d like to publish include: Is cultivated meat for real?, Biology is more theoretical than physics, and Why We Didn’t Get a Malaria Vaccine Sooner.
Speculative Fiction: We seek works of fiction that imagine positive, and plausible, futures. We’re after pieces in which science, rather than characters or plot, is the focus and explanations of technologies are detailed and mechanistic. What might the world look like if a certain kind of technology existed? What is the cost of not developing this technology? We’re excited by fiction that is evocative enough to encourage researchers to overcome a bottleneck or develop a new idea. We pay $1,000 for fiction. If pitching a work of fiction, please send a full draft in your email.
Examples of fiction we’d like to publish include: Lena, Story of Your Life, and They May As Well Grow on Trees.
Moonshots: Occasionally, we commission freelancers to produce densely-written problem statements, called moonshots. These are typically two pages in length and introduce a key problem (such as blood shortages in the U.S.), describe current approaches to address it, and conclude with tentative, near-term solutions. Moonshots must be simple to understand, but detailed enough to motivate readers to work toward solving them.
Interviews: Occasionally, we commission freelancers to produce written interviews. We seek to publish interviews with leading authorities that make sense of, or provide context for, technologies and big ideas that foster human and animal flourishing. Please pitch us with your interview idea, and we’ll work together to make it happen. We’re especially intrigued by interviews that humanize people, clearly articulate their ideas, and could help more people contribute to an open research problem.
Examples of interviews we’d like to publish include: Feeding the World Without Sunlight with Mike Hinge, What the Webb Space Telescope will Show Us Next with Jane Rigby, and the 80,000 Hours podcast with Kevin Esvelt.
Photo Essays: Research is not only done in sterile, white-walled laboratories. There are entire research facilities devoted to algae engineering, for example, and mosquito-rearing factories working to eradicate malaria. What do these places look like inside? We occasionally commission photo essays that demystify a technology, showcasing the equipment, people, and places on the front lines of its development.
Masthead
Xander Balwit (Editor-in-Chief) Xander arrived at biotechnology because of an unremitting interest in animal welfare. An experienced writer and editor, she wants to encourage more people to articulate and understand how science can provide solutions to our most pressing problems. Email: xander@asimov.com
Niko McCarty (Founding Editor) Niko is a former bioengineer and data journalist. He lives in Cambridge, MA with his wife and two cats, and holds degrees in synthetic biology and science journalism from Imperial College London, Caltech, and New York University. Email: niko@asimov.com
Devon Balwit (Copy Editor) Devon edits for Anthropic and Asimov Press when not editorializing in her own cartoons, reviews, or poetry. Learn more at her website.
Merrick Pierson Smela (Contributing Editor) Merrick is a graduate student at Harvard University. He studies human reproductive development using stem cell-based models, and is broadly interested in how synthetic biology can improve people's lives.
Ethan Freedman (Contributing Editor) Ethan is a journalist who writes mainly about science, ecology, climate change, wildlife and the built environment. He studied biology at Tufts University and science, health and environmental reporting at New York University.
Brady Huggett (Contributing Editor) Brady is the features editor at The Transmitter, a neuroscience publication supported by the Simons Foundation. Previously, he served as the business editor at Nature Biotechnology.
Advisors
Saloni Dattani, Researcher at Our World in Data & Co-Founder at Works in Progress
Tessa Alexanian, Ending Bioweapons Fellow at The Council on Strategic Risks
Tom Ellis, Professor of Synthetic Genome Engineering at Imperial College London
Tony Kulesa, Partner at Pillar VC & Co-Founder of Petri