We're Pausing Asimov Press

Summary

Asimov Press is going on hiatus. While a few more articles will appear over the next month — and our stunning hardcover book, Making the Modern Laboratory, will come out this summer — operations will pause in April. All articles will remain freely accessible online.As we prepare to pause, I want to celebrate what we’ve accomplished. In June 2023, Asimov Press was just a vague idea. (I remember posting the announcement from my phone in the Amsterdam metro, feeling a deep sense of fear about what we were starting.) A few months later, I brought on Xander Balwit. The two of us were its only editors and only full-time staff. We launched with about 7,000 subscribers, ported over from my personal blog, Codon. Our first article appeared in January 2024.While I had attended journalism school and thought I knew about publishing, I soon discovered that literally everything — from managing people, to recruiting and paying writers, to fact-checking stories, printing books, and much else — doesn’t play out as it’s taught in school. By trial and error, Xander and I had to learn how to develop an eye for writers with exceptional promise, separate good pitches from vague ones, figure out which parts of a draft were most compelling, and make sure stories were told deeply enough to satisfy scientists, while remaining accessible to all “ambitious” readers.Devon Balwit served as Copy Editor, helping us to convey these complex ideas in readable prose. In 2025, we hired Ella Watkins-Dulaney as our Art Director, and she promptly improved our header images and style. In the last several months, she has stepped into other roles as well, helping fact-check and compile the latest book. Ulkar Aghayeva composed and recorded the music for our podcasts, and also wrote several excellent articles for our pages. We’re also immensely grateful to the dozens of fact-checkers, artists, proofreaders, and writers who have contributed to maintaining a high bar of excellence at Asimov Press.We’ve come a lon...