Asimov's continued to be a prestigious market and several award-winning stories appeared during Dozois's tenure, including Lucius Shepard's "R&R"; Orson Scott Card's "Hatrack River"; Pat Murphy's "Rachel in Love"; Suzy McKee Charnas's "Boobs"; and Terry Bisson's "Bears Discover Fire".

Mike Ashley, a historian of science fiction magazines, describes Dozois's time at Asimov's as "one of the greatest of all editorial careers".

In February 1976, Isaac Asimov visited the offices of Davis Publications in New York to drop off a story he was submitting to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.

[2][4] Asimov wrote a regular science column for F&SF, which he continued, but Davis asked him not to submit fiction to competing magazines.

This may have been because Scithers was based in Philadelphia, with a local team of first readers to help read the incoming manuscripts, and Davis wanted an editor who was in the New York office five days a week.

Moloney was hired away by Times Books later that year, and replaced by McCarthy, who was told that Asimov had insisted that she become the next editor if the magazine wanted to keep his name.

"[19] The first issue included stories by Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Jonathan Fast, and Fred Saberhagen, and an excerpt from Gordon R. Dickson's novel Time Storm which would be published later that year.

[19] For example "Bat Durston: Space Marshal" by G. Richard Bozarth was a parody, inspired by an advertisement that had appeared on the back cover of Galaxy Science Fiction in the 1950s; Ashley points out that new readers might have thought it was intended as a serious story.

Ashley suggests that when Dozois left the editorial staff after only a year, it was because he wanted to acquire stories that were more sophisticated than the material Scithers preferred.

[3][19] Longyear's "Circus World" series began in the magazine, but his best-received story was "Enemy Mine", which appeared in the September 1979 issue and won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

[19] Some well-established writers appeared in the magazine, despite its reputation as a juvenile market: Varley contributed "The Barbie Murders" in early 1978, and Michael Bishop, Brian Aldiss, Tanith Lee, Robert Silverberg, Gene Wolfe, and James Tiptree, Jr, all appeared during Scither's tenure.

This combination was a good fit for Scithers's approach: traditional stories, without sex or profanity: "nothing too challenging or revolutionary", in Ashley's words.

[19][note 4] Some veteran science fiction writers such as L. Sprague de Camp, Hal Clement, and Jack Williamson fit in well with Scithers's constraints, producing material that could have been printed in a 1950s magazine, but Frederik Pohl's "Like unto the Locust", which appeared in 1979, did not.

"[19] Ashley argues that the magazine's success cannot be ascribed only to the unchallenging fiction it printed; Asimov's name drew in many fans of his books, and Davis Publications' marketing experience helped as well.

Two well-known stories published during Moloney's tenure were Connie Willis's "A Letter from the Clearys", and David Brin's "The Postman", which later formed the basis of a novel and film of the same name.

The February 1983 issue, the second one with McCarthy's name on the masthead, included Greg Bear's novella "Hardfought", which went on to win the Nebula Award.

McCarthy continued to be open to a broader range of fiction than Scithers had been, and at the end of the year published Leigh Kennedy's "Her Furry Face", with a plot that involved sex with an intelligent orangutan.

[26] Other stories from McCarthy's first year in charge included Dozois's "The Peacemaker", in the August 1983 issue, which won the Nebula Award.

[26] Well-received stories from 1984, McCarthy's second year in charge, included Lucius Shepard's "A Traveler's Tale", John Kessel's "The Big Dream", and Varley's "Press Enter■", which won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

"[26] Writers began to make Asimov's their first market to submit to, and 1985 saw more award-winning stories as a result: Pohl's "Fermi and Frost"; Silverberg's "Sailing to Byzantium"; Roger Zelazny's "24 Views of Mount Fuji, by Hokusai"; and "Portraits of His Children", by George R. R. Martin.

[26] McCarthy discovered or encouraged many new writers, including Mary Gentle, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Paul J. McAuley, and Karen Joy Fowler.

[28] Dozois's tenure began as cyberpunk (a subgenre of science fiction focused on the consequences of virtual reality and computer technology[29]) was becoming more popular, and cyberpunk fiction soon appeared: in January 1986, Dozois serialized William Gibson's Count Zero, the sequel to Gibson's debut novel, Neuromancer, and he also printed Pat Cadigan's "Pretty Boy Crossover".

Pat Murphy and Kim Stanley Robinson began selling regularly to Dozois; Murphy's "Rachel in Love", in the April 1987 issue, about a teenage girl's personality in a chimpanzee's body, won a Nebula and a Locus Award, and Robinson's "The Blind Geometer", in the August issue, also won a Nebula.

Ashley suggests this was because the magazine's reputation was now high, and Dozois received hundreds of manuscripts a week, making it harder for new authors to break through.

The mother of a 13-year-old girl who bought a copy complained about the magazine, which contained strong language and other material she objected to, and the complaint led to some negative news coverage, described by the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction as "over-sensationalized".

[3][31] Paul DiFilippo and Peter Heck took over the book reviews from Baird Searles in 1994, and Spinrad began contributing critical essays.

Dozois won the Hugo Award for best professional editor every year from 1988 to 2004 with only two exceptions, in 1994 and 2002,[28] and Ashley describes his time at Asimov's as "one of the greatest of all editorial careers".

[33] In Williams' first editorial, in the January 2005 issue, she made it clear she did not plan to make dramatic changes to the approach established by McCarthy and Dozois.

Asimov's has been digest-sized throughout its history, though the size was increased slightly with the June 1998 issue to conform with the publisher's other magazines.

All were edited by Scithers: the titles were Astronauts & Androids, Black Holes & Bug-Eyed Monsters, Comets & Computers, Dark Stars & Dragons, and Extraterrestrial & Eclipses.