Synopsis
This collection highlights 20 stellar space operas published over the past 20 years by top-notch authors of the science fiction genre. A soldier fights for survival behind enemy lines, on an alien vessel, thousands of light-years from Earth in “On the Orion Line,” by Stephen Baxter. A man aboard a ship in deep space wakes up from biostasis at the wrong time in “The Days Between,” by Allen M. Steele. An astronaut in a damaged balloon struggles to survive 800 meters above the surface of a sea on Titan in “Slow Life” by Michael Swanwick. Two rival space-faring cultures vie for influence over the people of a forgotten human world in “The Third Party,” by David Moles. One thousand people, aboard five generation starships, leave the Sol system to flee an enemy that threatens to destroy their way of life in “Mayflower II,” by Stephen Baxter. Modified combat troops must deal with recalcitrant settlers on a planet being attacked by hostile aliens in “Bright Red Star,” by Bud Sparhawk. Programmed military doppelgängers continue to carry out their missions long after the Quiet War’s end in “Dead Men Walking,” by Paul McAuley. Mathematicians seek to learn more from a civilization, on another planet, that spent three million years doing math in “Glory,” by Greg Egan. Human diplomats must deal their own cultural biases while dealing with two representatives from warring factions on a newly discovered planet in “Saving Tiamaat,” by Gwyneth Jones. Space pirates haul in booty aboard a living spaceship that doesn’t quite smell right in “Boojum,” by Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette. The constable in a settlement on a planet full of the tombs of a long-vanished alien race befriends a woman who researches dangerous hive rats in “City of the Dead,” by Paul McAuley. A dying young man on a treasure hunt tries to save a world that’s devoid of gravity and lit by artificial suns in “The Hero,” by Karl Schroeder. An eternal, aboard a slower than light ship, is woken to investigate an unexplained signal emanating from the area of the ship’s next stargate construction site in “The Island,” by Peter Watts. An alienated teenager, in a domed iron city on a planet where a fundamentalist revolt is brewing, seeks to uncover her enigmatic tutor’s long-held secret in “The Ice Owl,” by Carolyn Ives Gilman. A woman recalls a childhood train journey, on a planet with a permanent dayside and a nightside of eternal darkness, to see a captured specimen of the Nightmare race in “Weep for Day,” by Indrapramit Das. Peculiar mating rituals and divergent evolution have developed on a lost colony that has been out of contact with the rest of humanity in “Someday,” by James Patrick Kelly. An aristocrat’s trip to Venus, in search of her disgraced brother, is memorialized by papercuts of flora native to the planet in “Botanica Veneris: Thirteen Papercuts by Ida Countess Rathagan,” by Ian McDonald. An enemy of the revolution, on a colonized planet, uploads a digital copy of himself into the body of a braindead boy in an attempt to escape off-world in “Jonas and the Fox” by Rich Larson. Set in the author’s Machineries of Empire universe, an undercover agent infiltrates a space station to recover the crew of a lost ship in “Extracurricular Activities,” by Yoon Ha Lee. And finally, the captain of a dustship musters her crew to escape from a trap set by Hunter-Killers in a game of cat and mouse amid the rings of a giant planet in “By the Warmth of Their Calculus,” by Tobias S. Buckell.
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