The Jim Baen Memorial Award: The First Decade

CELEBRATING TEN YEARS OF THE JIM BAEN MEMORIAL SHORT STORY AWARD

A DECADE OF SCIENCE FICTION EXCELLENCE

Since 2007, Baen Books and The National Space Society have sponsored The Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award, to honor the legacy of Jim Baen and to promote the ideals of forward-thinking, positive science fiction. Here gathered together for the first time are the best of the best of the first decade of the Jim Baen Memorial Award. Winners and runners-up whose stories dared imagine a bright future in which humankind has shaken off the shackles of gravity and moved into that limitless realm known as “outer space.” Each tale is set in a plausible, near-future setting, and yet the variations are as limitless as the imaginations of the array of authors represented. Stories that ask, “What if?” Stories that dare to say, “Why not?” Stories that continue the grand science fiction tradition, looking to the future with a positive outlook on humanity's place in the universe.
 

"Fans of hopeful space stories will be very satisfied by those on offer here."—Publishers Weekly

"The universe is limitless in this optimistic collection of near-future sf stories. Fans of the genre will be clamoring for a copy."—Library Journal

“. . . truly wonderful. . . . This collection is a must read for those who dream of space colonization in our lifetimes. It encapsulates the challenges, risks, and sacrifices that will be integral to pushing the human race into the solar system. . . . delivers exactly what it promised.”—Tangent

“One of the great things about [the book] is how much variety there is in the included stories. We have tales set against backgrounds of space exploration, colonization missions, space industrialization, orbital dynamics. Stories are set on Earth, in space, on the Moon, on Mars, and various other destinations. There are problem stories, inspirational tales, conspiracies, political machinations, family stories, alternate histories, and even a few love stories.”—Analog

William Ledbetter is a Nebula Award winning writer with more than fifty speculative fiction stories and non-fiction articles published in markets such as Fantasy & Science Fiction, Jim Baen's Universe, Writers of the Future, Escape Pod, Daily SF, the SFWA blog, and Ad Astra. He's been a space and technology geek since childhood and spent most of his non-writing career in the aerospace and defense industry. He administers the Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award contest for Baen Books and the National Space Society, is a member of SFWA, the National Space Society of North Texas, a Launch Pad Astronomy workshop graduate, is the Science Track coordinator for the Fencon convention and is a consulting editor at Heroic Fantasy Quarterly. He lives near Dallas with his wife and three spoiled cats.