The Year's Top Hard Science Fiction Stories 4

By Carolyn Ives Gilman, Peter Watts, Tobias S. Buckell, and more

2020

First Published

3.88

Average Rating

441

Number of Pages

13H23M

Audio Length

An unabridged collection spotlighting the best hard science fiction stories published in 2019 by current and emerging masters of the genre, edited by Allan Kaster. A coastal restoration researcher can help the police solve a murder but is conflicted over the unjust nature of the criminal justice system in “Soft Edges,” by Elizabeth Bear. In “By the Warmth of Their Calculus,” by Tobias S. Buckell, 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. An arachnipede becomes wary of potential mates after she sees a male eat her mother . . . but she’s lonely in “A Mate Not a Meal,” by Sarina Dorie. In “The Slipway,” by Greg Egan, astronomers are hard-pressed to explain what appears to be a new cluster of stars that’s growing by the hour. Abandoned at a lunar base after losing radio contact with Earth, a newlywed traverses the moon in a buggy with her newborn toward a skyhook on the farside in “This is Not the Way Home,” also by Greg Egan. In “Cloud-Born” by Gregory Feeley, children born on a ship from Earth become anxious as they begin to transition to their new lives as colonists of Neptune. An astrobiology postdoc is called at the last minute to remotely navigate a robot searching for hydrogen-based life on Titan in “On the Shores of Ligeia,” by Carolyn Ives Gilman. In “Ring Wave,” by Tom Jolly, an engineer in a life pod is desperate to join a colony in space after an asteroid destroys Earth. A deep-sea mining company’s operation is threatened by a crustacean scientist in “The Little Shepherdess,” by Gwyneth Jones. In “Sacrificial Iron,” by Ted Kosmatka, a decades long mission to another star is threatened when the two men keeping watch over a frozen crew turn on each other. A teenager seeks to maintain her “Captain” status among her non-traditional lunar family by leading her siblings on a dangerous trek to Neil Armstrong’s first footprint on the moon in “The Menace from Farside,” by Ian McDonald. In “The Ocean Between the Leaves,” by Ray Nayler, the mind of a dying gardener is transferred to another body for three days of closure in a state-run experiment. A robot strives to maintain its energy reserves as it crosses thousands of kilometers underwater to find its way home in “At the Fall,” by Alec Nevala-Lee. In “Winter Wheat,” by Gord Sellar, a Canadian farmer and his son are at odds on how to cope with a powerful agribusiness promoting its genetically modified wheat. And finally, a resentful submarine pilot is ordered to an undersea research facility to assist with the mining survey of a formerly protected seabed in “Cyclopterus,” by Peter Watts.

Avg Rating

3.88

Number of Ratings

127

5 STARS

31%

4 STARS

34%

3 STARS

28%

2 STARS

1 STARS

goodreads

Authors

Carolyn Ives Gilman

Author · 15 books

Carolyn Ives Gilman has been publishing science fiction and fantasy for almost twenty years. Her first novel, Halfway Human, published by Avon/Eos in 1998, was called “one of the most compelling explorations of gender and power in recent SF” by Locus magazine. Her short fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies such as F&SF, Bending the Landscape, The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, The Best From Fantasy & Science Fiction, Interzone, Universe, Full Spectrum, and others. Her fiction has been translated into Italian, Russian, German, Czech and Romanian. In 1992 she was a finalist for the Nebula Award for her novella, “The Honeycrafters.” In her professional career, Gilman is a historian specializing in 18th and early 19th-century North American history, particularly frontier and Native history. Her most recent nonfiction book, Lewis and Clark: Across the Divide, was published in 2003 by Smithsonian Books. She has been a guest lecturer at the Library of Congress, Harvard University, and Monticello, and has been interviewed on All Things Considered (NPR), Talk of the Nation (NPR), History Detectives (PBS), and the History Channel. Carolyn Ives Gilman lives in St. Louis and works for the Missouri Historical Society as a historian and museum curator.

Born in the Caribbean, Tobias S. Buckell is a New York Times Bestselling author. His novels and over 50 short stories have been translated into 17 languages and he has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Prometheus and John W. Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction Author. He currently lives in Ohio.

What Goodreads really needs is a "currently WRITING" option for its default bookshelves...

Ian McDonald

Author · 39 books

Ian Neil McDonald was born in 1960 in Manchester, England, to an Irish mother and a Scottish father. He moved with his family to Northern Ireland in 1965. He used to live in a house built in the back garden of C. S. Lewis’s childhood home but has since moved to central Belfast, where he now lives, exploring interests like cats, contemplative religion, bonsai, bicycles, and comic-book collecting. He debuted in 1982 with the short story “The Island of the Dead” in the short-lived British magazine Extro. His first novel, Desolation Road, was published in 1988. Other works include King of Morning, Queen of Day (winner of the Philip K. Dick Award), River of Gods, The Dervish House (both of which won British Science Fiction Association Awards), the graphic novel Kling Klang Klatch, and many more. His most recent publications are Planesrunner and Be My Enemy, books one and two of the Everness series for younger readers (though older readers will find them a ball of fun, as well). Ian worked in television development for sixteen years, but is glad to be back to writing fulltime.

Allan Kaster

Author · 15 books

Editor of science fiction anthologies

Greg Egan specialises in hard science fiction stories with mathematical and quantum ontology themes, including the nature of consciousness. Other themes include genetics, simulated reality, posthumanism, mind transfer, sexuality, artificial intelligence, and the superiority of rational naturalism over religion. He is a Hugo Award winner (and has been shortlisted for the Hugos three other times), and has also won the John W Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel. Some of his earlier short stories feature strong elements of supernatural horror, while due to his more popular science fiction he is known within the genre for his tendency to deal with complex and highly technical material (including inventive new physics and epistemology) in an unapologetically thorough manner. Egan is a famously reclusive author when it comes to public appearances, he doesn't attend science fiction conventions, doesn't sign books and there are no photos available of him on the web. Excerpted from Wikipedia.

Gregory Feeley

Author · 3 books