The Year's Top Short SF Novels 5


Book Description

Short novels are movie length narratives that may well be the perfect length for science fiction stories. This unabridged collection presents the best-of-the-best short science fiction novels published in 2014 by current and emerging masters of this vibrant form of story-telling. In “The Man Who Sold the Moon,” by Cory Doctorow, hardware geeks and Burning Man fanatics band together to overcome challenges such as crowdfunding a space mission, falling in love, battling cancer and perfecting an open source engineering marvel in order to put a 3D printing robot, that creates ceramic building panels from sand, on the moon. “The Man Who Sold the Moon” won the 2015 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best short science fiction. In “The Regular,” by Ken Liu, a cybernetically enhanced private investigator keeps her emotions in check with a piece of hardware called The Regulator while she searches for the murderer of a prostitute whom she suspects is a serial killer. “Claudius Rex,” by John P. Murphy, is a sci-fi whodunit comedy that pays tongue-in-cheek homage to Rex Stout and Isaac Asimov. A humble PI partners with an arrogant AI to solve the murder of the AI’s creator. Ai! In “Of All Possible Worlds,” by Jay O’Connell, an old timeline wizard coaxes a younger man to become his apprentice in an attempt to edit Earth’s history so that the planet will escape the ravages of the Long Night and ensure that our timeline is the best of all possible worlds. In “Each in His Prison, Thinking of the Key,” by William Preston, the U.S. government brings a telepathic interrogator, who is a veteran of the American war in Iraq, to a secret complex in Texas to get a handle on an enigmatic prisoner known as “The Old Man.” A test of wills ensues between the two in this homage to Doc Savage. Finally, in “The Last Log of the Lachrimosa,” by Alastair Reynolds, set in the Revelation Space universe, a crew investigates a cave on a volcanic planet in the hopes of salvaging valuable abandoned tech only to discover that the cave is defended by a horrific psychological weapon.




The Year's Top Short SF Novels 7


Book Description

Short novels are movie length narratives that may well be the perfect length for science fiction stories. This unabridged collection presents the best-of-the-best science fiction novellas published in 2016 by current and emerging masters of this vibrant form of story-telling. In “Wyatt Earp 2.0,” by Wil McCarthy, a rough and tumble Martian mining town reconstructs Wyatt Earp to restore order. In “The Charge and the Storm,” by An Owomoyela, an uneasy co-existence between human refugees from a crashed spaceship and the aliens who saved them is threatened by human dissidents.In “Lazy Dog Out,” by Suzanne Palmer, a spaceship pilot becomes embroiled in a sinister conspiracy that threatens a space station’s way of life and everything she holds dear.In “The Iron Tactician,” by Alastair Reynolds, Merlin hunts the galaxy for a superweapon powerful enough to destroy the berserker-like robots called Huskers. “Einstein’s Shadow,” by Allen M. Steele, is an alternate history in which an American detective becomes Albert Einstein’s bodyguard as the physicist flees the Nazis onboard an airplane the size of an ocean liner. In “The Vanishing Kind,” by Lavie Tidhar, set in post-World War II London where Nazi Germany won the war, a lovesick, former German soldier searches for an old flame hoping to rekindle a romance in this cold, stark world. Finally, in “The Metal Demimonde,” by Nick Wolven, amidst a world dominated by automation, a carney passionate about her carnival ride has a fling with a jobless boy who rages against those machines.




The Year's Top Short SF Novels 6


Book Description

Short novels are movie length narratives that may well be the perfect length for science fiction stories. This unabridged collection presents the best-of-the-best science fiction novellas published in 2015 by current and emerging masters of this vibrant form of story-telling. In “The Citadel of Weeping Pearls,” by Aliette de Bodard, set in the author’s Dai Viet interstellar empire, an Empress orders her scientific Grand Master to search deepest space and track down the missing Citadel, along with its technologies, to help defend against enemies amassing on her borders. In “The New Mother,” by Eugene Fischer, a freelance journalist pursues the career-making opportunity to write a feature article for a major publication following a contagion that turns human ova diploid, capable of parthenogenesis—reproduction without the need for sperm. In “Inhuman Garbage,” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, set in the author’s popular Retrieval Artist series, a detective investigates the murder of a body found in a recycling/composting waste disposal crate in a dome on the moon. In “Gypsy,” by Carter Scholz, a meticulously rendered, slower-than-light, starship flees a totalitarian Earth on a mission whose outcome is not a clear-cut success or failure. Finally, in “What Has Passed Shall in Kinder Light Appear,” by Bao Shu, Xie Baosheng and his lifelong love, Qiqi, are small children as the countdown to the 2008 Beijing Olympics has begun. Their lives in China are prosperous but then history starts to run backwards.







The Best of Astounding


Book Description

A collection of short novels originally published in "Astounding" includes contributions from Isaac Asimov, L. Sprague de Camp, Murray Leinster, H.P. Lovecraft, James Blish, and Poul Anderson







The Year's Top Short SF Novels


Book Description

Short novels may well be the perfect length for science fiction. They are movie length tales that resonate with moxie while exploring characters, new worlds, and ideas. The stories in this unabridged collection are the best-of-the best short science fiction novels published in 2010 by current and emerging masters of this form. “Return to Titan,” by Stephen Baxter, is set in his Xeelee sequence. Michael Poole and his father search one of Saturn’s moons for sentient life that would interfere with their plans to build a gateway to the stars. In this year’s Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award winner for best short fiction, “The Sultan of the Clouds,” by Geoffrey A. Landis, a terraforming expert is inexplicably invited to Venus by the child who owns most of the planet’s habitable floating cities. “Seven Cities of Gold,” by David Moles, tells the story of a Japanese relief worker charged with tracking down the renegade Christian leader responsible for detonating a nuclear device in an Islam-occupied North American city. In “Jackie’s-Boy,” by Steven Popkes, an orphaned child befriends an uplifted elephant from the abandoned St. Louis Zoo as they trek south across a sparsely populated North America to find sanctuary. “A History of Terraforming,” by Robert Reed, involves a young boy’s ambition to take up his father’s work of terraforming Mars and then much of the solar system and discovers that much more than planets have been altered. In “Troika,” by Alastair Reynolds, the lone survivor of a mission that explored a massive alien object attempts to reveal what he discovered despite the wishes of the Second Soviet Union. Set in the author’s S’hdonni universe, “Several Items of Interest,” by Rick Wilber, the Earth ruling aliens ask a human collaborator to help quell a human insurrection led by the collaborator’s brother.




The Year's Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction 5


Book Description

An unabridged collection of the “best of the best” science fiction stories published in 2012 by current and emerging masters of the genre, edited by Allan Kaster. In “Invisible Men,” by Christopher Barzak, a maid in an inn encounters the Invisible Man who makes her an offer to be more than she is in this quasi-retelling of H.G. Wells’ famous story. In this year’s Nebula Award winner for best novelette, “Close Encounters,” by Andy Duncan, an old man is hounded by reporters about the stories he used to tell of an alien who took him into space and the dog he brought back with him. “Bricks, Sticks, Straw,” by Gwyneth Jones, follows virtual scientists forced to survive within their remotes when a young science team on Earth loses remote contact with their telepresences on Jupiter’s moons. In “Arbeitskraft,” by Nick Mamatas, Friedrich Engels strives to spread class revolution as a labor organizer for factory cyborg matchstick girls. “The Man,” by Paul McAuley, is a Jackaroo tale about a solitary woman, living in a cabin on the planet Yanos, whose life is interrupted by the sudden appearance of a naked man at her door. In “Nahiku West,” by Linda Nagata, set in the author’s Nanotech Succession sequence, officer Zeke Choy investigates an accident involving an illegal enhancement which was used to save a life. “Tyche and the Ants,” by Hannu Rajaniemi, showcases the plight of a young girl hidden on the moon by her parents, along with grags and Brain, as robotic ants have come from the Great Wrong Place to take her away. In “Katabasis,” by Robert Reed, human adventurers on a journey in an inhospitable high-gravity region of the Great Ship must use porters, evolved for massive worlds, to aid them. “The Contrary Gardener,” by Christopher Rowe, tells of the tough decisions a talented gardener in a society which genetically grows some crops for ammunition must come to when she’s recruited for the war effort. Finally, in “Scout,” by Bud Sparhawk, a reconstructed marine is deployed to a planet occupied by the Shardies to reconnoiter by making use of his “turtle” enhancements to avoid detection.




Lieu


Book Description

Nine short stories from a few of the greatest names in science fiction on the topic of exchange, replacement, upgrade, and masquerade. Ranging from true short story length through novelette and originally published in science fiction magazines in the 1950s, these brief escapes into improbable worlds have it all: humor, suspense, betrayal, mystery, twists, and of course-robots and aliens. THE BIG TRIP UP YONDER by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. THE JUDAS VALLEY by Randall Garrett and Robert Silverberg THE MOON IS GREEN by Fritz Leiber OLD RAMBLING HOUSE by Frank Herbert PIPER IN THE WOODS by Philip K. Dick SENTIMENT, INC. by Poul Anderson THE TUNNEL UNDER THE WORLD by Frederik Pohl YEAR OF THE BIG THAW by Marion Zimmer Bradley YOUTH by Isaac Asimov




The Year's Top Short SF Novels 4


Book Description

Short novels are movie length narratives that may well be the perfect length for science fiction stories. This unabridged collection presents the best-of-the-best short science fiction novels published in 2013 by current and emerging masters of this vibrant form of story-telling. In “Earth I,” by Stephen Baxter, asearch among the stars to ferret out the origins of mankind amidst the Xaian normalization digs up many surprises. In “Success,” by Michael Blumlein, a brilliant but erratic biologist studying epigenetics struggles to hang on to his grip on everyday life as he writes his ground-breaking tome. In “Feral Moon,” by Alexander Jablokov, the Alliance military is invading Phobos to retrieve dead bodies for later repatriation, but the stiff resistance is putting the operation in serious doubt. In “The Weight of the Sunrise,” by Vylar Kaftan, winner of both the Nebula Award and the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, the Incan empire is offered a vaccine, to contain a smallpox out-break, by a Virginian raising funds for the American war against the British. In “One,” by Nancy Kress, a boxer down on his luck gains the ability to read minds and grapples round-after-round with the consequences. In the Great Shipstory “Precious Mental,” by Robert Reed, an immortal captain who has been living incognito for hundreds of years is kidnaped to help salvage an ancient derelict spaceship. Finally, in the Poirot-like mystery “Murder on the AldrinExpress,” by Martin L. Shoemaker, murder is suspected in the death of the leader of a Mars expedition when evidence of sabotage is uncovered.