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The Year's Top Hard Science Fiction Stories 6

edited by Allan Kaster
 

          Paperback price: $19.99                        e-book price: $6.99

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An unabridged collection spotlighting the best hard science fiction stories and novellas published in 2021 by current and emerging masters of the science fiction genre, edited by Allan Kaster.

 

     
  • "Light Up the Clouds" by Greg Egan—Inhabitants in the floating forests of a gas giant that orbits a dwarf star launch a glider on an orbital trajectory to investigate unnatural asteroid-like objects that threaten their survival.

  • "Striding the Blast" by Gregory Feeley—As a form of punishment, a thief is forced by posthumans to race on a set of wings across a cloud-covered Mercury.

  • "Little Animals" by Nancy Kress—Using entangled quantum effects, a researcher goes back in time and unexpectedly becomes immersed in the life of the daughter of Antonj van Leeuwenhoek.

  • "Flowers Like Needles" by Derek Künsken—A metallic crablike creature living on a planet orbiting a pulsar confronts other warriors in its quest for wisdom.

  • "The Planetbreaker's Son" by Nick Mamatas—Interstellar posthuman emigrants, on a starship the size of a football stadium, grapple with vessel maintenance and family preservation while destroying worlds.

  • "Paley's Watch" by Anil Menon—Fishermen find a peculiar artifact in the Gulf of Alaska that is older than Earth and models the structure of the Universe.

  • "The Metric" by David Moles—A billion-year-old ship delivers a message to a far-future Earth that could mean the destruction of space and time.

  • "Año Nuevo" by Ray Nayler—Listless aliens, resembling oversized plastic garbage bags, suddenly disappear thirty years after arriving on a California beachfront.

  • "Vaccine Season" by Hannu Rajaniemi—A boy ventures out to an island to inoculate his secluded grandfather with a transmissible vaccine in a post-pandemic.

  • "Submergence" by Arula Ratnakar—An investigator uncovers the exploitation of an unusual marine sponge while optogenetically accessing the memories of a scientist who died unexpectedly.

  • "Aptitude" by Cooper Shrivastava—A woman from a slowly dying universe finds herself having to take a rigorous standardized exam after cheating her way into the selection process to become a universe builder.

  • "The Egg Collectors" by Lavie Tidhar—Two wild ballooners, forced to land during an ice storm, discover humming black eggs melting into the ice of Titan's Ligeia Mare.
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