Anthologies

It’s a treacherous region, the future. You can’t see far, and the footing is uncertain at best. Ghosts and phantoms stalk the haze around you, and their chittering will lead you astray. There are no maps to this territory, but sometimes a brave soul strides out ahead into the haunted shadows. Those who return to the campfire of the now often bear tales of the visions seared into their minds while they were out there, in the mists. We have scoured the earth for these most daring of travelers – the ones who have ventured out into the future and returned wraith-laden. Fifteen of them agreed to share their stories. Their enthralling accounts will seize you, and you might find it difficult to fight free of them afterwards, but any risks are overshadowed by the dazzling wonders that await. So muster your courage, and dive into the pages. Haunted Futures of all kinds await you, with open arms and suspiciously toothy smiles.

Discover frightening—and sometimes hilarious—visions of the future in this science fiction anthology featuring 12 short stories by Nebula and Hugo Award winners! New and established voices in science fiction offer original stories of the future. Tales from Who Fears Death ’s Nnedi Okorafor , The Three-Body Problem ’s Cixin Liu , and others reveal metal-melting viruses, vegetable-based heart transplants, search-and-rescue drones, and semi-automated sailing ships. Inside you’ll also find: • Ken Liu writes about a virtual currency that hijacks our empathy. • Elizabeth Bear shows us a smart home tricked into kidnapping its owner. • Clifford V. Johnson writes of a computer scientist seeing a new side of the artificial intelligence she invented. • J. M. Ledgard describes a 28,000-year-old AI who meditates on the nature of loneliness. Featuring a diverse collection of authors, characters, and stories rooted in contemporary real-world science, each volume in the Twelve Tomorrows series offers an inclusive and conceivable vision of the future—and celebrates the genre of hard science fiction pioneered by authors such as Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert Heinlein. Contributors Elizabeth Bear, SL Huang, Clifford V. Johnson, J. M. Ledgard, Cixin Liu, Ken Liu, Paul McAuley, Nnedi Okorafor, Malka Older, Sarah Pinsker, Alastair Reynolds

An unabridged collection spotlighting the “best of the best” hard science fiction stories published in 2018 by current and emerging masters of the genre, edited by Allan Kaster. In “3-adica,” by Greg Egan, sentient characters in an online multiplayer game hack the operating systems of their host machines to escape to a refuge that’s only rumored to exist. Struggling colonists, on a world subject to periodic bursts of radiation from its primary’s UV-emitting companion, go on an expedition to recover a critical package from Earth in “Umbernight,” by Carolyn Ives Gilman. In “Icefall,” by Stephanie Gunn, the Mountain on the planet, Icefall, holds the mystery to a lost colony and is an irresistible, fatal allure to the climbers of the universe; but no one ever returns from the Mountain. A mother seeks revenge on the doctor that changed her neuro-atypical son’s personality with a deep brain stimulation implant in “The Woman Who Destroyed Us,” by S.L. Huang. In “Entropy War,” by Yoon Ha Lee, a conquering alien race at the height of their powers, retreats into an arkworld to win the ultimate war in the only way they can. An AI piloting an island-ship, that used to be the Earth, struggles to make sense of the universe as the last stars are dying out in “Cosmic Spring,” by Ken Liu. In “Nothing Ever Happens on Oberon,” by Paul McAuley, set in the author’s Quiet War universe, a supervisor of a mining operation on the moon, Oberon, investigates the crash-landing of an ancient escape pod. In depression-era Alaska, a desperate bush pilot reluctantly accepts an illegal charter from a pair of scientists investigating a legendary mirage in Glacier National Park in “The Spires,” by Alec Nevala-Lee. In “Providence,” by Alastair Reynolds, the crew of a crippled starship, unable to complete its mission, decides to salvage its expedition by providing future exploratory ships with data they did not have. A disillusioned crèche manager leaves Luna to work on an asteroid-based crèche and then must decide whether or not to return to Luna in “Intervention,” by Kelly Robson. And finally, an entity that controls the solar system wants aid against another entity from a reconstructed human it just created, in “Kindred,” by Peter Watts.

These stories are about identity, relationships, and community. They're about hope, acceptance, affirmation, and joy. And most of all, in a time when uncertainty feels inescapable and overwhelming, they're about taking one another by the hand and choosing together to embrace the unknown. The possibilities are endless. This anthology is full of uplifting, affirming short stories about queer possibility by an outstanding lineup of speculative fiction authors including Charlie Jane Anders, Zen Cho, Amy Griswold, Nibedita Sen, Merc Fenn Wolfmoor, and S.L. Huang.