The Final Frontier: Stories of Exploring Space, Colonizing the Universe, and First Contact

by Neil Clarke

The vast and mysterious universe is explored in this reprint anthology from award-winning editor and anthologist Neil Clarke (Clarkesworld magazine, The Best Science Fiction of the Year).


The urge to explore and discover is a natural and universal one, and the edge of the unknown is expanded with each passing year as scientific advancements inch us closer and closer to the outer reaches of our solar system and the galaxies beyond them.


Generations of writers have explored these new frontiers and the endless possibilities they present in great detail. With galaxy-spanning adventures of discovery and adventure, from generations ships to warp drives, exploring new worlds to first contacts, science fiction writers have given readers increasingly new and alien ways to look out into our broad and sprawling universe.


The Final Frontier delivers stories from across this literary spectrum, a re

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Anthologies, Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Audiobook, Science Fiction Fantasy

844 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 3, 2018

About the author

Neil Clarke is best known as the editor and publisher of the Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning Clarkesworld Magazine. Launched in October 2006, the online magazine has been a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine four times (winning three times), the World Fantasy Award four times (winning once), and the British Fantasy Award once (winning once). Neil is also a ten-time finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Editor Short Form (winning once in 2022), three-time winner of the Chesley Award for Best Art Director, and a recipient of the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award. In the fifteen years since Clarkesworld Magazine launched, numerous stories that he has published have been nominated for or won the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Sturgeon, Locus, BSFA, Shirley Jackson, WSFA Small Press, and Stoker Awards.

Additionally, Neil edits  Forever —a digital-only, reprint science fiction magazine he launched in 2015. His anthologies include: Upgraded, Galactic Empires, Touchable Unreality, More Human than Human, The Final Frontier, Not One of Us,  The Eagle has Landed, , and the Best Science Fiction of the Year series. His next anthology, The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Seven will published in early 2023.

He currently lives in New Jersey with his wife and two sons.

Reviews

[Justine · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's hard to rate this overall...maybe 3.5 stars if I average them out? As is always the case with anthologies there were some great stories and some I didn't like at all.

Favourites in this collection included: A Jar of Goodwill; Mono No Aware (the best story in this collection); Diving Into the Wreck; The Firewall and the Door; Gypsy (my second favourite); and The Mind is Its Own Place.

Below are ratings and a few thoughts and/or quotes from each story in the collection.

A Jar of Goodwill by Tobias S. Bucknell - 4/5 stars I always like Bucknell's stories and this was no exception. My first exposure to him was in fact when we read Galactic Empires, a sort of companion collection to The Final Frontier. Previous stories of his have used the element of social inequality. This one integrates that into an interesting examination of contract interpretation and personal morality.

Mono No Aware by Ken Liu - 5/5 stars Beautiful, poetic, and emotionally charged. I would list this one among my favourite short stories that I have read. It might not hit everyone the same way, but for me it was so affecting. We are defined by the places we hold in the web of others' lives.

Rescue Mission by Jack Skillingstead - 2/5 stars A bit of a weird story about human connection and learning to let your guard down by relinquishing power voluntarily. I liked the message but the story wasn't really for me.

Shiva in Shadow by Nancy Kress - 3.5/5 stars A really interesting story showing two different possibilities for a crew of three on a scientific mission. The same personalities under the same conditions, but the strain pushes a different outcome for each.

Slow Life by Michael Swanwick - 3/5 stars An interesting kind of first contact story. I liked the upbeat nature of the main character, the way Swanwick captured the heart of an explorer.

Three Bodies at Mitanni by Seth Dickinson - 2.5/5 stars Three people sit in judgement of various paths of human social evolution, their job to eradicate the unacceptable. Interesting premise, but it didn't go where I wanted it to.

The Deeps of the Sky by Elizabeth Bear - 3/5 stars Wonderfully descriptive but I felt it was more exposition than story. I liked the idea of first contact from the alien perspective, but it ended a bit abruptly and just when I wanted to know more.

Diving Into the Wreck by Kristine Kathryn Rusch - 4/5 stars Cool and atmospheric story about a crew exploring a derelict ship which holds legendary yet deadly technology. I liked the way this story was so complete from start to finish and featured fully formed characters.

The Voyage Out by Gwyneth Jones - 3/5 stars This one was nicely written and kind of intriguing, but I felt it lacked resolution. I know it's about "the voyage out" but I still wanted a bit more after the actual arrival.

The Symphony of Ice and Dust by Julie Novakova - 3.5/5 stars I liked the story within a story structure, and the notion of these long intervals of amazing discovery and rediscovery of a lost ship.

Twenty Lights to "The Land of Snow" by Michael Bishop - 3/5 stars I didn't much care for the first half, mostly because the voice of the protagonist as a child felt very inauthentic to me. The second half I quite liked. I appreciated the whole premise of the disenfranchised people of Tibet seeking to establish a new homeland on another world.

The Firewall and the Door by Sean McMullen - 4/5 stars A great story about taking the initiative to do what needs to be done. Give people wonders, and they'll sit back, open a beer and watch. If you want folk to get up and do something, you must give them mysteries.

Permanent Fatal Errors by Jay Lake - 2.5/5 stars Survey ship crewed by immortal humans find possible evidence of alien intelligence, but divided about what to do. Then it just ends, making the story feel weirdly truncated (hence the 2.5 star rating). This read like a prologue rather than a complete story.

Gypsy by Carter Scholz - 5/5 stars A one way exploratory mission to Alpha Centauri is launched from a ravaged Earth with an end goal based on hope and luck that a habitatable planet exists at the journey's end. An entrancing story told over time through the viewpoints of various crewmembers who are awakened solo from hibernation sleep in order to complete necessary tasks. Poignant, and filled with a range of emotions from despair to hope. This joins Mono No Aware by Ken Liu as one of my favourite stories of the collection so far.

Sailing the Antarsa by Vandana Singh - 2/5 stars Not for me at all. Mostly slow, contemplative musings and remembrances rather than actual story per se. I'm rarely in the mood for stories without much in the way of plot.

The Mind is Its Own Place by Carrie Vaughn - 4.5/5 stars An excellent story with one heck of an unreliable narrator used to great effect. Reality is made ambiguous by the mental state of the main character, which kept me guessing even after the story ended.

The Wreck of the Godspeed by James Patrick Kelly - 2.5/5 stars An interesting outcome at the end, but it was a pretty bumpy road to get there. The randomness of the story was somewhat pulled together by the ending, but I didn't care for this one much.

Seeing by Genevieve Valentine - 3.5/5 stars I liked this although it was still a little nebulous in parts for my taste. The atmospheric writing is a highlight in this short story. Numbers are universal, Marika gets it. You have to rely on mathematics if you're going to get anywhere, because the universe conspires against you the moment you lift your face to the sky in some warm place on a windy plane, the atmosphere sluicing across the nightscape, your meager vision blurred by tears.

Travelling Into Nothing by An Owomoyela - 2.5/5 stars Another one that ended just as I felt it was coming to the point.

Glory by Greg Egan - 3/5 stars I liked this one, although it's depressing to think of the competitive and destructive nature of civilisation growth as inevitable.

The Island by Peter Watts - 3.5/5 stars I was a fool: I let myself believe in life without conflict, in sentience without sin. For a little while, I dwelt in a dream world where life was unselfish and unmanipulative, where every living thing did not struggle to exist at the expense of other life. I deified that which I could not understand, when in the end it was all too easily understood.

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars, rounded up to 4. Some good stories. Some not so great stories. But generally the quality was good and I can recommend this anthology.

Favourite stories:
- MONO NO AWARE, KEN LIU , ~18 p., ★★★★★½
- THE FIREWALL AND THE DOOR, SEAN McMULLEN, ~30 p., ★★★★★
- SEEING, GENEVIEVE VALENTINE, ~12 p., ★★★★★

Story reviews below are in reverse order of the book.

————
THE ISLAND, PETER WATTS, ~36 p., ★★½☆☆
You sent us out here. We do this for you: spin your webs and build your magic gateways, thread the needle’s eye at sixty thousand kilometers a second.
Good beginning, but the author lost me along the way. The potentially sentient lifeform they found promised interesting developments, but just vanished into thin air. The story ending about the son was just weird and unsatisfying. I missed a red thread and an ending that tied up the loose ends.

————
GLORY, GREG EGAN, ~24 p., ★★★☆☆
An ingot of metallic hydrogen gleamed in the starlight, a narrow cylinder half a meter long with a mass of about a kilogram.
A very abstract beginning. I skimmed past most of that science-tech babble, I confess. I liked the story that followed the info dump.

However...
“There’s more to life than mathematics,” Joan said. “But not much more.”
Math was always one of my best subjects at school, but still... too much! Math Fiction? Mathematical SF?

It was ok, nice idea of a vaguely Star Trekky set-up without the Prime Directive and more cloning and uploading of consciousness. Plus that hard SF thing with the needle that I skimmed... Did I miss the big reveal, aka Brig Crunch? It probably just flew right over my head.

The ending was a bit wishy-washy for me. Too devoid of emotion.

Can be read for free here: https://outofthiseos.typepad.com/blog...

————
SEEING, GENEVIEVE VALENTINE, ~12 p., ★★★★★
After it was over, they pulled her from the sea.
I was very confused at first. Something pre-apocalyptic? Maybe a dystopia? I felt the urge to go and study astrophysics, to understand what was going on. It took a moment, but I ended up really liking this. Not an easy story.

I think this is a story you need to read twice to make sense of it. Layers upon layers. In retrospect, skimming the story a second time, I am upgrading this to 5 stars. A lot going on for a mere 12 pages!

Can be read for free here: Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 50, November 2010
http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/valen...

About the author: https://www.genevievevalentine.com/ab...

————
THE WRECK OF THE GODSPEED, JAMES PATRICK KELLY, ~48 p., ★★☆☆☆

„Colorful pilgrims travel to new worlds until their ship’s artificial intelligence begins to act strangely.“ I was pretty much skimming from the start. The story just held no interest for me. There was no plot, just some vignettes about various topics. It was all very superficial.

————
THE MIND IS ITS OWN PLACE, CARRIE VAUGHN, ~24 p., ★★★★☆

“Carrie Vaughn is best known for her New York Times bestselling series of novels about a werewolf named Kitty who hosts a talk radio show.“
I really liked that series! But it seems as if she is more of an SF author than UF, right?

“If someone locked you in a room full of crazy people, was there any chance that you weren’t crazy?“
Well, that is the question. How delusional or crazy is our MC here?

“But some of us are the next step in evolution.”
And wouldn‘t that be cool... Not telling you, what exactly, sorry. I enjoyed this!

Story excerpt here: https://web.archive.org/web/201610101...

————
SAILING THE ANTARSA, VANDANA SINGH, ~30 p. (Tot. 432 p., 72%), ★★☆☆☆
“The protagonist, a woman called Mayha, undertakes an unusual journey in a story involving physics, the environment, biology, communication, and myth. And there’s an enormous tree-like being that is central to everything.“
http://vandana-writes.com/short-stories/

Space exploration. Very imaginative world, however the writing did nothing for me. Too slow, too contemplative. The in-between stories and/or myths did not interest me.

Found this online and it is very fitting: “notions of coexistence, acceptance of the past and future as fellows, existing hand-in-hand in the present“
http://theaerogram.com/21767-2/

About the author: https://scroll.in/article/894504/thes...

————
GYPSY, CARTER SCHOLZ, ~60 p., ★★¾☆☆
“When a long shot is all you have, you’re a fool not to take it. —Romany saying“

Earth is doing badly. Overpopulation, rising sea levels, etc., and we haven‘t learned a thing. So a few people take a very, very long shot indeed.

Lots of potential, interesting premise, but too little good storytelling, repetitive and brief, way too much science babble. The ending is depressing as hell and makes the whole venture pointless. Thanks for all the fish, sorry you had to die for naught! „Fuck you“ indeed. Is the ending supposed to be a HEA? Kick in the nuts, more like...

Interview: Carter Scholz on “Gypsy”
https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/2015/...

Novella can also be found in a separate edition: Gypsy

————
PERMANENT FATAL ERRORS, JAY LAKE, ~18 p., ★★★★☆
Maduabuchi St. Macaria had never before traveled with an all-Howard crew. Mostly his kind kept to themselves, even under the empty skies of a planet.

A story involving the Fermi paradox. With addition of some altered, almost immortal humans. Is Anybody Out There?

Well-written, easy to read. I liked it.

Can be read for free here: Lightspeed Magazine July 2018, Issue 98
http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fic...

————
THE FIREWALL AND THE DOOR, SEAN McMULLEN, ~30 p., ★★★★★
I was in the living room with my family when the Argo made its flyby of the double star Alpha Centauri.

Good entertainment, worthy of a full novel and then some. The virtual Ashford could be a cousin of muderbot, although it did not have a lot of page time. I identified with the MC so much. Sweet ending. Loved the analogy of the door held open.

A neat idea, a well-done story of space exploration, and a strong piece of advocacy for it – Lois Tilton, Locus Online

————
TWENTY LIGHTS TO “THE LAND OF SNOW” EXCERPTS FROM THE COMPUTER LOGS OF OUR RELUCTANT DALAI LAMA by MICHAEL BISHOP, ~54 p., ★★½☆☆

COMPUTER LOGS OF THE DALAI LAMA-TO-BE, AGE 7

I liked the voice of our reluctant Dalai-Lama-to-be as a child, aboard her generation ship. The teenager was ok, the older iterations lost my interest. I skimmed the latter part of this.

The world building lacked in depth for me and the musings of our MC did not grab my interest. There was no decent plot and the question if she really was the reborn Dalai Lama was not explored in a captivating way. I couldn‘t tell if she cared. I didn‘t.

Story can be found for free here: https://www.baen.com/Chapters/A978145...

————
THE VOYAGE OUT, GWYNETH JONES, ~18 p., ★★★¾☆
“Do you want to dream?”

Wow, that was really depressing! A not-so-far-away, digitally transformed future without civil rights or liberties. A set of condemned criminals (to that system, not ours just yet) preparing for their final voyage. Really, really depressing. But cool as well. Wouldn‘t have minded to find out how they fared after their voyage out.

Part of the White Queen books by the author: https://www.goodreads.com/series/5595...

Also part of this quartet of stories: https://aqueductpress.blogspot.com/20...
The author‘s recap of this particular short story made me laugh. Love the Gruffaloes.

http://www.gwynethjones.uk

————
DIVING INTO THE WRECK, KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH, ~54 p., ★★★★☆

“We approach the wreck in stealth mode: lights and communications array off, sensors on alert for any other working ship in the vicinity.“

„We don’t face water here—we don’t have its weight or its unusual properties, particularly at huge depths. We have other elements to concern us: No gravity, no oxygen, extreme cold.
And greed.“

I love the wreck diving analogy, aka comparison to scuba diving. Greed is a recurring theme in this story. They find something in this wreck. Is it worth the risk?

“The award-winning “Diving into the Wreck” novella marked the first step in a large journey for New York Times bestselling writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch.“
I will certainly look more closely at this author. This was fun to read. Although I find it hard to believe that they haven‘t managed to develop snag-proof fabric that far into the future.

This made me think of The Expanse. Hard hitting, unforgiving space. And Event Horizon. Creepiness in space.

There is a 300+ pages long book by the author by the same name, so I assume this might be a novella that was expanded into said novel. Just a guess.

http://kriswrites.com
http://divingintothewreck.com

————
THE DEEPS OF THE SKY, ELIZABETH BEAR, ~12 p., ★★★★☆
“Stormchases’ little skiff skipped and glided across the tropopause, skimming the denser atmosphere of the warm cloud-sea beneath, running before a fierce wind.“

Beautifully imaginative world. Sky-mining storms in a gas giant. Aliens dropping in.
2013 Locus award finalist.

Can be read for free here: https://io9.gizmodo.com/sky-mining-is...
or here: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/bear_...

————
THREE BODIES AT MITANNI, SETH DICKINSON, ~18 p., ★★½☆☆
The ideas behind the story are interesting. I just didn‘t like the execution. Too abstract, too talkative, too little doing for my taste. But the central theme of the story is something you could debate hotly for hours. Uploaded consciousness, curtailed consciousness, colonization, expansion.

Originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact issue 06|15

————
SLOW LIFE, MICHAEL SWANWICK, ~18 p., ★★★★☆
“It was the Second Age of Space. Gagarin, Shepard, Glenn, and Armstrong were all dead. It was our turn to make history now.” –The Memoirs of Lizzie O’Brien

I really liked this. I was immediately deeply immersed in the story and identified with Lizzie from the first moment. Great, vivid descriptions of Titan. Loved the concept and have to leave it at that, as I don‘t want to give anything away. The ending felt a little abrupt.

Can be read for free here: http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fic...
Reading the author spotlight, that goes with this novelette, was fun as well: http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/non...

————
SHIVA IN SHADOW, NANCY KRESS, ~48 p., ★★★★☆
... much of her work, concerns genetic engineering.

In this case we have a similar topic with a different premise—uploaded consciousness… And how we communicate with each other. What makes us tick, what causes us to behave differently, where do we divert from the path and why. The story was well told with a great plot twist that caught me by surprise. Sad and bittersweet ending.

————
RESCUE MISSION, JACK SKILLINGSTEAD, ~12 p., ★★★☆☆
“Michael Pennington floated in Mona’s amniotic chamber, fully immersed, naked and erect, zened out. The cortical cable looped lazily around him. Womb Hole traveling.“

The beginning sounded pretty exciting. Pilot with body modifications (gills!!!), merged to his ship. Assuming that Mona is his ship... There are hints to pilot-ship personal dynamics that are not really elaborated upon. The romance/personal relationship wasn‘t really there. The story was ok, but it didn’t explore anything deep enough or to a satisfying level.

————
MONO NO AWARE, KEN LIU , ~18 p., ★★★★★½
“The world is shaped like the kanji for “umbrella,” only written so poorly, like my handwriting, that all the parts are out of proportion.“

“At the end of the cable hangs the heart of the Hopeful, the habitat module, a five-hundred-meter-tall cylinder into which all the 1,021 inhabitants of the world are packed.“

It‘s the end of the world as we know it and the survivors are on a generation ship. This story is about how they got there and what happens next.

Wow, beautiful story. I cried. The story is very much about the needs of the many, the few and the one. Fascinating, Mr. Spock! What makes a hero? A great look at the differing views of East and West, a holistic understanding of the world and the many, juxtaposed to that one hero.

- 2013 Hugo Award for Best Short Story, winner
- 2013 FantLab's Book of the Year Award for best Translated Novella or Short Story, winner
- 2013 Locus Award for Best Short Story, finalist
- 2013 Theodore Sturgeon Award, finalist

Story can be read for free here: http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fic...

————
A JAR OF GOODWILL, TOBIAS S. BUCKELL, ~ 24 p., ★★★★☆
“You keep a low profile when you’re in oxygen debt.“
A world where aliens have patented pretty much everything. Think Monsanto in space. Great imagery. I would like to find out more about this world and its inhabitants. A short story with potential for more. I am intrigued by the Compact and the concept of Friends. I wouldn‘t mind to read more stories set in this world or by the author.

The story can be read for free on Clarkesworld where it was published originally: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/bucke...

I just found this info online:
“As of September 2011, Buckell is working on a stand-alone novel titled Infringement, adapted from his short story "A Jar of Goodwill," which was originally published in Clarkesworld. The novel will be published by Tor, sometime after the independent release of Apocalypse Ocean.“

The info comes from this interview: https://web.archive.org/web/201204280...

I looked around and could not find a book by this name, so I guess he hasn‘t written it yet.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Editor Neil Clarke subverts our expectations from the very first story in his massive themed anthology The Final Frontier—and that's an excellent thing to do. Tobias S. Buckell's "A Jar of Goodwill" does include space exploration and first contact, but it's the farthest thing from a triumphalist narrative of interstellar colonialism—its scattered humanity reminded me more of John Varley's Eight Worlds stories than my first thought (due to the similar title), Fritz Leiber's "A Pail of Air."

There are happier futures ahead, but "Mono No Aware" from Ken Liu is a similarly somber tale of humanity's first, and possibly last, interstellar expedition. "It is in the face of disasters that we show our strength as a people." (p.23).

Nuance characterizes all of the stories in The Final Frontier, in fact, even the ones that are more traditional. "Rescue Mission," by Jack Skillingstead, could have been a part of the "New Wave" of psychedelic fiction in the Sixties. Michael and Natalie had a thing—but it's "its," not "it's," you know.

Next comes "Shiva in Shadow," by Nancy Kress (who is, it says here, married to Jack Skillingstead—huh). I'd read this one elsewhere. The story is in some ways even more traditional—tightly focused on three scientists aboard an exploratory vessel that's been sent to the big black hole at the center of the galaxy—but Kress also observes how critical emotional labor will be for the stability of a small, isolated crew.

"Slow Life," by Michael Swanwick, is another hard SF story, almost hard enough to have been written by Hal Clement. The secrets of Titan's sea, uncovered by an astronaut who's a Gene Kelly fan and a robot fish.

I'd also read "Three Bodies at Mitanni" (Seth Dickinson) before, but this nightmare of neuroscience still had significant impact on me. (See Tor Nørretranders' The User Illusion for a nonfiction treatment of similar concepts.) I also thought this story's placement was interesting, so close to Nancy Kress' three-person interstellar crew.

"The Deeps of the Sky," by Elizabeth Bear, gives us First Contact from a jovian perspective, resonating strongly for me with other SF works as varied as Poul Anderson's classic "Call Me Joe" and Iain M. Banks' The Algebraist.

Next, immerse yourself in Kristine Kathryn Rusch's "Diving into the Wreck," which is tense, hard-boiled starship spelunking (I wanted to call it "spacex," like urbex-in-space, but that name seems to be taken), set in a universe old enough for spacefaring humanity to have lost track of its own ships for five thousand years or so.

"The Voyage Out," by Gwyneth Jones, features transportees destined for digitization, detained on a transitional space station which may already be more algorithmic than strictly physical... this one, in contrast to most of the previous works in The Final Frontier, seemed to me like really modern SF, psychedelic and existential.

"The Symphony of Ice and Dust," by Czech translator and author Julie Nováková, reads as if it were in translation itself, but transcends its occasionally rocky syntax to relate a poignant tale (with another three-person crew) of deep time and deep space.

"Twenty Lights to the 'Land of Snow'," by Michael Bishop. Tibetan Buddhists accompany the Dalai Lama to an even longer and farther exile—but human beings still cannot escape human passions.

"The Firewall and the Door," by Sean McMullen. Just remember that the background matters too, and that, at any given time, the happiest person in the world is anonymous.

"Permanent Fatal Errors," by the late Jay Lake. Praise Bob (Heinlein, that is)! This sly and pitch-perfect deconstruction of Heinleinian tropes features a shipful of typically selfish, libertarian (but I repeat myself), omnicompetent immortals (all from "Howard Families," no less, in explicit homage) wrangling "like cats in a sack" (p.313). I found several laugh-out-loud moments, amid all the injuries and property damage.

"Gypsy," by Carter Scholz, whom I first encountered back in the 1980s, as coauthor (with Glenn Harcourt) of the Ace Science Fiction Special Palimpsests. What do you do when the ones who could have reversed the world's fall proceeded "quite purposely and at speed toward this dire world they foresaw, a world in which, to have the amenities even of a middle-class life—things like clean water, food, shelter, energy, transportation, medical care—you would need the wealth of a prince. You would need legal and military force to keep desperate others from seizing it. Seeing that, they moved to amass such wealth for themselves as quickly and ruthlessly as possible, with the full understanding that it hastened the day they feared." (p.374; italics in original). Although Scholz' story is a grimly engineering-based extrapolation from current knowledge (considering, objectively, notions like the Fermi Paradox and the bathtub curve of mean time between failures), it retains a grain or two of hope.

"Sailing the Antarsa," by Vandana Singh. Full of woo and beauty—the easy comparisons that came to my mind mixed Ursula K. Le Guin and Cordwainer Smith with... Larry Niven? You'll understand why when you read it. The story did seem curiously unreflective in places, though; I wondered why Mayha didn't just ask the Ship why it had awakened her, and whether she, a fifth-generation colonist of the planet Dara, ever realized that its devtaru were not, after all, "the only being known to spread its seed to another world." But Singh's future did seem in general like the sort worth aspiring to, and a luminous contrast to the shadows pervading "Gypsy."

"The Mind Is Its Own Place," by Carrie Vaughn. Almost Phildickian, though the story eventually goes in a way I don't think PKD would have chosen—and is the better for it.

"The Wreck of the Godspeed," by James Patrick Kelly. What happens when a colonizing vessel is no longer able to find planets to colonize? Or, consider that some of the consequences of matter transmission may not be inevitable.

"Seeing," by Genevieve Valentine. "Some thirsts you never get over."

"Travelling into Nothing," by An Owomoyela. An interesting fragment, featuring a neural interface with—heh—a mind of its own.

"Glory," by Greg Egan. A glory is a halo of light, but mathematical proofs have their own kind of glory—and there are other meanings of the word as well. I'd read this one before but enjoyed it anew here.

And, finally, "The Island," by Peter Watts. This was a good choice to end the anthology. Hard SF in the far future, featuring yet another three... three-being crew, more or less, this one engaged in building an interstellar transportation network over the (very) long haul.


Ultimately I was pleased with both this anthology's individual building blocks and with the way those components were assembled—The Final Frontier is stellar work (heh) from some of the biggest names in current science fiction.

[Beige · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars, rounding up because I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of reading such a diverse selection of stories and authors.


100% - THE ISLAND by PETER WATTS - ★★★★
Oh, the book finished on a high note. Great story of a generation ship eons in the future. A thoughtful take on humanity, A.I and the flaws of both. Very creative, I can't wait to read more by this author.


94.0% GLORY by GREG EGAN - ★★★½
A shocking amount of hard science at the start had me intrigued and scratching my head at the same time. It quickly blossomed into a first contact story from the advanced society's perspective. Really imaginative and thoughtful.


90.0% TRAVELLING INTO NOTHING by AN OWOMOYELA - ★★★
I'm impressed with how much the author developed on so few pages. A fully realized mystery with a planet toting spaceship and a prisoner given a new lease on life. I'd love to see this one extended into a novella/series.


87.0% SEEING by GENEVIEVE VALENTINE - no rating, just too far out there for my tastes.


85.0% The Wreck of the Godspeed by James Patrick Kelly - ★★½
Woohoo! I might just finally finish this anthology before 2020! This was mixed, I was engaged through the entire story, but it was odd and not in a confident, weird way just like a collage that didn't quite fit together. Too bad because it was an imaginative take on colonization, religion and A.I decision making.


76.0% The Mind Is Its Own Place by Carrie Vaughn - ★★¾
A story of a mysterious illness suffered by spaceship navigators. Imho, the mystery wasn't fully realized. But kudos to the author for successfully conveying the claustrophobia of confinement.


72.0% Sailing the Antarsa by Vardana Singh - ★★★★
I knew from reading reviews of this author's other stories that this wouldn't be typical. It's filled with SF elements such as a generation ship, colonizers of an alien planet, further space exploration, etc. However, the story feels like a fantasy dreamworld. It's a calm, beautiful story filled with the wonder of discovery and respect for all life in the universe.


66.0% Gypsy by Carter Scholz - ★★★½
A nightmarish 22nd century earth ruled by a handful of plutocratic leaders. I'm impressed with this author's capacity to use both sides of their brain. It's poetic, technical (too much for my taste) and very, very bleak. Any hope for life on earth has been crushed, but a few privileged scientists escape the galaxy entirely.


55.0% Permanent Fatal Errors by Jay Lake - ★★½
I can be a patient reader and I have been known to do well with ambiguity. However, to me, this story of augmented humans exploring the far reaches of space felt unfinished and left me dissatisfied. Still, it piqued my curiosity so I can't be too harsh.


53.0% The Firewall and the Door by Sean McMullen - ★★★¾
This far future earth space exploration was made entirely plausible by the pov of a human judge and criminal case. I personally liked where humanity had evolved to from an ethical point of view, but by the end, I suspected the author and I are philosophical polar opposites. Still, a good story though.


48.0% Twenty Lights To The Land of Snow by Michael Bishop - ★★★½
I almost didn't read this one. It starts with a child's pov with odd slang, but as she grows, her language normalizes. I'm glad I stuck with it. This Tibetan generation ship seeking a new world for their people and the Dalai Lama was surprisingly vivid and emotional.


39.0% The Symphony of Ice and Dust by Julie Novakova - ★★★★½
I really liked this far future and far far future combo. To see space exploration for the sake of science evolve over the centuries to the sake of art was fascinating. I look forward to reading this Czech author's first English novel.


36.0% The Voyage Out by Gwyneth Jones
I'm not sure how to rate this one. It's a bit slipstream, dreamlike which isn't always my cup of tea. However, the writing is good and I appreciated the speculation on future space travel and prison systems. I wonder if I would have appreciated it more if I'd read the White Queen series that this story was spun from.


33.0% Diving into the Wreck - Kristine Kathryn Rusch - ★★★
The suspense was great in this deep space diving thriller. However, the limitations of their diving tech seemed far fetched and spoiled the effect.


24.0% The Deeps of the Sky by Elizabeth Bear - ★★★★
This one was difficult to visualize at first, with its description of the dangers of mining a continent sized super storm. I stuck with it and the unique pov more than paid off. So cool.


22.0% Three Bodies at Mitanni by Seth Dickinson - ★★★★
Big ethical questions are posed in this unique take on first contact. With rich, sometimes abstract prose. I usually prefer more straightforward prose, but this was lovely. I had a glimpse at why others praise his fantasy series.


19.0% Slow Life by Michael Swanwick - ★★★★
What a fascinating first contact story set on Titan, one of Saturn's moons.


16.0% Shiva in Shadow by Nancy Kress ★★½
I just read my first hard scifi story! After many years of hearing Star Trek jargon, it wasn't nearly as intimidating as I expected.
There was a lot I liked about this story, I enjoyed the parallel pov's and even the science (that I kinda grasped). However, some elements felt a bit antiquated in their thinking, so one less star for those.


8.0% Rescue Mission by Jack Skillingstead ★★½"


6.0% Mono No Aware by Ken Liu - ★★★½


4.0% A Jar of Goodwill - by Tobias S. Buckell ★★★★

[Terence · Rating 3 out of 5]

"A Jar of Goodwill," Tobias Buckell - Decent story about a future where humanity struggles against aliens who've claimed "patent rights" on much of human technology, though it's not a simple, us vs. them story. I'd be interested in reading more stories set in this universe.

"Mono no Aware," Ken Liu - A story about a generational ship fleeing Earth after an asteroid destroys it. Not very interesting or original and infuriatingly stupid. The plot hangs upon the fact that the ship's builders made no provision for handling damage to the solar sail. WTF?!, as my millennial friends might say. I also couldn't buy that a society that had the technology to build a starship in the first place couldn't have handled the asteroid.

"Rescue Mission," Jack Skillingstead - A variation of the lorelei myth. Meh.

"Shiva in Shadow," Nancy Kress - One of the nice things about multi-author anthologies is that you can see the difference between a good writer and a great one. Kress is much closer to the right side of that spectrum than otherwise. This is a story about an expedition to the center of our galaxy and recommended.

"Slow Life," Michael Swanwick - Decent story about encountering life on Titan.

"Three Bodies at Mitanni," Seth Dickinson - The Traitor Baru Cormorant was one of the best novels I read in 2017 and I look forward to its soon-to-be published sequel (one week as I write this). "Three Bodies" is another example of Dickinson's talent. It's a story about an Earth expedition investigating the fates of lost human colonies and judging whether they do or might cause a threat to human survival.

"The Deeps of the Sky," Elizabeth Bear - Another decent, if not memorable story about first contact between humans and the inhabitants of a gas giant.

"Diving Into the Wreck," Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Reading this I was reminded of George R.R. Martin's "Nightflyers" (short story, not book), which is a compliment. There are also hints of the movie Event Horizon. Well written with interesting characters and an attention to how real salvage crews work that's appreciated.

"The Voyage Out," Gwyneth Jones - The story starts out interesting enough. It's a Botany Bay situation where an authoritarian united Earth government is transporting "undesirables" to an extrasolar colony. There're hints that things are not quite what they seem. And then...it ends.

"The Symphony of Ice and Dust," Julie Novakova - According to the bio at the head of the story, Novakova is a Czech writer and translator, and - though it's not explicit - presumably the translator of this story (if she hasn't written it in English originally). (IMO, of course) She's not a good translator. The story itself is another "meh." An expedition in the far future (10,000+ years) comes across the remains of another, earlier one under the ice of Sedna along with an alien artifact. Most of the story is essentially a "found footage" movie of the earlier astronauts that depends far, far too much on plot convenience. I was hoping that the serial disasters afflicting the first expedition had some connection to the aliens but, alas, no. It was just a series of contrivances to force the story.

"Twenty Lights to 'The Land of Snow,'" Michael Bishop - In the near future, China (aided by the international community) decides to resolve its Tibetan "problem" by cleansing the plateau of its native inhabitants and shipping them off to a planet orbiting a nearby star. Bishop is a good writer and I liked the narrator, "our reluctant Dalai Lama" as the section headers name her, though he couldn't avoid making her a Westerner, which may offend some readers.

"The Firewall and the Door," Sean McMullen - This one reminded me of a '50s era sci-fi flick. I read it as an homage to the spirit of exploration that (supposedly) fueled America's drive to land on the moon and explore the Solar System. Not bad but I wasn't sucked in by it.

"Permanent Fatal Errors," Jay Lake - Another story that leaves the reader hanging without a resolution. A post-human expedition of immortals voyages to a brown dwarf. The protagonist discovers what might be evidence of alien life & a solution to Fermi's Paradox but a cabal of fellow crew attempt to suppress the information.

“Gypsy,” Carter Sholz – In a nightmare dystopia where hyper-surveillance police states fight over the dwindling resources of a dying world, a visionary conspires to build a starship to take a handful of people to Gliese 581. Again with “Gliese 581” – For some reason this modest little red dwarf is a popular destination for a lot of these stories. This is a bleak and powerful story that balances the human drive to survive with an implacable, uncaring universe.

“Sailing the Antarsa,” Vandana Singh – This is the only story here that I’ve read before, in the author’s collection Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories. I gave four stars to that book, and this story was one of my favorites:

“Sailing the Antarsa" - This story is representative of a theme that runs through much of Singh's work here: How limited human perceptions of the universe are.

“The Mind is Its Own Place,” Carrie Vaughn – In the future, human navigators are integral parts of how starships cross space but the price is high, ultimately fatal. “Mind” is about one of those pilots, who finally breaks, and how he copes with his mind’s breakdown. I liked it; I’ve read Vaughn before and like her.

“The Wreck of the Godspeed,” James Patrick Kelly – Solid story about a slightly mad starship whose encounter with an alien species goes catastrophically wrong for itself and its passengers.

“Seeing,” Genevieve Valentine – Didn’t enjoy this story about yet another expedition to Gliese 581 that goes horribly wrong. It’s not badly written but I didn’t like the style; other readers may find it right up their alley.

“Traveling into Nothing,” An Owomoyela – Another solid entry in the collection. “Traveling” is about a mentally wounded pilot who’s been condemned to death but is “rescued” by a mysterious traveler needing someone willing to take a one-way voyage to his space-faring habitat. If anything, the story is too short; I thought it could have used a bit more development of the main character’s, Kiu Alee’s, mental state.

“The Island,” Peter Watts, and “Glory,” Greg Egan, are the last two stories of this anthology and their juxtaposition couldn’t better illustrate the difference between good hard sci-fi and just adequate. “The Island” utilizes hard science to tell a story about human/AI relations as well as our first encounter with an alien intelligence. “Glory” reads like something from the so-called Golden Age and wouldn’t be out of place in stuff from Heinlein, Asimov or Campbell. It’s simplistic in its philosophy and its aliens, for all their physical weirdness, are mere humans in rubber suits.

Overall, The Final Frontier is a good collection. There are a few clunkers, as with any similar anthology, but nothing unreadable and there are some genuinely good stories here. Recommended.

[Greg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some stories did it for me, while others did not. To me, some stories were struggling with making use of the setting. Instead some authors buried their story of a character under technical details that had no bearing to the plot. If you like the science parts of science fiction and don't feel that it has to effortlessly blend with the story, you may not mind this very much.

[Cheryl]

"A Jar of Goodwill," Tobias Buckell - pretty good story, also intriguing peek into a world I want to know more about... especially from the perspective of a professional Friend, less interested in the alien overlords

"Mono No Aware," Ken Liu - interesting, sentimental, literary, less SF'al than what I prefer

"Rescue Mission," Jack Skillingstead - girl for woman, and it's for its... signs that insufficient care was taken... and a story that's been told many times before, including in The Martian Chronicles by Bradbury and in Star Trek the original series.

"Shiva in Shadow," Nancy Kress - novelette that starts out w/ an interesting premise: this ship of exploration is manned by only two Scientists and one Captain/ Nurturer. Their uploaded analogues will actually go into danger to do the survey etc... and that turns out to be the point of the story: the divergence between the humans and the uploads over time. Kress deserves her reputation.

"Slow Life," Michael Swanwick - worth reading story of first contact with a truly alien intelligence, again a very small & intimate exploration crew; I'll consider more by the author

"Three Bodies at Mitanni" - Seth Dickinson - boy, I guess Roddenberry was wrong; it seems that small crews are the way to go, even when the mission is of much more import than exploration. Well, ToS was involved in a heck of a lot of missions of import, too... maybe that's why story reminded me of the that series, and why I hope to read more by Dickinson.

"The Deeps of the Sky" - Elizabeth Bear - dnf... just can't get into it, though it's prolly me not the story.

"Diving into the Wreck" - Kristine Kathryn Rusch - great lines, like the quarreling crew-members who had to work together, but did so in an "outspoken silence." I'd read more by this author.

[Art Enyedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of short (and some not-so-short) stories, twenty-one in all. Final Frontier is 579 pages in a large thick trade paperback. The theme of the collection is tales of exploring outer space, space colonization, and first contact. Many of the authors are recognizable to me, so I anticipated that this collection, which came out in 2018, would have a lot of excellent stories. I listed the date of original publication for each story, they were written from 2004 thru 2016. In his introduction, the editor Neil Clarke says that he intended this collection to be a companion to his previous anthology, Galactic Empires. It is good to see that the SF short story ecosystem is thriving, even though I mostly read novels. It takes a long time to read a collection this large!

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ A Jar of Goodwill - Tobias S. Buckell. 2010. Buckell kicks off the collection with a gem of a story, so many ideas packed into his tale that it is hard to believe that it is just twenty pages long. The unnamed protagonist is in oxygen debt on a space station, and the half-human/half-cyborg station master will have to take measures - except a reprieve arrives in the form of a mysterious starship has docked and is looking for a professional Friend. A Friend is a professional companion, a modified human who can read micro-expressions, poses, emotions - Friends are ideal during negotiations because they can detect what the other party is thinking. Even better, a Friend is always loyal, not revealing your secrets, and always telling you the truth. The unnamed protagonist is a Friend - it looks like signing onto the Screaming Kettle starship is the only option. Once aboard, the small crew is encountered - Oslo and his weaponized cane, Cruize and Kepler. Also, there is a drone named Beck from the Compact on board. The Compact is a hive mind, and it is clear that Oslo needs their super mental computing powers to analyze a discovery on a chlorine rich planet he has discovered. Lots of good ideas here, I wonder if Buckell has written other tales set in this "universe".

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ Mono No Aware - Ken Liu. 2012. This is the story of Hiroto, one of 1021 humans jammed on the generation ship The Hopeful headed out toward the Virgo star system. The Hopeful moves a good fraction of light speed, propelled by photons from the now-distant sun bouncing off the kilometers-wide, gossamer-thin solar sail. Even a minor rent in such a frail sail could have catastrophic results. The story is not told entirely in linear fashion, there are some flashbacks, and for a short while I was temporarily confused by the unfolding storyline.

⭐ ⭐ Rescue Mission - Jack Skillingstead. 2009. I did not like this tale. Michael is a pilot on starship when he detects something anomalous. He brings the ship into orbit around an unknown swampy planet, and descends to the surface, leaving Natalie alone on board. None of this story made sense to me - the sentient plants send out telepathic lures to a pilot of a starship traveling at lightspeed? The atmosphere of the planet just so happens to be hallucinogenic to human biology? Why did the plants want Michael to stay? But the plants are hostile to female humans (Natalie)? Unless the female is accompanied by Michael?

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ Shiva in Shadow - Nancy Kress. 2004. Three humans are on a ship just outside the galactic core. There are two brilliant scientists on board: Kane and Ajit. The third human is the ship captain and official "Nurturer" - Tizrah. They are investigating gravitational anomalies in an environment of fierce radiation and gravitational forces. The expected forces do not match the predicted physics - something strange is happening. The three of them upload duplicates of their consciousnesses to a probe which is shot off to get much closer to the black hole at the galactic core. The probe will inevitably disintegrate in such a harsh environment, but before failing, they hope to send back collected data in a minicapsule, which will carry their scientific findings back to the true ship and the physical humans. This novella presents some plausible sounding science about extreme phenomena at the galactic core; it also has good depictions of scientists obsessed with their research.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ Slow Life - Michael Swanwick. 2002. Another tale featuring three human explorers. In this story, Alan Greene remains in orbit on the Clement, while scientists Lizzie O'Brien and Consuelo Hong have descended to the surface of Titan. The cold environment contains methane rain and a giant sea of organic compounds. The sea is deep, but the explorers have brought a robotic fish which they release beneath the waves. O'Brien launches herself in a balloon to sail through the atmosphere. Despite all the excitement of exploration, she finds herself quite sleepy, and when she sleeps, it seems a vast mysterious voice is talking to her. I like the descriptions of Titan and how the humans explore that moon.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ Three Bodies at Mitanni - Seth Dickson. 2015. Another story featuring three human explorers: Thienne, Anyahera and Shinobu are on the Lachesis, a powerful starship that is tracking down the fate of "seed ships" that departed from Earth generations ago. Did any of those ships successfully establish a colony? And, if so, what type of civilization did they build, and (most importantly), is the new civilization a threat to Earth? The Lachesis has just departed from Jotunheim, after carefully concluding that the vile slaving society there did not pose a threat to Earth and so should not be exterminated. Now the Lachesis decelerating into the Mitanni system, and discover something even more disturbing. The story ponders what would happen if humans had no personal agenda, but instead acted entirely for the benefit of their species.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ The Deeps of the Sky - Elizabeth Bear. 2012. Insectoid, sentient creatures live in the upper clouds of a gas giant (Jupiter?). They have some technology - they build floating worlds and fly kite-powered skiffs through the troposphere. The daring males fly along the edges of the great storms, collecting valuable compounds the well up from the dense depths. One character, named Stormchases, pushes the limits of his craft, hoping to collect enough material that the Mothergraves floating world will allow him to mate. But a dark object, unlike anything Stormchases has ever seen, spirals down through the edge of the storm - it isn't going to survive long and soon will be crushed in by the deeper depths of the atmosphere. Stormchases dives to investigate.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐Diving Into the Wreck - Kristine Kathryn Rusch. 2005. A lone space pilot flying her ship, Nobody's Business, has come upon an astonishing wreck - it appears to be a spacecraft that is thousands of years old. With the location of her find carefully concealed, she returns to Longbow station and hires five wreck divers to help her investigate. She also researches what type of vessel the ancient ship might be - it looks like a military craft called a Dignity Vessel. Which of course is impossible, because those old ships were never in service when humanity finally reached this distant part of the galaxy. The wreck divers she has hired are all experienced salvage investigators, but a find this significant might be beyond what they can safely handle. The danger and fears of probing the mysterious wreck is well done.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ The Voyage Out - Gweneth Jones. 2008. Criminals are assembled at the Kuiper Belt Station, 6 billion kilometers from the sun. The United States of Earth has condemned them to permanent exile. Using a transmitter called a Buonarotti Device, they will be somehow obliterated from our solar system and reconstituted on an inhabitable world in a distant solar system. Earth is dumping its criminals onto planets as settlers, to thrive or perish according to their own skills, luck and ability to work as a team. The entire story takes place as the criminals meet each other and run through a few simulations to see if they work together. The story felt like it was meant to be a much bigger tale.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ The Symphony of Ice and Dust - Julie Novakova. 2013. Three explorers have journeyed far out into the Kuiper belt to rendeveous with the dwarf planet Sedna. Sedna has a huge eccentric orbit, its closest point to the sun occurs only once every 11,000 years. But when the explorers arrive, they are astonished to find an ancient spaceship with two dead humans in cryosleep pods. It seems that on Sedna's previous perihelion, the small two-person ship Kittiwake had ventured out to Sedna. An unmanned, damaged probe, the Nerivik2, had found something on Sedna and sent back enough intriguing data about something buried in the ice of Sedna that a human team had been sent to investigate. It is too bad that this story isn't expanded further, with more information about what the latest three explorers found in the ice of Sedna.

⭐ Twenty Lights to the "Land of Snow" - Michael Bishop. 2012. This was certainly the most tedious story in the collection. Boring, and much too long. It took me six sessions reading to trudge through the 51 pages that make up this story; so hard to pick up and resume reading, so easy to set it back down again. The story is about a young girl on a space ship traveling for a hundred-plus years to colonize a hellish planet that is tidally locked around the red dwarf star Gliese-581, which spews out deadly Xrays. One side of the planet melts under constantly heat of the sun, the dark side of the planet is a frigid wasteland of eternal darkness. For reasons unexplained, this inhospitable planet has been to chosen for colonization, they will build a settlement in the thin strip of land between the hot and cold sides. Most of this story is about a girl who will be declared the new Dalai Lama, the reincarnated spirit of the man who has died, even though she was already five years old when he perished. There are ghosts onboard the spaceship, but I could not figure out if they were real presences or not. The spaceship appears vast, with temples and courtyards, yet there are less than 1000 colonists on board. There appear to be different sectors: Kham Bay, Amdo, U-Tsang, but there is so little description of the ship's functions that is impossible to imagine how this all works. The story is devoid of surprise, or clever ideas or memorable characters. I hated it.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ The Firewall and the Door - Sean McMullen. 2012. Humanity has sent its one and only probe, the Argo to the stars. Now it has reached the Alpha Centauri system and will do a quick fly-by before a gravity assist and course correction will slingshot it onward to its final destination, the Gliese-581 system, which has 6 planets in orbit around it. The Argo is controlled by quantum entanglement technology, allowing mission control to maintain instantaneous communication and control by virtual assistant, despite the vast distance back to Earth. The Argo launches a probe to do a high speed fly-by of the Alpha-Centauri planets. But something goes wrong, a speck of dust must have collided with a the Argo. A tiny particle, but the Argo was traveling at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light. Catastrophic damage occurs - but then communication is re-established...

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ Permanent Fatal Errors - Jay Lake. 2010. This is a terrific story about a crew of seven immortal Howard-class humans on a starship dubbed Inclined Plane that have journeyed out to investigate the brown dwarf Tiede 1. Howard-class persons seem to be naturally hostile, so having an ageless all-Howard crew is a bit of an experiment. Maduabuchi isn't like the others, he isn't always plotting against the others, and thus Captain Smith can trust him with the mission. Maduabuchi sits in the observatory, staring at the glowing proto-sun (a brown dwarf is too small to ignite into a star, but too big to be a gas giant.) when he spots a flash of green light emanating from the surface. That isn't possible, so he reports to Captain Smith what he saw. It soon be comes clear that this mission has a bigger agenda than routine observation of a brown dwarf. I loved this story, until the end. Because the ending explains nothing at all. Aaargh!

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐Gypsy - Carter Scholz. 2015. This is a long story about a team of desperate colonists fleeing a dysfunctional Earth that degrades more each year. It is clear civilization is breaking down and environmental collapse is underway. Roger Fry is a brilliant physicist who works with matter-antimatter reactions. Of course, the government immediately uses that knowledge to build a fleet of bombs to place into orbit. Alarmed by the imminent destruction of the planet, Roger gathers a group of like-minded scientists and steals a starship, the Gypsy. There isn't much time to test any of the systems, the future colonists slide into experimental cryo-chambers. One by one, the ship wakes them up part way thru the voyage to Alpha Centauri, because a problem needs solving. It is a good story, but I was skeptical that plot that big could possibly remain undetected.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐Sailing the Antarsa - Vandana Singh. 2013. The story speculates about a type of matter (alt-matter) that is invisible to us, yet nevertheless passes through us in currents, just like a hail of nutrinoes. The scientists of the planet Dhara have seen how native devtaru trees launch their seed pods, which are propelled by no noticeable force. Investigating the pods leads to the discovery of altmatter wings and the Antarsa current. A spaceship is built to sail the current, but only a single passenger will take the one way trip toward the Ashtan system. Now she has been awaken from her cryosleep, even though the ship is still a long way out. What has else has been detected in the alt-matter stream? I thought that this was an interesting idea, but how can the pilot (I am not sure she is ever given a name) seemingly see and interact with altmatter?

⭐ ⭐ ⭐The Mind is its Own Place - Carrie Vaughn. 2016. Lieutenant Mitchell Greenau wakes up in the Law Station infirmary. How did he get here? He is the navigator on the Drake, one of the special people with the ability to confirm the matrix of coordinates to make the ship jump. Mitchell cannot recall anything - he had just arrived at this console on the bridge to confirm the next jump, and now he is here, in a facility with other damaged navigators. The medical staff encourage him to not think back, don't try to remember, but Mitchell is baffled by his circumstances and haunted by a suspicion that he doesn't belong here.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐The Wreck of the Godspeed - James Patrick Kelly. 2004. Adel Ranger Santos steps through the MASTA gate (molecular array scanner/transmitter/assembler) to find himself on the starship Godspeed, which has six other passengers. The Godspeed is the oldest of a fleet of pioneering ships created out of hollowed out nickel/iron asteroids and propelled by antimatter drives. The continuum sent these sentient ships out in search of terrestrial planets that can be colonized. When such a planet is found, colonizers will pass through the MASTA gate (the act of scanning destroys the original object, so your initial body is vaporized as a new one is reassembled light years away) and start a colony on the new planet. Right now, the Godspeed is cruising through interstellar space, and so there just the seven eccentric people on board. Kamilah shows Adel around the ship. It becomes clear that Kamilah does not trust "Speedy" (as the ship's controlling AI is called) and that something is wrong.

⭐ Seeing - Genevieve Valentine. 2010. When I finished reading this story, I wondered what had happened. Perhaps it was a story about a crew of three sent to the Gliese-581 system?? The narrative leaped around (and there some paragraphs written in parentheses, but what did that signify?) The whole thing was a incoherent mess. The brief biography of Valentine indicated she wrote stories for comic books - maybe if Seeing had been illustrated I would have understood what was going on? The only reason this isn't the worst story in the collection is because it is much shorter than the interminable Twenty Lights to the "Land of Snow". This was the third story in the collection to mention the star Gliese-581, which made me wonder why it kept showing up. A quick internet search reveals that the M-class Gleise-581 is the 101st closest known star (including brown dwarfs) to our sun, 20.5 light years away, and relatively stable compared to most red dwarfs. Doesn't seem to be anything special about it, so I guess it is just a coincidence that the same star system appears in multiple stories.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐Traveling Into Nothing - An Owomoyela. 2016. Tarsul offers to get Kiu Alee out of the Erhat prison where she is being held, condemned to death for the act of murder. Tarsul needs a pilot and Kiu Alee has augments in her head that are just what are required to guide the ship. Having no choice, Kiu agrees to go with him on his ship, even if it seems to be heading out into empty space, not toward any star system.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐Glory - Greg Egan. 2007. Joan and Anne are two mathematicians from the galaxy spanning civilization called the Amalgam. They are interested in the Noudah civilization, which has not yet achieved star-flight and is unaware of the Amalgam's existence. The Noudah are insect-like creatures, with six limbs and a thorax, they express emotions by altering the colors cells on their face. Joan and Anne are interested in an old Niah culture, which predated the rising Noudah. The Niah existed for 3 million years, they achieved a level of comfortable civilization, and then focused on art, learning and mathematics. The Niah wrote their discoveries on indestructible tablets; Anne and Joan would like very much to see what is written there. So they have donned Noudah bodies and flown to their planet, making themselves known to the two major national powers. Egan is an author who always comes up with original, amazing ideas. Sometimes his prose gets bogged down in technical explanation, but not in this interesting tale.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐The Island - Peter Watts. 2009. The Eriophora sails through the galaxy on an infinitely long mission. When it approachs a star system, it releases von Neumann machines which construct a wormhole in the new star system. What comes out of these wormholes is sometimes monstrous - the Eriophora has been on its journey for so long that Earth is certainly a burnt out cinder that perished a billion years ago. The ship's intelligence, "the chimp" wakes up one of the crew. They are approaching a new system, DHF428, and are starting another build. There is something strange about this star, a red dwarf. Is it signaling?

[Meghan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this book as an advanced reader's copy due to projects from teachers on outer space and astronauts. This book however I found to be very lacking in the "findings" and basic information but more focused on discovery and exploring. The book was a good read and was interesting to discover but for what I thought it was, it did miss the mark. 3 stars!

[Mervi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fine collection and I liked most of the stories. However, the vast majority of these stories are about the relationships between the humans who are in space, rather than first contact or colonization. Some of them also explore the world that the explorers left behind far more than what they encounter.

”A Jar of Godwill” by Tobias S. Buckell: The gedda are an alien race whose economics are based on patents rights on technology. Since they've previously developed tech that the humans use, they own the patents. Alex is a professional friend. A genetically engineered human (a hermaphrodite) whose job is to, essentially, keep humans sane in the vastness of space with empathy and touch (not necessarily sex). However, Alex's account is overdrawn and his only chance is to take a job in an approaching space ship full of scientists. Alex's job is to befriend a drone, another engineered human who is part of a hive mind but who is now far away from the hive.

In "Mono No Aware" by Ken Liu, a giant asteroid is on a collision course with Earth. Some governments have tried to build space ships. The narrator was a child in Japan and we see in flashbacks how the Japanese reacted. In the now of the story, he's aboard the ship, working with others when a disaster occurs.

”Rescue Mission” by Jack Skillingstead: Michael and Natalie had a brief affair. Since they're both single adults, that shouldn't have been a problem. However, they're assigned to the same mission of exploring a new planet. They're the only crew. Things get really weird down there.

"Shiva in Shadow” by Nancy Kress is a story I've listened before in the collection Starship Vectors.

This story takes place in a deep space exploration ship the Kepler which has just three people; the Nurturer Captain Tirzah and two scientists Kane and Ajit. Tirzah’s duty is to keep the scientists focused on their work and working together. In order to do that, she has to constantly monitor them and she also has sex with both. They are exploring a black hole and to get data, the ship launches a probe which will send the data back to the Kepler. The probe has uploads of Tirzah, Kane, and Ajit. The story alternates between the crew aboard the ship and the probe.

In "Slow Life” by Michael Swanwick, three scientists explore the surface of Titan, especially it's nitrogen/methane sea. Lizzie O'Brien enjoys her work immensely when she's ballooning around inside her armored exploration suit, even when she must sleep inside it. But then her dreams turn weird.

In "Three Bodies at Mitanni" by Seth Dickinson humanity has sent seed ships into space. Much later, they have chosen three people who have been sent to evaluate the human colonies which have sprang from the ships. If the colonies might offer existential threat to humanity, they must be destroyed.

Anja-Hera, Tien, and the POV character have complex relationships and they must vote if the colonies will survive or if they will be destroyed.

"The Deeps of the Sky” by Elizabeth Bear: Stormchasers are space miners; they mine a gas giant in fragile little skiffs. When one of them notices an alien ship in trouble, he must decide if helping it is worth losing his potential mating rights with the Mothergrave.

I'm a fan of Rusch's Diving universe so I'm very familiar with the next story, "Diving into the Wreck" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Boss has found an old space ship. It's possibly several thousand years old. She and her crew of four are “diving” into the airless ship without knowing what they'll find. They take a lot of precautions which might not be enough.

"The Voyage Out" by Gwyneth Jones: Ruth is a criminal condemned to death because she dared to speak out against the government, United States of Earth. She and more than a hundred other people are aboard a spaceship which is heading toward a habitable planet. They are going to be put down and start a colony without a possibility of coming back. None of the people are violent criminals but one young girl seems especially innocent.

This story feels like it could be a beginning of novel about the colony.

"The Symphony of Ice and Dust" by Julie Nováková: Kieran and Manuel are aboard Orpheus, looking for material for their next great symphony. On the planet Sedna, they find the remains of the previous expedition, 1100 years go.

"Twenty Lights to the 'Land of Snow'" by Michael Bishop: 990 Tibetian Buddhists, and a group of others, have accompanied their Dalai Lama to exile to another planet. The Kalachakra is still on its way. Two young people are competing for the position of the next Dalai Lama: Jetson is Tibetian teenager and Greta Bryn is young Western woman. The story is seen through computer logs by Greta.

"The Firewall and the Door" by Sean McMullen: Argo is the only unmanned space probe sent about 30 years ago. Its information is sent directly to everyone's living room. Its crew is on Earth and runs the drone from there. The main character is a magistrate, specializing in space law. When things go very wrong on Argo, he's called in. In this world, stopping waste is the most important thing and no other spacecraft were ever built because it would have been too wasteful.

"Permanent Fatal Errors" by Jay Lake: the spaceship has just seven people but they're all heavily modified: one can even withstand vacuum without a spacecraft. They're also all immortal. When they find out something unexpected, they start to turn against each other.

“Gypsy” by Carter Sholz: When the US (or is that world?) economy tanked, Sofi was one of the people who had to take any job she could to survive. Her job isn't terrible but in the end it can't even support her and she must move to the company barracks. The world is full of hate and distrust. Governments and companies try to control everything and everyone. However, Sofi finds out that a group of people have built a spaceship and they're going to escape the oppressive Earth. They're heading to Alpha Centuri which should have a habitable planet. Sofi joins the crew happily. She should have spent the journey in hibernation but something goes wrong and she's woken just two years into the journey. We also get to know Roger who came up with this project, called Gypsy, and many of the other people involved in and living in this hopeless world.

“Sailing the Antarsa” by Vandana Singh: Mayha is from the planet Dara, which was inhabited a few centuries ago. When the council of kinhouses decides to send someone to find out what happened to people who had left Dara a few generations ago, Mayha in the one who is chosen to go. Alone. She's put in cryosleep but something happens and she's woken too soon. She reminisces about her life in peaceful Dara.

“The Mind is Its Own Place” Carrie Vaughn: Mitchel is one of the pilots on starship Francis Drake. But then Mitchel wakes up in the neurological ward without memories of what happened. He's told that he has a disease which affects a lot of pilots but he can't accept that.

“The Wreck of the Godspeed” James Patrick Kelly: Adele volunteers to go aboard a starship which is looking for new planets to colonize. It has been doing that for a couple of thousand years, with changing crew but the same AI.

“Seeing” Genevieve Valentine: Marika is a scientist and one of the crew of three who are going to travel to Gliese 581. However, something goes terribly wrong.

“Traveling into Nothing” An Owomoyela: Kiu Alee is waiting to die. She was sentenced to death because she’s a murderer. Instead, an alien gives her a chance to live, if she becomes the alien's pilot. The catch is that it's a one-way trip to the alien planet. However, Kiu agrees and then finds out that she must deal with a neural interface she doesn't like.


“Glory” Greg Egan: Two xenomathematicans travel to another star where there are two alien nations which are hostile to each other. The aliens know that they’re not alone in the universe because they have a founding culture which they think is actually alien. However, they’ve never seen or heard from actual aliens before. The (human) mathematicians are interested in that root culture and the mathematics that they came up with. However, that culture died out three thousand years ago so the two must rely on the two nation’s archaeology. The scientists have bodies which look and function like the aliens. Each scientist goes to one nation to encourage them to dig up more of those artifacts. The aliens have very interesting different biology but behave like, well, like USA and Soviet Union at the height of their paranoia.

“The Island” Peter Watts: In the far future, humans have left Earth. This group is traveling very long distances in space to explore. The crew is in deep sleep and only revived when necessary. When the ship encounter something new, it wakes up one of the humans from a very long sleep. To her surprise, she’s confronted by a boy she doesn’t know. He’s build partly from her genes so she’s unexpectedly a mother which doesn’t please her. The boy hasn’t been around humans and the ship’s AI, the Chimp, has been making independent decisions for very long.

“Gypsy” is mostly about the horrible, dystopian world the whole Earth has become. The next story, “Sailing the Antarsea”, is about the wonderful world of Dara that our explorer has left behind and the secrets it might yet contain. It was very interesting to read them one after the other. Many of the stories have spacecrafts where most of the crew is in cryosleep but one is awakened prematurely to deal with a threat. It’s interesting that the stories were still quite different.

I really liked the first story and I’m hoping Buckell will write more in that universe. Bear’s story was very interestingly different from the others and I liked it a lot, too. The same with Swanwick’s story

Of course, Rusch’s novella was also a favorite but I’ve already read the whole series.

While I was somewhat frustrated with some of the stories, overall I enjoyed the collection. The narrators were good and Kowal was very good, as usual

[Johan · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I could go back in time to the first week of May 2021, my advice to myself would be to not read this collection of 21 stories. The first story that I actually liked was the eighth:

- Diving into the Wreck by Kristine Kathryn Rusch on the dangers of exploring the wrecks of old spaceships, especially the ones that shouldn't be there in the first place.

I was getting my hopes up, but alas ..

The other stories worth mentioning

- The Symphony of Ice and Dust by Julie Novakova on discovering some forgotten explorers in the Oort cloud.
- The Firewall and the Door by Sean McMullen with a magistrate as the main protagonist in a SF story
- Gipsy by Carter Scholz about the despair and loneliness aboard Earth's first and also illegal starship.
- Sailing the Antarsa by Vandana Singh, a beautiful spiritual story.

My rating is based on the five stories that I liked, otherwise I would have given it 1 or 2 stars.

[Riju Ganguly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This massive tome, containing prints in font size 9.5 spread across 579 pages plus sundry, was not easy on eyes by any means. But fortunately, apart from a few definitive 'Meh'-s, most of the huge novellas were good reads, with a few jewels here and there.
My take-away would be the following~
1. Tobias S. Buckell's 'A Jar of Goodwill';
2. Nancy Kress's 'Shiva in Shadow';
3. Julie Novakova's 'The Symphony of Ice and Dust';
4. Sean McMullen's 'The Firewall and the Door' (I totally loved it!);
5. Jay Lake's 'Permanent Fatal Errors';
6. Carrie Vaughn's 'The Mind is Its Own Place';
7. An Owomoyela's 'Travelling into Nothing';
8. Peter Watt's 'The Island'.
Reading this book was a worthwhile experience. But it seems that the art of writing crisp and compact short stories is either getting lost, or the editors aren't interested, favouring humongous tales over them.
Meanwhile, if you can get hold of this one and have a handy pair of bifocals, go ahead.

[Alex M · Rating 4 out of 5]

This anthology was excellent - great variety of stories that were almost all utterly captivating. There were very few stories I didn't like - I thought it was a really great mix of authors, writing styles, and story content. Some of them really sat with me after and made me think. Every story was unique, and they were all VERY focused on what the subtitle says: exploring space, colonizing, and first contact. Highly recommend this anthology if you're looking for some great short space/sci-fi stories. I'll definitely be checking out other anthologies by this editor.

[Harry Blanchard]

A collection of stories, all of which are good, none of which are exceptional. The stated anthology theme (exploring in space) doesn't quite hold together, it feels a lot like "miscellaneous" - indeed, there is a strong alternate theme of transhumanism (most of the stories contain this element). It's like they're leftovers from Clarke's other 2 anthologies Galactic Empires and More Human than Human. But. Who cares. The stories are all solid, if you're looking for a generous hit of pure science fiction, this will do nicely.

[Mark Catalfano]

Previously read and liked from this anthology:

Mono No Aware -- Ken Liu -- The Future is Japanese
Slow Life -- Michael Swanwick -- Lightspeed August 2012
The Deeps of the Sky -- Elizabeth Bear -- Edge of Infinity
The Mind is its own Place -- Carrie Vaughn -- Asimov's"

[David Lum · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hits and misses, of course. An enjoyable bunch of SciFi on average.

[Lincoln · Rating 5 out of 5]

The rating is mostly aimed at the last two stories, I found them interesting, not in a I learnt something type of way but simply entertaining...

[John Bohnert · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've never read such a disappointing collection of science-fiction stories in my life.

[Charl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent collection, all fitting the theme quite well.