The Year's Top Hard Science Fiction Stories 4

by Allan Kaster, Greg Egan, Ian McDonald

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

Genres: Science Fiction

441 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 19, 2020

About the author

Editor of science fiction anthologies

Reviews

[Peter Tillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

An above-average Year's Best anthology, the better of the two of these I've read so far. The book is available at no extra charge if you subscribe to Amazon's Kindle Unlimited service (which you can try for a month at no charge).
Full ToC and story details: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?...
My favorites, in rough descending order:
• "The Little Shepherdess" • (2019) • short story by Gwyneth Jones. Wonderful feel-good story about a marine biologist studying critters who live on the abyssal plains near deep-sea polymetallic nodules. 4.5 stars, highly recommended. My full review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
• "The Ocean Between the Leaves" • (2019) • novelette by Ray Nayler. A slice-of-life story in the Istanbul Protectorate by a newish writer who's becoming one of my favorites. 4.5 stars, highly recommended. Copy online at https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fi...
• "The Menace from Farside" • 2019 novella by Ian McDonald. A fine YA adventure and Heinlein homage in his popular Luna series. I have a full review at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
• "On the Shores of Ligeia" • (2019) • short story by Carolyn Ives Gilman. First-rate story about an ESA mission exploring Titan, from the POV of the human operator of the robot rover. Online at https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fi...

Other stories that I would recommend include "Soft Edges," a police procedural by Elizabeth Bear; "By the Warmth of Their Calculus" by Tobias S. Buckell; and "The Slipway," an astronomical puzzle-piece by Greg Egan. And there are more stories just a notch or two behind those. Overall rating for the anthology: 3.5 stars, rounded up.

[Kelly Wagner · Rating 3 out of 5]

No table of contents

An anthology like this really needs a table of contents with hyperlinks to each story; it's slow going without it.

[Charl · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first story almost stopped me from reading any others, but I've read a couple of the others, so I kept going.

And the rest of the collection was satisfying. If you like hard SF, go for it. And if you ignore the baby in the first one, it's pretty good, too.

What's wrong with the first one? New bride goes to the Moon for their honeymoon. They get stranded. She has to try to catch the Skyhook to get back to Earth, which involves driving to the far side of the moon. Which is fine, except for she has a new-born infant with her! Seriously? Either they put a near-term pregnant woman on a rocket to the moon (high gees do get mentioned), or they let her take her suckling infant with her? (She's not there long enough to get pregnant and deliver after she got there.) Either one is so preposterous I had to simply ignore the baby's presence to read the story. I expect better of Mr. Egan.

Like I said, though, other than that, I enjoyed the whole collection. It's worth it.

[Boyd Waters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent Choices

After working at an observatory, writing software for astronomers, I truly love Greg Egan's "Slipway". It took me some effort to visualize the geometry, but was a more rewarding story for all that.

Tom Jolly's "Ring Wave" is a new take on the aftermath of an Earth-killing asteroid.

"Winter Wheat", a story of one farmer's Quixotic resistance to rent-seeking conglomerates' genetic modifications.

More here that are truly great.

I first enjoyed some of these stories in science fiction magazines, but it's difficult for me to collect the digital back issues.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good read..not great

Many of the stories are interesting the last novella about the moon base just seriously dragged on way too long with not enough interesting detail to make me stick with it. Very rarely like maybe 2% of the time tops do I just scroll to the ending cuz I'm done.

[Jon Pennycook · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good value for money.

[Earl Truss · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not very many outstanding stories. Mostly average.

[Bill Reynolds · Rating 4 out of 5]

WARNING. The Kindle edition of this book is defective. It tells you that the book is complete after it is only up to 78%. You have to keep going, or you'll miss a terrific novella by Ian McDonald, The Menace from Farside, which is set in the universe of his Luna trilogy.

[Patrick J. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read several stories from this anthology. None were badly written, but none of the stories were memorable. I'm putting this aside for now.