Timescape merits the tag "hard science fiction"; it tells the story of scientists, and readers can't help but learn something about tachyons and physics while reading it. Yet much of the story is about humanity: the men John Renfrew and Gordon Bernstein and their relationships--between husband and wife, lover and lover, English working class and upper class, professor and student, and academician and colleagues.

Winner of the Nebula Award in 1980 and the John W. Clark Award in 1981, Timescape offers readers a great yarn, in terms of both humanity and science.

Dr. Benjamin Knowlton heads the High Energy Astrophysics (enter, a prestigious research facility devoted to the interpretation of astronomical data. He stands at the apex of his profession, respected by his peers and involved in research with the potential to revolutionize our understanding of the universe. But Benjamin has no cause to celebrate. His beloved wife and colleague, Charming, an ex-astronaut turned astronomer, is dying of cancer. She has only a few months to live.

Then an anomalous signal from a remote probe alerts Benjamin to the presence of a wandering black hole beyond the orbit of Pluto. Though its trajectory will take it through the solar system, the singularity poses no threat to Earth-on the contrary, it may hold answers to the most fundamental questions of physics. But when an encoded message is received from the block hole, excitement turns to astonishment and apprehension. The thing is alive, intelligent, its mind residing in powerfully fluctuating fields of electromagnetic energies that radiate outward from its infinitely dense core. And it wants a (loser look at Earth...and its inhabitants.

The entity -- dubbed the Eater for its habit of devouring everything in its path--proves eager to share its vast knowledge, accumulated in the course of explorations that began long before life arose on Earth. In exchange, it seeks to learn about human art, culture, and science. The world is charmed by the seemingly beneficent alien. Even Channing is infused with fresh strength and purpose.

But gradually a terrifying truth about the singularity emerges -- a truth almost too awful to comprehend. Now, as the world waits, Channing volunteers to undertake a desperate gamble: a one-to-one confrontation with the Eater.Astrophysicist Benjamin Knowlton heads up a large research center while caring for his terminally ill ex-astronaut wife, Channing. He and his team discover a black hole moving quickly through space, devouring everything in its path, and name it, the "Eater." There's no danger -- its orbit will miss Earth with room to spare. Then the Eater speaks. It is a life form, an intelligence built into an astrophysical field. It seems benign enough: interested in human art, culture, and intelligence, and eager to share its vast knowledge of many previously unknown alien cultures. But gradually, humans discover the terrifying truth: the Eater is lonely for companionship on its interstellar journeys, and plans to "upload" the personalities of Earth -- by destroying the planet and their physical beings. Channing volunteers to sacrifice the little time she has left for a magnetic immortality, to become part of the creature and, perhaps, defeat it.

Martian Race is near-future SF, set in the twenty-teens (just before Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars saga kicks off), which may contribute to its being a bit of a slow starter; this is realistic, nuts-and-bolts speculation on a mission using pretty basic technology. But the pace picks up considerably as our heroes--the likable Julia and her Russky hubby Viktor and crew, backed by the Mars Consortium and its biotech billionaire CEO John Axelrod--begin to duke it out with a Euro-Sino concern to claim the $30 billion Mars Prize and, of course, get back from the Red Planet in one piece. Benford's work throughout is engaging and thorough, exploring every aspect of why we should make this trip at all (and even a few arguments against it, like Mars Bar marketing tie-ins). --Paul Hughes

So, humans want and are able to communicate (wordlessly and otherwise) over thousands of years. But, asks Benford, can we accurately convey information over millions of years, or longer? We may need to do just that in order to responsibly protect future beings from our current, long-reaching messages--nuclear waste, climate change, extinction of species. Benford was part of a team of artists and scientists trying to come up with ways of saying "WARNING" to humans (or other beings) in the distant future. Deep Time is a fascinating look at the nature of communication and the future implications of things we do today. It's a terrifically intelligent, detailed, and comprehensive long view, with a message sorely needed by short-lived, but brainy, humans. --Therese Littleton

On the poisonous, icy surface of Ganymede, a man and a boy are on a deadly hunt.Their prey is the Aleph--an unknowable alien artifact that roamed and ruled Ganymede for countless millennia. Indescribable, infinitely dangerous, the Aleph haunts men's dreams and destroys all efforts to terraform Ganymede into a habitable planet. Now in a modern world ancient struggle is joined, as a boy seeks manhood, a man seeks enlightenment, and a society seeks the power to rule the universe.

Life onboard the aging space station is cramped, spartan, and dangerous. Its mission--to monitor incoming signals and transmissions in search of alien life--has so far proven fruitless.

It is the only world Matt has ever known.

But now, as the threshold of adulthood--with its onset of new questions, confusions and feelings --Matt Bohles faces an impending crisis that threatens everything he knows and is. For unless he can prove himself an invaluable member of the scientific team--and quickly--he will be exiled to a filthy, perilous and unfamiliar hell called Earth.

But even though this collection of just over 20 short pieces wasn't the magazine's last gasp, some of them prove superior to the Star Wars, Star Trek, and Babylon 5 fiction that followed in the Wizards years. Editor Kim Mohan (who stayed on for the revival) collected then-new works from the likes of Ursula K. Le Guin, Gregory Benford, and Howard Waldrop, as well as other shorts from less-established writers. Of particular note is a Robert Silverberg-Philip K. Dick tandem: a 1953 Amazing reprint of Dick's Noah's Ark-inspired "The Builder," followed by Silverberg's praise and ruminations in "Quality and Quantity: The Short Fiction of Philip K. Dick."

Aside from Noah's Ark, quite a few other ideas get tossed around--everything from divine androgyny to time travel to the parameters of dream flight (the last being the title of a piece by Arlan Andrews Sr.), all at an easily digestible length and most matching the quality of previous Mohan-edited collections. --Paul Hughes

Caveats aside, these 12 stories do demonstrate what the Campbell- and Nebula-winning Benford does best: tight hard-SF that's plausible for both its science and its characterization. (Or, in the case of the dark "A Dance to Strange Music," the clever and deliberate omission of characterization.) Benford is inarguably one of the genre's big guns, alongside dons like Greg Bear and Paul J. McAuley, with whom Benford shares the distinction of being an accomplished scientist to boot (he teaches plasma physics and astrophysics at UC-Irvine).

Any way you cut it, a collection of Benford stories is going to be worth your time whether you're already familiar with his work or not. But if you're not, consider a longer piece--like Cosm or Timescape--to get properly acquainted. --Paul Hughes