The Year's Top Hard Science Fiction Stories 2

by Allan Kaster, Gregory Benford, Dave Hutchinson

An unabridged collection spotlighting the “best of the best” hard science fiction stories published in 2017 by current and emerging masters of the genre, edited by Allan Kaster. In “Shadows of Eternity,” by Gregory Benford, a student investigates enigmatic SETI recordings from probes sent to nearby stars despite her teachers’ admonishments to stick to the curriculum. An alien robot offers to help save Earth as war and pollution ravage the last of the survivors on the planet in “The Chatter of Monkeys,” by Bond Elam. In “Acadie,” by Dave Hutchinson, the first humans still, even after five hundred years, hunt across the stars for their augmented children who have left Earth in search of paradise. The crew of an exploratory starship finds an icy moon that might harbor life in “Canoe,” by Nancy Kress. In “The Use of Things,” by Ramez Naam, an astronaut struggles to survive after being jolted free from an asteroid while on a solitary prospecting mission. A problem with the local birds threatens the rebuilding of Bikini Island as sea-levels rise due to global warming in “The Proving Ground,” by Alec Nevala-Lee. In “Holdfast,” by Alastair Reynolds, a genmod human soldier faces off with an alien warrior in the inhospitable terrain of a superjovian planet. A Russian astronaut, gathering debris in near-Earth space, must make tough moral choices when asked to carry out a special mission in “Vanguard 2.0,” by Carter Scholz. And finally, after a terrorist attack, a technically dead fish farmer gets a new body and second chance at life as an experimental super soldier, in “ZeroS,” by Peter Watts.

Genres: Science Fiction

250 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 21, 2018

About the author

Editor of science fiction anthologies

Reviews

[Dennis DAsaro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yearning for the old stuff

Look, these are all well written and interesting. But have endings gone out of style? One of these doesn'tji have one. One is ambiguous.
These stories are inventive, but somehow not as much fun as a nineteen-fifties Clarke collection.
Lots of ideas, characters well drawn, but less punchy than what I grew up on.

[Wdspa43gmail.Com · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent collection . I read it exclusively to the finish. The series captured my interest and made me

And hoping there would be more. I thoroughly enjoyed the reading, and I home this will continue. Thank you, dale

[Jon Pennycook · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slightly disappointing. There were some very good stories, some okay stories, but too many that I skipped that didn't feel like hard SF. A lot of the stories came from just two anthologies which was interesting.

[Charl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chock-full-o-science! With a couple of seriously mind-bending stories, and all the rest satisfyingly tight and solid Sci Fi.

If you like your Sci Fi titanium hard, read it.

[Sarah Murray Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book of good hard science stories, read them twice so must be good. Very nice to find a good editor, I miss Gardner Dozois.

[Charles Myers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good read.



This book is a good read if you like hard science fiction. The stories are varied and each brings out the author's particular style of writing. Worth a look.

[Earl Truss · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not too much here to talk about. The best story, Acadie, was way too long but had a real surprise ending.