“Apartment Wars” by Vera Brook — The widow of a physicist, residing in a country short of living space for its citizens, finds a device that creates small pocket dimensions. This novella is a finalist for a 2025 Analog Analytical Laboratory (AnLab) Award.

“ESRI” by James Dick — The daughter of the woman who launched a failed second mission to Europa, launches the third mission to that moon.

“Freediver” by Isabel J. Kim — A two-man team risks a spacewalk to repair vital portal-spanning telecom cables that hang a hundred meters beneath the ocean . . . and billions of light years away.

“Reality Check” by Nancy Kress — Parents resort to deep brain stimulation to break their son’s addiction to gaming.

“Threat Assessment” by Matthew Kressel & Mercurio D. Rivera — A psychologist is recruited to determine why a self-aware AI, secluded on the Moon, wants to destroy humankind.

“The Last Lunar New Year” by Derek Künsken — The fate of humanity’s descendants is argued in a far-future zero-G court.

“In the Slime of Life" by Edward M. Lerner — Humans and green scum antagonize each other on a malodorous, water world.

“The Hunt for Lemuria 7” by Allen M. Steele — Robotic rovers are dispatched to search for the passengers and crew of a tourist-class lunar spacecraft that mysteriously vanished on the Moon.

“Tenth Contact" by Bruce Sterling & Paul Di Filippo — Astronauts on Ganymede are caught in a once-in-twenty-million-years galactic aurora storm. This novelette is a finalist for a 2025 Asimov’s Readers’ Award.

 “The Twenty-One Second God” by Peter Watts — A man able to keep his sanity after briefly joining a hivemind is interrogated by the government. This novelette is a finalist for a 2026 Locus Award.

“Infestation” by Jay Werkheiser — Borane life-forms discover a planet infested with carbon life-forms.​