The Year's Top Hard Science Fiction Stories 3

An unabridged collection spotlighting the “best of the best” hard science fiction stories published in 2018 by current and emerging masters of the genre.

• “3-adica” by Greg Egan — Sentient characters in an online multiplayer game hack the operating systems of their host machines to escape to a refuge that’s only rumored to exist.

• “Umbernight” by Carolyn Ives Gilman — Struggling colonists, on a world subject to periodic bursts of radiation from its primary’s UV-emitting companion, go on an expedition to recover a critical package from Earth.

• “Icefall” by Stephanie Gunn — The Mountain on the planet, Icefall, holds the mystery to a lost colony and is an irresistible, fatal allure to the climbers of the universe; but no one ever returns from the Mountain.

• “The Woman Who Destroyed Us” by S.L. Huang — A mother seeks revenge on the doctor that changed her neuro-atypical son’s personality with a deep brain stimulation implant.

• “Entropy War” by Yoon Ha Lee — A conquering alien race at the height of their powers, retreats into an arkworld to win the ultimate war in the only way they can.

• “Cosmic Spring” by Ken Liu — An AI piloting an island-ship, that used to be the Earth, struggles to make sense of the universe as the last stars are dying out.

• “Nothing Ever Happens on Oberon” by Paul McAuley — Set in the author’s Quiet War universe, a supervisor of a mining operation on the moon, Oberon, investigates the crash-landing of an ancient escape pod.

• “The Spires” by Alec Nevala-Lee — In depression-era Alaska, a desperate bush pilot reluctantly accepts an illegal charter from a pair of scientists investigating a legendary mirage in Glacier National Park.

• “Providence” by Alastair Reynolds — The crew of a crippled starship, unable to complete its mission, decides to salvage its expedition by providing future exploratory ships with data they did not have.

• “Intervention” by Kelly Robson — A crèche manager gets a chance to work on a bid to re­form Luna’s failing crèche system after initially leaving Luna to work on an asteroid-based crèche.

• “Kindred” by Peter Watts — An entity that controls the solar system wants aid against another entity from a reconstructed human it just created.