The Year's Top Hard Science Fiction Stories 4

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.

• “Soft Edges” by Elizabeth Bear — A coastal restoration researcher can help the police solve a murder but is conflicted over the unjust nature of the criminal justice system.

• “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.

• “A Mate Not a Meal” by Sarina Dorie — An arachnipede becomes wary of potential mates after she sees a male eat her mother . . . but she’s lonely.

• “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.

• “This is Not the Way Home” also by Greg Egan — 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.​​​​​​​

• “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.

• “On the Shores of Ligeia” by Carolyn Ives Gilman — An astrobiology postdoc is called at the last minute to remotely navigate a robot searching for hydrogen-based life on Titan.

• “Ring Wave” by Tom Jolly — An engineer in a life pod is desperate to join a colony in space after an asteroid destroys Earth.

• “The Little Shepherdess” by Gwyneth Jones — A deep-sea mining company’s operation is threatened by a crustacean scientist.

• “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.

• “The Menace from Farside” by Ian McDonald — 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.

• “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.

• “At the Fall” by Alec Nevala-Lee — A robot strives to maintain its energy reserves as it crosses thousands of kilometers underwater to find its way home.

• “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.

• “Cyclopterus” by Peter Watts — A resentful submarine pilot is ordered to an undersea research facility to assist with the mining survey of a formerly protected seabed.