The Year's Top Tales of Space and Time

An unabridged collection spotlighting the best space operas, alternate histories, and time travel stories published in 2020 by current and emerging masters of the science fiction genre, edited by Allan Kaster.

• “Midstrathe Exploding” by Andy Dudak — A city that had been struck with a time bomb two hundred years ago has become a popular destination for tourists.
• “Not This Tide” by Shiela Finch — Time travelers visit England in 1944, while it sustains V1 and V2 rocket attacks, to pass on important information.
• “Exile’s End” by Carolyn Ives Gilman — A museum curator finds herself at odds with a representative of a long-persecuted culture from another planet wanting to repatriate a painting.
• “Words We Say Instead” by Brit E. B. Hvide — An old military smartship pilot searches for the decommissioned ship with which she had once bonded.
• “Beyond the Dragon’s Gate” by Yoon Ha Lee — The military enlists the expertise of a former academician to prevent the annihilation of their AI-controlled starship fleet.
• “Pax Mongolica” by Evan Marcroft — In a world where the Mongol Empire reigns, an Egyptian boy meets a Polish girl at a zoo where the old gods are kept.
• “Knock, Knock Said the Ship” by Rati Mehrotra — An indentured refugee from war-ravaged Luna, working off her debt on a spaceship, collaborates with the ship’s AI to fight off pirates.
• “Father” by Ray Nayler — In an alternate 1950s, the VA sends a robot to be a surrogate father to the son of a dead soldier.
• “Laws of Impermanence” by Kenneth Schneyer — the text of a long lost will continually changes over time.
• “Come the Revolution” by Ian Tregillis — In an alternate 18th Century Holland, a robot whose obedience is enforced through pain is determined to escape her makers’ constraints.
• “Sinew and Steel and What They Told” by Carrie Vaughn — A pilot, injured in an accident that should have killed him, is forced to reveal a long-held secret he’s been keeping from the captain and crew of a pirate-hunting starship.