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

 

• “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.