edited by Allan Kaster

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An unabridged collection spotlighting the best space adventures, alternate histories, and time travel stories published in 2023 by current and emerging masters of the science fiction genre.

 

• “Ceres 7” by Lorraine Alden—the all-female crew of a colony ship is hard-pressed to complete their mission.

• “The Mausoleum’s Children by Aliette de Bodard—a woman returns to a military, starship junkyard to rescue two of her childhood friends from a life of servitude.

• “Waystation City” by A. T. Greenblatt—a journalist helps twins, lost in time, get back to the 1970s.

• “Forever the Forest” by Simone Heller—a space craft crash lands in a sapient forest on an alien world.

• “Embot’s Lament” by James Patrick Kelly—a bot from another timeline takes an interest in a woman running away from her husband.

• “Heavy Lies” by Rich Larson—a pregnant alien becomes anxious about birthing its successor.

• “Counting Casualties” by Yoon Ha Lee—a fleet of spaceships is called upon to intercept an invading deadfleet.

• “Blade and Bone” by Paul McAuley—a company of mercenaries track down a raiding party on a Mars blighted by artificial organisms.

• "Symbiosis” by D.A. Xiaolin Spires—a pregnancy in a colony city of an asteroid belt does not go as planned.

• “The House on Infinity Street” by Allen M. Steele—two science fiction writers are obsessed with finding someone from the future.

• “Blowout” by Wole Talabi—a woman tries to rescue her brother from a subsurface drilling blowout on Mars using a remote-controlled robot.

• “The Blaumlich” by Lavie Tidhar—a young man, bored with his life on Mars, imagines another one for himself.

• “To the Mean” by Rick Wilber—a woman travels back in time to claim her Caledonian title from a Roman emperor.

• “Bird-Girl Builds a Machine” by Hannah Yang—a woman is devoted to a machine she can’t tell her daughter about.