A collection spotlighting the “best of the best” science fiction stories published in 2013 by current and emerging masters of the genre, edited by Allan Kaster.

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• “Zero for Conduct” by Greg Egan — An Afghani teenager, living in a near-future Iran with her exiled grandfather, makes a game-changing superconductor discovery.

• “Exit, Interrupted” by C. W. Johnson — A young girl struggles to survive on a planet, with a stringent class structure, where Doors are used to go off-world.

• “Pathways” by Nancy Kress — A teenage girl from a small Kentucky mountain town, in a near-future U. S., struggles with her family and culture as she seeks treatment for Fatal Familial Insomnia.

• “Entangled” by Ian R. MacLeod — An Indian woman, in a Britain turned upside down by a disease that links people’s minds, searches for answers to her personal catastrophe.

• “The Irish Astronaut” by Val Nolan — A colleague brings the ashes of an astronaut, who died in the Aquarius disaster, to Ireland for final burial.

• “Among Us” by Robert Reed — A government agency goes to extraordinary lengths to identify and track the aliens among us.

• “A Map of Mercury” by Alastair Reynolds — A failed artist is dispatched to retrieve an artistic genius from a collective of cyborgs parading across the face of Mercury.

• “Martian Blood” by Allen M. Steele — A researcher from Earth goes on an expedition into the untamed regions of Mars to extract blood from its natives.

• “The She-Wolf’s Hidden Grin” by Michael Swanwick — Set in the same milieu as Gene Wolfe’s “The Fifth Head of Cerberus,” this story follows the childhoods of two sisters on a planet far from Earth.

• “The Best We Can” by Carrie Vaughn — A frustrated scientist pursues first contact among an apathetic populace.