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This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, August 2012.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Nebula Award winning novella. It originally appeared on Sci Fiction, July 5, 2000. The story can also be foundin the anthology Nebula Awards Showcase 2002, edited by Kim Stanley Robinson. It is included in the collection Goddesses & Other Stories (2011).

Light and Shadow collects eight stories by award-winning author Linda Nagata. Visit high-tech future battlefields, surreal other worlds, an orbital habitat, and a distant moon. Embrace action, and harrowing adventure. Half of these stories have appeared in various best-of-the-year anthologies, and each is introduced with brief notes from the author.

Table of Contents:

• "Through Your Eyes" (2013) - short story
• "Halfway Home" (2013) - short story
• "Codename: Delphi" (2014) - short story
• "Attitude" (2014) - novelette
• "A Moment Before It Struck" (2012) - short story
• "Light and Shadow" (2014) - short story
• "Nightside on Callisto" (2012) - short story
• "The Way Home" (2015) - short story

Virgil Copeland, Randall Panwar, and Gabrielle Villanti are all brilliant young biotechnologists, working together on an artificial life-form affectionately known as "LOVs," an acronym for Limit Of Vision, because in size LOVs are just at the boundary of what the human eye can easily see.

LOVs contain bioengineered human neurons. They enhance brain function when implanted in test animals. Experimentation on humans is, of course, highly illegal. But it's the nature of brilliant and ambitious young minds to ignore the rules. Believing the LOVs to be perfectly safe, Virgil, Panwar, and Gabrielle experiment on themselves, using implanted LOVs to enhance their own cognitive abilities.

But there is a limit of vision, too, when we try to foresee the consequences of technology--especially of a living, thinking technology that can evolve into new forms in a matter of hours.

When the experiment goes terribly wrong, the consequences are bizarre and unforeseeable. Virgil finds himself on the run, riding the whirlwind of a runaway biotechnology that could lead to the next phase of human evolution.

Acclaimed hard-SF author Linda Nagata introduces a new world: a human colony whose people have forgotten their past, on a tremendous structure that forms a great ring around the sun... where the sky is bisected by an arch of light and the mysterious "silver" rises from the ground each night to completely transform the landscape-and erase from existence anything it touches.

Young Jubilee is devastated when her brother Jolly is caught and taken by the silver. But when a forbidding stranger with the incredible power to control the silver comes seeking Jolly-and claiming that Jolly knows him-Jubilee first distrusts the man, then fears him and flees. For she has learned an impossible secret: Jolly may still be alive... and may somehow become the catalyst for the annihilation of everything she knows if she does not find him first.

Jubilee's flight will lead her to discoveries she could never have imagined, from the secret history of her civilization and her people's origins to the true nature of the silver, to the awesome forgotten memories within her. And with these she will forever alter her world's future... unless the dark stranger, relentless in his pursuit, achieves his goal of destroying it. One way or another, Jubilee's final confrontation will change everything....

Ava Arnett is a Honolulu cop, captain of the night shift in the autonomous Waikiki District. Nine years ago a massive hurricane hit the island. Ava remains haunted by the mistakes she made and the lives she failed to save during that disaster. Since then, she relies on HADAFA, an AI designed to observe, analyze, and predict human behavior. HADAFA monitors her actions, and its assessments guide her decisions.

Now, another Category 5 hurricane is approaching Honolulu... In the hectic hours before landfall, Ava stumbles into a terrorist conspiracy - and HADAFA begins to glitch. She can no longer rely on the AI. She must decide on her own whether or not to trust a mysterious federal agent named Lyric Jones - knowing the wrong choice could lead to greater devastation... and a war no one will win.

Scarred by war, in pursuit of truth.

Army veteran True Brighton left the service when the development of robotic helicopters made her training as a pilot obsolete. Now she works at Requisite Operations, a private military company established by friend and former Special Ops soldier Lincoln Han. ReqOp has embraced the new technologies: robotics, big data, and artificial intelligence are all tools used to augment the skills of veteran warfighters-for-hire.

But the tragedy of war is still measured in human casualties, and when True makes a chance discovery during a rescue mission, old wounds are ripped open. She's left questioning what she knows of the past, and resolves to pursue the truth, whatever the cost.

A powerful science fiction story about an architect on Earth commissioned to create (via long distance) a masterwork with materials from the last abandoned Martian colony, a monument that will last thousands of years longer than Earth, which is dying.

This story can be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Twelve (2018), edited by Jonathan Strahan, The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection (2018), edited by Gardner Dozois, The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 3 (2018), edited by Neil Clarke, and The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2018, edited by Rich Horton.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Operation Arcana (2015), edited by John Joseph Adams, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, March 2015.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

It is the most powerful technology known to humanity, microscopically small, allowing its user to control and change other's moods and emotions, and even to reprogram his or her own genetic structure. Its potential as the ultimate weapon or an instrument of peace has led to its ban by the Commonwealth.

Someone has stolen this outlaw technology, the Bohr Maker, from the secret files of the Commonwealth Police, at the command of a man with a genetic time bomb coded into his DNA. Nikko Jiang-Tibayan has only weeks to live, and he will do anything to stay only weeks to live, and he will do anything to stay alive, even if it means the end of life as we know it.

But then the Bohr Maker falls into the hands of a beautiful young woman in the poverty-stricken slums of Sunda. Its technology will make her both fugitive and messiah. The object of frantic searches by a walking dead man and a high-tech police force, the Maker holds the key to the total destruction of humanity -- or its miraculous rebirth....

In a war of belief, faith is a virus, and it's spreading fast. Remnants of an alien nanotechnology infest the surface of the planet, Deception Well, giving rise to deadly plagues that make the Well uninhabitable-or so most believe.

Jupiter Apolinario saw it differently. He believed the planet was host to an ancient, alien mechanism of transformation meant to embrace all life forms in an ecstatic communion. Jupiter disappeared on the planet along with a handful of followers, though whether they were taken by death or transcendence, no one could say.

Ten years later, Jupiter's son, Lot, stands at the center of conflict. Like his father, Lot has a seductive presence, and a charismatic nature that seems more-than-human. People are helplessly drawn to him. Their faith in him is strong and their numbers are growing, but Lot is beset with doubts about his father's teachings. So he sets out to learn the truth about Jupiter, about his own powerful calling as a prophet, and about the real nature of Deception Well, where a razor-thin line divides bliss from damnation.

Enjoy all four books of the Nanotech Succession, a collection of stand-alone novels exploring the rise of nanotechnology and the strange and fascinating future that follows.

Aboard Null Boundary, a giant starship thousands of years old, four survivors of an ancient alien war are making a desperate journey: Lot, son of a fiery prophet and carrier of an insidious virus that spreads a cultlike religious mania among those it infects; Urban, Lot's boyhood friend from the city of Silk, and a man in search of challenge and adventure; Clemantine, cast adrift when her world was destroyed, and yearning for revenge; and Nikko, sometimes a living man, but always the ship's disembodied mind.

They are bound for unknown territory. Ahead of them loom vast, lightless clouds of dust and gas where stars are born, and where the alien Chenzeme are believed to live. The Chenzeme are an enigmatic race whose automated warships have ravaged the living worlds of the galaxy's Orion arm for millions of years. But why? Null Boundary's crew is driven to find out--though in their quest to discover the source of the Chenzeme, they must also explore the terrible truth of their own past, the meaning of revenge, and the price each one of them is willing to pay for survival. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

For Katie Kishida, the nanotechnology revolution begins with an act of love. Katie is a young mother with a successful career and a loving marriage, when her perfect life is shattered by the sudden death of her husband, Tom. Putting her faith in a science that hasn't been invented yet, Katie has Tom's body placed in cryonic suspension-frozen in liquid nitrogen against a time when advances in nanotechnology might heal his injuries and restore his life. Katie never suspects the consequences that will follow.

Tom's death and his costly entombment spark immediate political controversy. It's a debate that only grows more passionate as the years go by. Katie's life is taken over by the need to defend her husband's future and to shepherd into existence the controversial technologies that might let him live again . . . even as she's haunted by the question: Does Tom really want to come back?

Tech-Heaven is a compelling story of devotion and unyielding determination set amid the tumultuous politics of our time, in a world that is teetering on the cusp of a technological revolution like no other in history. Enjoy all four books of the Nanotech Succession, a collection of stand-alone novels exploring the rise of nanotechnology and the strange and fascinating future that follows-beginning tomorrow and reaching far into time.

Deception Well is a world on the edge, home to an isolated remnant surviving at the farthest reach of human expansion. All across the frontier, other worlds have succumbed to the relentless attacks of robotic alien warships, while hundreds of light years away, the core of human civilization--those star systems closest to Earth, known as the Hallowed Vasties--have all fallen to ruins. Powerful telescopes can see only dust and debris where once there were orbital mega-structures so huge they eclipsed the light of their parent stars.

No one knows for sure what caused the Hallowed Vasties to fail, but a hardened adventurer named Urban intends to find out. He has the resources to do it. He commands a captive alien starship fully capable of facing the dangers that lie beyond Deception Well.

With a ship's company of explorers and scientists, Urban is embarking on a voyage of re-discovery. They will be the first in centuries to confront the hazards of an inverted frontier as they venture back along the path of human migration. Their goal: to unravel the mystery of the Hallowed Vasties and to discover what monstrous life might have grown up among the ruins.

A Lost Ship - A New World

Urban is no longer master of the fearsome starship Dragon. Driven out by the hostile, godlike entity, Lezuri, he has taken refuge aboard the most distant vessel in his outrider fleet.

Though Lezuri remains formidable, he is a broken god, commanding only a fragment of the knowledge that once was his. He is desperate to return home to the ring-shaped artificial world he created at the height of his power, where he can recover the memory of forgotten technologies.

Urban is desperate to stop him. He races to reach the ring-shaped world first, only to find himself stranded in a remote desert, imperiled by a strange flood of glowing "silver" that rises in the night like fog - a lethal fog that randomly rewrites the austere, Earthlike landscape. He has only a little time to decipher the mystery of the silver and to master its secrets. Lezuri is coming - and Urban must level up before he can hope to vanquish the broken god.

"Tanjiri is not for you. You are not ready to encounter what exists there."

So Lezuri spoke in warning, long ago. Urban still possesses the strange gift--the impossible puzzle--Lezuri gave him that day. A needle, ultra-thin and twelve centimeters long, with a silvery surface that slices light into rainbow glints. All Lezuri's knowledge lies locked within that needle. Urban has only to discover the trick of opening it, to gain that knowledge for himself--but the needle remains an enigma.

Now Dragon and its fleet of outriders has reached the periphery of Tanjiri system. The belt of ruins lies ahead: a chaos of remnant megastructures from a fallen civilization. Farther in, an Earthlike world orbits in the company of a miraculous living moon created less than 4,000 years ago. An entity--one greater even than Lezuri--must have made that moon. And yet the system is silent. No one, nothing, has answered Dragon's hails.

Perhaps the entity is gone? But Urban doesn't believe that. He is sure that when the fleet enters Tanjiri system, he will meet this maker of worlds--with the lives of everyone he loves at stake. Better, safer, to encounter this entity from a position of strength, armed with all the knowledge and power contained within the needle.

The starship Dragon, accompanied by its fleet of outriders, is faring ever deeper into that region known as the Hallowed Vasties. Here, at the shattered heart of ancient human civilization, once-living worlds were ripped apart by the dimensional intrusions of a Blade. Yet despite the apocalyptic-scale destruction, the fleet's telescopes have picked out signs of life among the ruins and the ship's company is eager to go on--but should they?

From his post on Dragon's high bridge, Urban looks ahead to the smaller starship, Griffin, now far, far in front of the fleet. The mind that pilots that ship--a stern and colder version of his lover, Clemantine--has gone silent. The implication chills him. Like Dragon, Griffin was an alien warship, designed to destroy without mercy all living worlds, and it still has a mind of its own. The question that haunts Urban: Has that alien mind somehow reclaimed control of Griffin?

It's a question he must answer, and soon. Every wonder that lies ahead--and every ambition hidden within his heart--is at risk while Griffin's true nature remains unknown.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, April 2014. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Military SF & Space Opera: First Annual Edition (2015), edited by David Afsharirad.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This stort story in Nagata's The Red series originally appeaared in Lightspeed, May 2012. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirtieth Annual Collection (2013), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Read the full story for free at Lightspteed.

There Needs To Be A War Going On Somewhere.

Lieutenant James Shelley commands a high-tech squad of soldiers in a rural district within the African Sahel. They hunt insurgents each night on a harrowing patrol, guided by three simple goals: protect civilians, kill the enemy, and stay alive - because in a for-profit war manufactured by the defense industry there can be no cause worth dying for. To keep his soldiers safe, Shelley uses every high-tech asset available to him - but his best weapon is a flawless sense of imminent danger... as if God is with him, whispering warnings in his ear.

In the wake of nuclear terrorism, a squad of elite soldiers must combat artificial intelligence and seek justice in this military political thriller, a sequel to The Red: First Light.

Lieutenant James Shelley and his squad of US Army soldiers were on a quest for justice when they carried out the unauthorized mission known as First Light. They returned home to America to face a court-martial, determined to expose the corruption in the chain of command that compelled their actions. But in a country still reeling from the nuclear terrorism of Coma Day, the courtroom is just one battlefield of many.

A new cycle of violence ignites when rumors of the elusive, rogue AI known as the Red go public - and Shelley is, once again, pulled into the fray. Challenged by his enemies, driven by ideals, Shelley feels compelled to act. But are the harrowing choices he makes really his own, or are they made for him, by the Red? And with millions of lives at stake in a game of nuclear cat-and-mouse, does the answer even matter?

In the third book in The Red Trilogy, former Army Lt. James Shelley becomes a black ops sniper working for the Red--a suspected rogue artificial intelligence that is ripped from today's headlines.

James Shelley has left his lover, Delphi, and his companion-in-arms, Jayne Vasquez, with a fortune acquired from a fallen oligarch. They believe him to be dead, and he doesn't try to set the record straight. His long-running question has been answered: There are other soldiers like him who have served the purposes of the Red--and he has accepted his place among them. As a soldier of the Red he pursues covert missions designed to nudge history away from existential threats--but that doesn't mean the world is growing more orderly. It's only in the froth of a "managed chaos" that human potential can grow and thrive. Shelley's missions eventually take him into orbit--and into conflict with those he loves--Delphi and Jaynie--who are determined to escape the influence of the Red.

The Wild existed in beautiful and ruthless perfection--until the people came.

Generations past, disaster drove the people to seek a new home on a wild continent that had never before known a human presence. Spirits of wind, stream, forest, and mist inhabit this land, but these beings care nothing for the people, and some are cruel and hostile.

Siddél is a power among these spirits. He is thunder and lightning, he is the storm--and he despises all people. He has resolved to drive them from the land and for this purpose he created the arowl--mad, ravening beasts with an unquenchable hunger. Arowl are abominations. They hunt all creatures, while craving human flesh above all else.

Bennek is a young warrior, skilled at hunting arowl and eager to slay any that dare venture into the Protected Lands. But he longs for greater deeds. One morning, in the cold blue hour before sunrise, an owl spirit visits, urging Bennek, along with his brother and cousin, to take on a perilous quest. The three youths must find the Snow Chanter--an ancestral spirit that they had thought long gone from the world. History teaches that the Snow Chanter was an enemy of Siddél. If she still exists, might her power help to bring him down?

Bennek is determined to find out. With his kin, he sets off to seek for her. But other forces are stirring. As the trio ventures north into a dangerous land overrun by arowl, they chance to meet a strange young woman--a sorceress, with ambitions even greater than their own.

An end must be made--and soon.

The future of the people hangs in the balance as Lanyon continues her journey north. She must find the Storm Lair, home of the Inyomere Siddél, where she'll have one more chance to slay the great spirit of storm. But her journey grows ever more perilous and strange, and even her devoted companions cannot keep her safe.

Bennek, meanwhile, has been taken south to Habaddon. Through Lanyon's magic he has survived terrible injury, yet he still needs time to heal. But time is short--and Siddél is resolved to destroy Habaddon. As the great Inyomere sends ever more arowl south towards the city, Bennek finds himself swept up in a relentlessly brutal war.

Never before have the people warred against the people.

Bennek senses change flooding the world. Dread weighs on him, and he fears what is to come. But Jahallon sees hope.

Gifted with foresight, Jahallon is certain it won't be much longer before Lanyon returns, bringing the talisman with her. Determined to distract and weaken Lanyon's enemies before they have a chance to waylay her, he launches a great offensive against both the Inyomere Siddél and the sorcerer Édan.

With his growing skills, Bennek serves at Jahallon's side, directing Habaddon's army--but his skills are not enough to contend against Édan, while Siddél remains an even greater enemy. All the while, time is running short.

Sturgeon Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, October 2012 and has been reprinted in Clarkesworld, Juli 2016. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Seven (2013), edited by Jonathan Strahan, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2013, edited by Rich Horton and Year's Best SF 18 (2013), edited by David G. Hartwell. It is included in the collection Two Stories: "Nahiku West" & "Nightside on Callisto".

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

This short story originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, June 2013. It can also be found in The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2014, edited by Rich Horton.