Search Worlds Without End

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology The Lowest Heaven (2013), edited by Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection (2014), edited by Gardner Dozois.

This short story originally appeared in Interzone, #257 March-April 2015. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Ten (2016), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 1 (2016), edited by Neil Clarke.

This short story appeared in the anthology Voices from the Past (2011). It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Ninth Annual Collection (2012).

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Shine: An Anthology of Optimistic Science-Fiction (2010), edited by Jetse de Vries, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, August 2013. The story can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 16 (2011), edited by Kathryn Cramer and David G. Hartwell.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Alastair Reynolds has continued to publish short fiction throughout the thirty-odd years of his professional career. This fourth collection gathers material mostly written by the former space scientist in the last decade, even as a number of stories--such as the title piece, set in the universe of House of Suns--revisit earlier environments.

The scope of settings is wide, ranging from the contemporaneous Earth to the near future and out to the furthest realms of the galaxy, and taking in such diverse topics as the perils of immortality, cybernetic encounters in the Wild West, uncanny skateboard parks and the flocking behaviour of birds. There is horror here, but also hope--and not a little black humour.

The collection includes "Open and Shut," "Night Passage," and "Plague Music," a long, previously unpublished story, all three set in the Revelation Space universe.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: Winter Did Come
• Belladonna Nights
• Different Seas
• For the Ages
• Visiting Hours
• Holdfast
• The Lobby
• A Map of Mercury
• Magic Bone Woman
• Providence
• Wrecking Party
• Sixteen Questions for Kamala Chatterjee
• Death's Door
• A Murmuration
• Open and Shut
• Plague Music
• Night Passage
• Story Notes

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Constellations: The Best of New British SF (2005), edited by Peter Crowther. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Third Annual Collection (2006), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Year's Best SF 11 (2006), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Kramer. The story is included in the collections Zima Blue and Other Stories (2006) and Beyond the Aquila Rift: The Best of Alastair Reynolds (2016).

This is an amazing collection of some of the best short fiction ever written in the SF genre, by an author acclaimed as 'the mastersinger of space opera' THE TIMES.

With an introduction by noted SF critic Johnathan Strahan, this collection of twenty short stories, novellettes and novellas includes MINLA'S FLOWERS, SIGNAL TO NOISE, TROIKA, and seven previous uncollected stories, including TRAUMA POD, THE WATER THIEF and IN BABELSBERG.

Alastair Reynolds has won the Sidewise Award and been nominated for The Hugo Awards for his short fiction. One of the most thought-provoking and accomplished short-fiction writers of our time, this collection is a delight for all SF readers.

Table of Contents:

• "Great Wall of Mars"
• "Weather"
• "Beyond the Aquila Rift"
• "Minla's Flowers"
• "Zima Blue"
• "Fury"
• "The Star Surgeon's Apprentice"
• "The Sledge-Maker's Daughter"
• "Diamond Dogs"
• "Thousandth Night"
• "Troika"
• "Sleepover"
• "Vainglory"
• "Trauma Pod"
• "The Last Log of the Lachrymosa"
• "The Water Thief"
• "The Old Man and the Martian Sea"
• "In Babelsberg"
• Story notes

Three hundred years in the future, Verity Auger is a specialist in the archaeological exploration of Earth, rendered uninhabitable after the technological catastrophe known as the Nanocaust. After a field-trip to goes badly wrong, Verity is forced to redeem herself by participating in a dangerous mission, for which her expertise in invaluable.

Using a backdoor into an unstable alien transit system, Auger's faction has discovered something astonishing at the far end of a wormhole: mid twentieth-century Earth, preserved like a fly in amber. Is it a window into the past, a simulation, or something else entirely?

CENTURY RAIN is not just a time-travel story, nor a tale of alternate history. Part hard SF thriller, part interstellar adventure, part noir romance, CENTURY RAIN is something altogether stranger.

Deep Navigation is the 2010 Boskone Book by Boskone's Guest of Honor Alastair Reynolds. It contains a broad spectrum of his work, from his first published story, "Nunivak Snowflakes," through "The Receivers" and "Monkey Suit," both published within the last year, plus an introduction by his friend, and former Boskone Guest, Stephen Baxter. It is well-known that the scope of Dr. Reynolds' stories is vast; his Revelation Space stories alone attest to that. This collection shows his impressive range, from the claustrophobic Antarctic station, "Byrd Land Six," to the brane-spanning "Tiger, Burning," to the millennia-long quest of "Fury." His viewpoints are as varied as his constant production of big, new ideas. A lone artist calmly painting the universe. A planetary ecological struggle reduced to a game. A fleeing assassin drawn into an alien rescue between the stars. The full-color dust jacket is by John Picacio, the Boskone 47 Official Artist. This is not a limited edition.

Table of Contents

• Introduction - essay by Stephen Baxter
• Nunivak Snowflakes - (1990) - short story
• Monkey Suit - (2009) - short story
• The Fixation - (2009) - short story
• Feeling Rejected - (2005) - short story
• Fury - (2008) - novelette
• Stroboscopic - (1998) - short story
• The Receivers - (2009) - novelette
• Byrd Land Six - (1995) - novelette
• The Star Surgeon's Apprentice - (2008) - novelette
• On the Oodnadatta - (1998) - novelette
• Fresco - (2001) - short story
• Viper - (1999) - short story
• Soirée - (2008) - short story
• The Sledge-Maker's Daughter - (2007) - short story
• Tiger, Burning - (2006) - novelette

In a cosmic rally race winding 12,000 kilometers across Io's treacherous surface in just 60 hours, all while dodging the competition, fatigue, and violent lava geysers - there's only one way Cat knows how to win: Just drive.

This story was originally published on Tor.com on 12 July 2023. Read it for free at Tor.com

Doctor Silas Coade has been tasked with keeping his crew safe as they adventure across the galaxy in search of a mysterious artifact, but as things keep going wrong, Silas soon realizes that something more sinister is at work, and this may not even be the first time it's happened.

In the 1800s, a sailing ship crashes off the coast of Norway. In the 1900s, a Zepellin explores an icy canyon in Antarctica. In the far future, a spaceship sets out for an alien artifact. Each excursion goes horribly wrong. And on every journey, Dr. Silas Coade is the physician, but only Silas seems to realize that these events keep repeating themselves. And it's up to him to figure out why and how. And how to stop it all from happening again.

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Eclipse Two: New Science Fiction and Fantasy (2008), edited by Jonathan Strahan. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 14 (2009), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. It can also be found in the collections Deep Navigation (2010) and Beyond the Aquila Rift: The Best of Alastair Reynolds (2016).

This short story origianally appeared in the anthology Extrasolar (2017), edited by Nick Gevers. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 3 (2018), edited by Neil Clarke.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Reach for Infinity (2014), edited by Jonathan Strahan. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Second Annual Collection (2015), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collection Beyond the Aquila Rift: The Best of Alastair Reynolds (2016).

Fix the past. Save the present. Stop the future. Master of science fiction Alastair Reynolds unfolds a time-traveling climate fiction adventure in Permafrost.

2080: at a remote site on the edge of the Arctic Circle, a group of scientists, engineers and physicians gather to gamble humanity's future on one last-ditch experiment. Their goal: to make a tiny alteration to the past, averting a global catastrophe while at the same time leaving recorded history intact. To make the experiment work, they just need one last recruit: an ageing schoolteacher whose late mother was the foremost expert on the mathematics of paradox.

2028: a young woman goes into surgery for routine brain surgery. In the days following her operation, she begins to hear another voice in her head... an unwanted presence which seems to have a will, and a purpose, all of its own - one that will disrupt her life entirely. The only choice left to her is a simple one.

Does she resist... or become a collaborator?

Some centuries from now, the exploration and exploitation of the Solar System is in full swing. On the cold edge of the system, Bella Lind, captain of the huge commercial spacecraft Rockhopper IV, helps fuel this new gold rush by attaching mass-driver motors to organic-rich water-ice comets to move them back to the inner worlds. Her crew are tough, blue-collar miners, engineers and demolition experts. Around Saturn, something inexplicable happens: one of the moons leaves its orbit and accelerates out of the Solar System. The icy mantle peels away to reveal that it was never a moon in the first place, just a parked spacecraft, millions of years old, that has now decided to move on. Rockhopper IV, trapped in the pull, is hurled across time and space into the deep, distant future, arriving in a vast, alien-constructed chamber. And the crew are not alone, for each chamber contains an alien culture dragged into this cosmic menagerie at the end of time. The crew of the Rockhopper IV know a lot about blowing up comets, but not much about first contact with ultra-advanced aliens.

They have two things to worry about: can they (and their new alien allies) negotiate their way through each harrying contact? And can they assimilate the avalanche of knowledge about their own future - including all the glittering, dangerous technologies that are now theirs for the taking - without destroying themselves in the process?

This short story originally appeared in audio on the website of the English newspaper The Guardian, June 23rd 2009. It was later reprinted in Lightspeed, May 2011. THe story can also be found in the anthologies Lightspeed: Year One (2011), edited by John Joseph Adams and War & Space: Recent Combat (2012).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed or listen to the audio version at The Guardian.

This novelette originally appeared in the collection Zima Blue and Other Stories (2006). The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection (2007), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Other Worlds Than These (2012), edited by John Joseph Adams.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Bridging Infinity (2016), edited by Jonathan Strahan. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection (2017), edited by Gardner Dozois.

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF (2010), edited by Mike Ashley. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Eighth Annual Collection (2011), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Robot Uprisings (2014), edited by Daniel H. Wilson. The story is included in the collection Beyond the Aquila Rift: The Best of Alastair Reynolds (2016).

Locus-winning and Hugo-nominated Novella

A vast conflict, one that has encompassed hundreds of worlds and solar systems, appears to be finally at an end. A conscripted soldier is beginning to consider her life after the war and the family she has left behind. But for Scur -- and for humanity -- peace is not to be.

On the brink of the ceasefire, Scur is captured by a renegade war criminal, and left for dead in the ruins of a bunker. She revives aboard a prisoner transport vessel. Something has gone terribly wrong with the ship.

Passengers -- combatants from both sides of the war -- are waking up from hibernation far too soon. Their memories, embedded in bullets, are the only links to a world which is no longer recognizable. And Scur will be reacquainted with her old enemy, but with much higher stakes than just her own life.

In a far distant future, an enforcement agent named Quillon has been living incognito in the last human city of Spearpoint, working as a pathologist in the district morgue. But when a near-dead angel drops onto his dissecting table, his world is wrenched apart.

For the angel is a winged posthuman from Spearpoint's Celestial Levels, and with the dying body comes bad news-to save the angel's life, Quillon must leave his home and travel into the cold and hostile lands beyond the city.

Sidewise Award winning short story. It originally appeared in the anthology The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume Three (2009), edited by George Mann. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 15 (2010), edited by David G. Harrtwell and Kathryn Cramer. The story is included in the collection Deep Navigation (2010).

Inspired by Sir Arthur C. Clarke's short story A Meeting with Medusa, this novel, with permission from the Clarke Estate, continues the story of Commander Howard Falcon over centuries of space-exploration, interaction with AI, first contact and beyond. All brought to life by two of our greatest SF authors, Stephen Baxter and Alastair Reynolds.

Howard Falcon almost lost his life in an accident... and a combination of human ingenuity and technical expertise brought him back. Not as himself, but as an augmented human: part man, part machine, and exceptionally capable.

The Medusa Chronicles charts his journey through time, the changing interaction between humanity and our universe, and combined moments of incredible action with unparalleled exploration of and expansion into space. A compelling read from the beginning, this is classic SF which has appeal for readers who like Gravity and The Martian.

What if Genghis Khan got his wish, and brought the entire planet under the control of the Mongols? Where would he have gone next?

A thousand years after Khan's death, Yellow Dog is the codename of a female spy working for a vast Mongol-dominated galactic empire. When she learns of anomalous events happening on the edge of civilised space -- phantom ships appearing in the faster-than-light transit system which binds the empire together -- Yellow Dog puts herself forward for the most hazardous assignment of her career. In deep cover, she must penetrate the autonomous zone where the anomalies are most frequent, and determine whether the empire is really under attack, and if so by who or what. Yellow Dog's problems, however, are only just beginning. For the autonomous zone is under the heel of Qilian, a thuggish local tyrant with no love for central government and a reputation for extreme brutality. Qilian already knows more about the anomalies than Yellow Dog does. If she is going to learn more, she will have to earn his confidence -- even if that means working for him, rather than against him.

So begins a deadly game of subterfuge and double-cross -- while the anomalies increase...

This short story originally appeared in Interzone, #209 April 2007 and was reprinted in Clarkesworld Magazine, #99 December 2014. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection (2008), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collections Deep Navigation (2010) and Beyond the Aquila Rift: The Best of Alastair Reynolds (2016).

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

This short story originally appeared in Arc 1.1: The Future Always Wins (2012). It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirtieth Annual Collection (2013), edited by Garnder Dozois. The story is included in the collection Beyond the Aquila Rift: The Best of Alastair Reynolds (2016).

For many of us, the Ace Double Novels of the 50s and 60s have long been a source both of pleasure and nostalgia. This new double volume from Subterranean Press stands squarely in that distinguished tradition, offering a pair of colorful, fast-paced stories from the reigning master of the intergalactic space opera: Alastair Reynolds.

Thousandth Night, the genesis for the epic novel House of Suns, is quintessential Reynolds. A visionary account of intrigue, ambition, and technological marvels set within a beautifully realized far-future milieu, it combines world-class storytelling with a provocative meditation on the mystery, grandeur, and inconceivable immensity of the universe.

The masterful novella Minla's Flowers features Merlin, a familiar figure to Reynolds' readers. Diverted by technical difficulties to a planet known as Lecythus, Merlin finds himself forced to play a part in the moral and military dilemmas of a world on the verge of extinction.

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Forbidden Planets (2006), edited by Peter Crowther. It can also be found in the anthologies Year's Best SF 12 (2007), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, and The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF (2009), edited by Mike Ashley. The story is included in the collection Deep Navigation (2010).

Hugo-nominated Novella

In novels such as Chasm City and Revelation Space, Alastair Reynolds established himself as an indisputable master of the far-flung intergalactic epic. Reynolds brings that same deceptively effortless mastery to the shorter fictional forms, a fact that Troika, his elegant, compulsively readable new novella, amply demonstrates.

Troika tells the story of men and women confronting an enigma known as the Matryoshka, a vast alien construct whose periodic appearances have generated terror, wonder, and endless debate. During its third "apparition" in a remote corner of the galaxy, a trio of Russian cosmonauts approach this enigma and attempt to penetrate its mysteries. What they discover--and what they endure in the process--forms the centerpiece of an enthralling, constantly surprising narrative.

Troika is at once a wholly original account of First Contact and a meditation on time, history, and the essentially fluid nature of identity itself. Suspenseful, erudite, and gracefully written, it is a significant accomplishment in its own right and a welcome addition to a remarkable body of work.

This novelette orginally appaered as a limmited edition booklet. It can also be found in the anthologies Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2006 Edition, edited by Rich Horton, and Science Fiction: The Very Best of 2005, edited by Jonathan Strahan. The story is included in the collection Zima Blue and Other Stories (2006).

This short story originally appeared in Postscripts, Summer 2005. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Third Annual Collection (2006), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collections Zima Blue and Other Stories (2006) and Beyond the Aquila Rift: The Best of Alastair Reynolds (2016).

Reynolds' pursuit of truth is not limited to wide-angle star smashing - not that stars don't get pulverised when one character is gifted (or cursed) with an awful weapon by the legendary Merlin. Reynolds' protagonists find themselves in situations of betrayal, whether by a loved one's accidental death, as in 'Signal to Noise', or by a trusted wartime authority, in 'Spirey and the Queen'. His fertile imagination can resurrect Elton John on Mars in 'Understanding Space and Time' or make prophets of the human condition out of pool-cleaning robots in the title story. But overall, the stories in ZIMA BLUE represent a more optimistic take on humanity's future, a view that says there may be wars, there may be catastrophes and cosmic errors, but something human will still survive.

Table of Content:

• Introduction - (2006) - essay by Paul J. McAuley
• The Real Story - (2002) - novelette
• Beyond the Aquila Rift - (2005) - novelette
• Enola - (1991) - short story
• Signal to Noise - (2006) - novelette
• Cardiff Afterlife - (2008) - short story
• Hideaway [Merlin] - (2000) - novelette
• Minla's Flowers [Merlin] - (2007) - novella
• Merlin's Gun [Merlin] - (2000) - novelette
• Angels of Ashes - (1999) - novelette
• Spirey and the Queen - (1996) - novelette
• Understanding Space and Time - (2005) - novelette
• Digital to Analogue - (1992) - short story
• Everlasting - (2004) - short story
• Zima Blue - (2005) - short story

This short story originally appeared in the anthology The Weight of Words (2017), edited by Dave McKean and William Shafer. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Twelve (2018), edited by Jonathan Strahan.

Six million years ago, at the very dawn of the starfaring era, Abigail Gentian fractured herself into a thousand male and female clones: the shatterlings.

Sent out into the galaxy, these shatterlings have stood aloof as they document the rise and fall of countless human empires. They meet every two hundred thousand years, to exchange news and memories of their travels with their siblings. Campion and Purslane are not only late for their thirty-second reunion, but they have brought along an amnesiac golden robot for a guest.

But the wayward shatterlings get more than the scolding they expect: they face the discovery that someone has a very serious grudge against the Gentian line, and there is a very real possibility of traitors in their midst. The surviving shatterlings have to dodge exotic weapons while they regroup to try to solve the mystery of who is persecuting them, and why - before their ancient line is wiped out of existence, forever.

When Sora's swallowship is taken out by a swarm during the war she is rescued by Merlin, a legendary man who has allegedly discovered a super-weapon built by the Way creators; a gun so powerful it I said to have stopped the previous war. Sora is sceptical, though, for Merlin has been missing for ten thousand years, yet he has not aged a day. As the current war between aliens and humans intensifies, the need to find this weapon becomes unquestionably urgent. They must find the gun before the enemy does and incinerates them. Can their quest to save humanity and end the war be achieved with Merlin's gun?

This novella originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, May 2000. It can also be found in the anthology The Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction (2006), edited by Mike Ashley. The story is included in the collection Zima Blue and Other Stories (2006).

This is a brand new stand-alone deep space adventure from Alastair Reynolds, featuring the author's long-running character Merlin, who has previously appeared in "Merlin's Gun" (2000), "Hideaway" (2000), and "Minla's Flowers" (2007).

When Merlin encounters the derelict hulk of an old swallowship drifting in the middle of nowhere, he can't resist investigating. He soon finds himself involved in a situation that proves far more complex than he ever anticipated.

A forgotten enemy. An old adversary. A terrible alliance.

From a ruined world at the end of time, the vicious Sild make preparations to conquer the past and rewrite history. But to do it they will need to enslave an intellect greater than their own...

On Earth, UNIT is called in to examine a mysterious incident on a North Sea drilling platform. They've hardly begun, though, when something even stranger takes hold: The Brigadier and others are starting to forget about UNIT's highest-profile prisoner.

As the Sild invasion begins, the Doctor faces a terrible dilemma. To save the universe, he must save his arch-nemesis... The Master.

One hundred and fifty years from now, in a world where Africa is the dominant technological and economic power, and where crime, war, disease and poverty have been banished to history, Geoffrey Akinya wants only one thing: to be left in peace, so that he can continue his studies into the elephants of the Amboseli basin. But Geoffrey's family, the vast Akinya business empire, has other plans. After the death of Eunice, Geoffrey's grandmother, erstwhile space explorer and entrepreneur, something awkward has come to light.

Eunice's ashes have already have been scattered in sight of Kilimanjaro. But the secrets she died with are about to come back out into the open, and they could change everything.

Chiku Yellow is earthbound: living a peaceful life on a changing world as humanity explores a thousand new ways to experience life.

Chiku Red is space-bound: blasted into deep space to investigate Eunice Akinya's last journey, and maybe discover the final secrets of space travel.

Chiku Green is planet-bound: travelling thousands of lightyears to the planet Crucible. A new home for humankind; it's a habitable planet hosting a fascinating alien labyrinth.

All three are Chiku Akinya.

All three are pivotal to our future in space.

All three are in danger...

Two hundred years after the fall of Mechanism, human society has achieved a kind of stability. There are colonies beneath the oceans, throughout the solar system, and beyond: on the worlds of extrasolar systems. Vast hemirelativistic ships connect these colonies, travelling at half the speed of light. Or rather they would, if the ominous presence of the alien Watchkeepers had not led to an enforced moratorium on interstellar travel.

But when a seemingly impossible radio signal reaches the colony Crucible, everything changes:

Send Ndege

Its origin is unpopulated, unexplored space. No one could be there at least, not if they travelled using human technology so who could have sent it? How did they get there? And what use do they have for the disgraced scientist Ndege Akinya?

Finding the answers will require one of the greatest expeditions humankind has ever launched, a journey further than ever attempted before, conducted under the implacable scrutiny of the Watchkeepers.

But as a mission is prepared on Crucible, it turns out they werent the only ones to see the message or its potential...

This short story originally appeared in Interzone, #120 June 1997, and was reprinted on infinity plus, Januari 2001. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifteenth Annual Collection (1998), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collection Galactic North (2006).

Read the full story for free at Infinity Plus.

Diamond Dogs

The planet Golgotha--supposedly lifeless--resides in a remote star system, far from those inhabited by human colonists. It is home to an enigmatic machinelike structure called the Blood Spire, which has already brutally and systematically claimed the lives of one starship crew that attempted to uncover its secrets. But nothing will deter Richard Swift from exploring this object of alien origin...

Turquoise Days

In the seas of Turquoise live the Pattern Jugglers, the amorphous, aquatic organisms capable of preserving the memories of any human swimmer who joins their collective consciousness. Naqi Okpik devoted her life to studying these creatures--and paid a high price for swimming among them. Now, she may be the only hope for the survival of the species--and of every person living on Turquoise...

This novelette originally appeared in Interzone, #145 July 1999. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Seventeenth Annual Collection (2000), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Space Soldiers (2001), edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collection Galactic North (2006).

Centuries from now, the basic right to expand human intelligence beyond its natural limits has become a war-worthy cause for the Demarchists and Conjoiners. Only vast lighthugger starships bind these squabbling colonies together, manned by the panicky and paranoid Ultras. And the hyperpigs just try to keep their heads down. The rich get richer. And everyone tries not to think about the worrying number of extinct alien civilizations turning up on the outer reaches of settled space...because who's to say that humanity won't be next?

This novella originally appeared in Spectrum SF, #5 February. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Nineteenth Annual Collection (2002), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Year's Best SF 7 (2002), edited by David G. Hartwell. The story is included in the collection Galactic North (2006).

This novella originally appeared in Spectrum SF, #1 February 2000. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighteenth Annual Collection (2001), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Hard SF Renaissance (2002), edited by David G. Harwell and Kathryn Kramer. The story is included in the collections Galactic North (2006) and Beyond the Aquila Rift: The Best of Alastair Reynolds (2016).

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Infinite Stars (2017), edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection (2018), edited by Gardner Dozois.

This novella originally appeared in the collection Galactic North (2006). It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection (2007), edited by Gardner Dozois.

A novellette set in the Revelation Space universe: a crew investigates a cave on a volcanic planet in the hopes of salvaging valuable abandoned tech only to discover that the cave is defended by a horrific psychological weapon.

Read the full story for free at Suberranean Press Magazine.

The Pattern Jugglers of planet Turquoise -- an alien entity that takes the form of floating organisms on the surface of a planet-wide sea. Turquoise Days is the story of Naqi Okpik, a human scientist who must come to terms with the mysteries of the Jugglers while dealing with an external threat to the planet -- a threat to the Jugglers themselves. But are the Pattern Jugglers conscious life forms, and can they protect themselves against this alien menace?

This novella can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twentieth Annual Collection (2003), and Best of the Best Volume 2: 20 Years of the Year's Best Short Science Fiction Novels (2007), both edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collection Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days (2003).

Dr. Dan Sylveste, an archaeologist who has for years been fascinated with the long-dead alien race the Amarantin, is about to discover something that could change the course of mankind. But before he can act on anything his wife is killed and he is captured when a coup sweeps across the planet Resurgam. Meanwhile, an astonishing ship bearing a crew of militaristic cyborgs and a kidnapped Gunnery Officer is bearing down on Resurgam, crossing light years of space to enlist Sylveste's help to save their metamorphosing Captain. Only Sylveste, or, more accurately, the software programme containing his father's knowledge that he carries in his mind, can save the Captain. None of them can anticipate the cataclysm that will result when they meet, a cataclysm that will sweep through space and could determine the ultimate fate of humanity.

Tanner Mirabel was a security specialist who never made a mistake - until the day a woman in his care was blown away by Argent Reivich, a vengeful young postmortal. Tanner's pursuit of Reivich takes him across light-years of space to Chasm City, the domed human settlement on the otherwise inhospitable planet of Yellowstone.

But Chasm City is not what it was. The one-time high-tech utopia has become a Gothic nightmare: a nanotechnological virus has corrupted the city's inhabitants as thoroughly as it has the buildings and machines. Before the chase is done, Tanner will have to confront truths which reach back centuries, towards deep space and an atrocity history barely remembers.

Many, many millennia ago, the Inhibitors seeded the universe with machines designed to detect life and then suppress it... but after hundreds of millions of years, the machines started to fail and intelligent cultures started to emerge. Then Dr Dan Sylveste and the crew of Infinity discovered what had happened to the Amarintin race... and awakened the Inhibitors.

On Yellowstone, where no one is quite who they appear, the Inquisitor and the planet's Most Wanted War Criminal are watching as the Inhibitors turn a small group of planets into raw materials. Whatever they are building with those materials is not good for Humanity.

Once again, Al Reynolds has produced a stunning, universe-spanning space opera of mind-blowing proportions. Big in size, big in concepts, REDEMPTION ARK will leave you gasping at its audacity and breathless at its conclusion.

Mankind has endured centuries of horrific plague and a particularly brutal interstellar war ...but there is still no time for peace and quiet. Stirred from aeons of sleep, the Inhibitors - ancient alien killing machines - have begun the process of ridding the galaxy of its latest emergent intelligence: mankind.

As a ragtag bag of refugees fleeing the first wave of the cull head towards an apparently insignificant moon light-years away, they discover an avenging angel, a girl born in ice. She has the power to lead mankind to safety, and the ability to draw down their darkest enemy. And on a planet where vast travelling cathedrals crawl towards the treacherous fissure known as Absolution Gap, an unsettling truth becomes apparent: to beat one enemy, it may be necessary to forge an alliance with something much, much worse ...

For thirty years a tiny band of humans has been sheltering in the caverns of an airless, crater-pocked world called Michaelmas. Beyond their solar system lie the ruins of human interstellar civilization, stalked by a ruthless, infinitely patient cybernetic entity determined to root out the last few bands of survivors. One man has guided the people of Michaelmas through the hardest of times, and given them hope against the wolves: Miguel de Ruyter.

When a lone human ship blunders into their system, and threatens to lead the wolves to Michaelmas, de Ruyter embarks on a desperate, near-suicide mission to prevent catastrophe. But an encounter with a refugee from the ship - the enigmatic woman who calls herself only Glass - leads to de Ruyter's world being turned upside down.

Tom Dreyfus is a Prefect, a law enforcement officer with the Panoply. His beat is the multi-faceted utopian society of the Glitter Band, that vast swirl of space habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone, the teeming hub of a human interstellar empire spanning many worlds.

His current case: investigating a murderous attack against one of the habitats that leaves nine hundred people dead, a crime that appalls even a hardened cop like Dreyfus. But then his investigation uncovers something even more potentially dangerous-a covert plot by an enigmatic entity seeking nothing less than total control of the Glitter Band...

Ten thousand city-state habitats orbit the planet Yellowstone, forming a near-perfect democratic human paradise.

But even utopia needs a police force. For the citizens of the Glitter Band that organization is Panoply, and the prefects are its operatives.

Prefect Tom Dreyfus has a new emergency on his hands. Across the habitats and their hundred million citizens, people are dying suddenly and randomly, victims of a bizarre and unprecedented malfunction of their neural implants. And these "melters" leave no clues behind as to the cause of their deaths...

As panic rises in the populace, a charismatic figure is sowing insurrection, convincing a small but growing number of habitats to break away from the Glitter Band and form their own independent colonies.

Panoply is a small, efficient police force, dedicated to maintaining the rule of democracy among the ten thousand disparate city-states orbiting the planet Yellowstone.

Ingvar Tench was one of Panoply's most experienced operatives. So why did she walk alone and unarmed into a habitat with a vicious grudge against her organization?

As his colleagues pick up the pieces following her death, Prefect Tom Dreyfus must face his conscience. Four years ago, when an investigation linked to one of his most dangerous adversaries got a little too personal, Dreyfus arranged for Tench to continue the inquiry by proxy. In using her, did Dreyfus also put her in the line of fire? And what does Tench's attack tell him about an enemy he had hoped was dormant?

A superb SF adventure set in the rubble of a ruined universe, this is a deep space heist story of kidnap, betrayal, alien artefacts and revenge.

The galaxy has seen great empires rise and fall. Planets have shattered and been remade. Amongst the ruins of alien civilisations, building our own from the rubble, humanity still thrives.

And there are vast fortunes to be made, if you know where to find them...

Captain Rackamore and his crew do. It's their business to find the tiny, enigmatic worlds which have been hidden away, booby-trapped, surrounded with layers of protection - and to crack them open for the ancient relics and barely-remembered technologies inside. But while they ply their risky trade with integrity, not everyone is so scrupulous.

Adrana and Fura Ness are the newest members of Rackamore's crew, signed on to save their family from bankruptcy. Only Rackamore has enemies, and there might be more waiting for them in space than adventure and fortune: the fabled and feared Bosa Sennen in particular.

Revenger is a science fiction adventure story set in the rubble of our solar system in the dark, distant future - a tale of space pirates, buried treasure and phantom weapons, of unspeakable hazards and single-minded heroism... and of vengeance...

Adrana and Fura Ness have finally been reunited, but both have changed beyond recognition. Once desperate for adventure, now Adrana is haunted by her enslavement on the feared pirate Bosa Sennen's ship. And rumors of Bosa Sennen's hidden cache of treasure have ensnared her sister, Fura, into single-minded obsession.

Neither is safe; because the galaxy wants Bosa Sennen dead and they don't care if she's already been killed. They'll happily take whoever is flying her ship.

Two sisters ran away from home to join the crew of a spaceship. They took on pirates, faced down monsters and survived massacres... and now they're in charge. Captaining a fearsome ship of their own, adventures are theirs for the taking. But Captain Bosa's fearsome reputation still dogs their heels, and they're about to discover that, out in space, no one forgives, and no one forgets...