by Various
Table of Contents
1. When We Were Heroes, by Daniel Abraham
2. Olga, by C.T. Adams
3. Foundation, by Ann Aguirre
4. The Department of Alterations, by Gennifer Albin
5. The Fermi Paradox is Our Business Model, by Charlie Jane Anders
6. Six Months, Three Days, by Charlie Jane Anders
7. Intestate, by Charlie Jane Anders
8. Legacy Lost, by Anna Banks
9. The Witch of Duva, by Leigh Bardugo
10. The Too-Clever Fox, by Leigh Bardugo
11. The Girl Who Sang Rose Madder, by Elizabeth Bear
12. The Horrid Glory of Its Wings, by Elizabeth Bear
13. Faster Gun, by Elizabeth Bear
14. The Final Now, by Gregory Benford
15. Grace Immaculate, by Gregory Benford
16. Backscatter, by Gregory Benford
17. River of Souls, by Beth Bernobich
18. A Window or a Small Box, by Jedediah Berry
19. Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes, by Michael Bishop
20. Catch ‘Em in the Act, by Terry Bisson
21. TVA Baby, by Terry Bisson
22. The Cockroach Hat, by Terry Bisson
23. Shall We Gather, by Alex Bledsoe
24. Prophet, by Jennifer Bosworth
25. The Ruined Queen of Harvest World, by Damien Broderick
26. Time Considered as a Series of Thermite Burns in No Particular Order, by Damien Broderick
27. The Memory Coder, by Jessica Brody
28. The Desecrator, by Steven Brust
29. Brother. Prince. Snake., by Cecil Castellucci
30. We Have Always Lived on Mars, by Cecil Castellucci
31. Our Human, by Adam Troy Castro
32. The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere, by John Chu
33. Fare Thee Well, by Cathy Clamp
34. The Commonplace Book, by Jacob Clifton
35. What Makes a River, by Deborah Coates
36. The Ghosts of Christmas, by Paul Cornell
37. The Elephant in the Room, by Paul Cornell
38. Day One, by Matthew Costello
39. Am I Free To Go?, by Kathryn Cramer
40. Tourists, by Sean Craven
41. Eve of Sin City, by S.J. Day
42. The Cage, by A.M. Dellamonica
43. Among the Silvering Herd, by A.M. Dellamonica
44. Wild Things, by A.M. Dellamonica
45. Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away, by Cory Doctorow
46. On 20468 Petercook, by Andy Duncan
47. The Strange Case of Mr. Salad Monday, by G.D. Falksen
48. Men Who Wish to Drown, by Elizabeth Fama
49. The Iron Shirts, by Michael Flynn
50. A Clean Sweep With All the Trimmings, by James Alan Gardner
51. Lightbringers and Rainmakers, by Felix Gilman
52. Shade, by Steven Gould
53. Bugs in the Arroyo, by Steven Gould
54. Steampunk Quartet, by Eileen Gunn
55. Mother, Crone, Maiden, by Cat Hellisen
56. The Ink Readers of Doi Saket, by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
57. Too Fond, by Leanna Renee Hieber
58. At the Foot of the Lighthouse, by Erin Hoffman
59. Ghost Hedgehog, by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
60. A Spell of Vengeance, by D.B. Jackson
61. The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles, by Kij Johnson
62. Ponies, by Kij Johnson
63. Crazy Me, by James Patrick Kelly
64. First Flight, by Mary Robinette Kowal
65. How to Make a Triffid, by Kelly Lagor
66. A Water Matter, by Jay Lake
67. The Speed of Time, by Jay Lake
68. The Starship Mechanic, by Jay Lake and Ken Scholes
69. Dress Your Marines in White, by Emmy Laybourne
70. A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel, by Yoon Ha Lee
71. Uncle Flower's Homecoming Waltz, by Marissa Lingen
72. Earth Hour, by Ken MacLeod
73. Farewell Performance, by Nick Mamatas
74. Though Smoke Shall Hide the Sun, by Brit Mandelo
75. The Finite Canvas, by Brit Mandelo
76. The Hanging Game, by Helen Marshall
77. The Courtship of the Queen, by Bruce McAllister
78. Heads Will Roll, by Lish McBride
79. Swift, Brutal Retaliation, by Meghan McCarron
80. Preparations, by Mark Mills
81. About Fairies, by Pat Murphy
82. Fire Above, Fire Below, by Garth Nix
83. Ruled, by Caragh M. O'Brien
84. Hello, Moto, by Nnedi Okorafor
85. Sacrifice of the First Sheason, by Peter Orullian
86. The Great Defense of Layosah, by Peter Orullian
87. The Battle of the Round, by Peter Orullian
88. Sweetheart, by Abbi Mei Otis
89. Ragnarok, by Paul Park
90. Four Horsemen, at Their Leisure, by Richard Parks
91. The Rotten Beast, by Mary E. Pearson
92. Angel Season, by J.T. Petty
93. Silver Linings, by Tim Pratt
94. The Button Man and the Murder Tree, by Cherie Priest
95. Clockwork Fairies, by Cat Rambo
96. The Next Invasion, by Robert Reed
97. Our Candidate, by Robert Reed
98. Swingers, by Robert Reed
99. The Cairn in Slater Woods, by Gina Rosati
100. Jack of Coins, by Christopher Rowe
101. Jack and the Aktuals, or, Physical Applications of Transfinite Set Theory, by Rudy Rucker
102. Good Night, Moon, by Rudy Rucker
103. Loco, by Rudy Rucker
104. Jacks and Queens at the Green Mill, by Marie Rutkoski
105. The Film-Makers of Mars, by Geoff Ryman
106. Firstborn, by Brandon Sanderson
107. After the Coup, by John Scalzi
108. The President's Brain is Missing, by John Scalzi
109. Shadow War of the Night Dragons, Book One: The Dead City: Prologue, by John Scalzi
110. A Weeping Czar Beholds the Fallen Moon, by Ken Scholes
111. Making My Entrance Again With My Usual Flair, by Ken Scholes
112. Two Stories, by Ken Scholes
113. If Dragon's Mass Eve Be Cold and Clear, by Ken Scholes
114. Rag and Bone, by Priya Sharma
115. Do Not Touch, by Prudence Shen
116. The Night Children: An Escape From Furnace Story, by Alexander Gordon Smith
117. King of Marbury, by Andrew Smith
118. Beauty Belongs to the Flowers, by Matthew Sanborn Smith
119. Overtime, by Charles Stross
120. Down on the Farm, by Charles Stross
121. A Tall Tail, by Charles Stross
122. Zeppelin City, by Michael Swanwick
123. The Trains That Climb the Winter Tree, by Michael Swanwick
124. The Dala Horse, by Michael Swanwick
125. The Mongolian Wizard, by Michael Swanwick
126. The Fire Gown, by Michael Swanwick
127. Day of the Kraken, by Michael Swanwick
128. Eros, Philia, Agape, by Rachel Swirsky
129. A Memory of Wind, by Rachel Swirsky
130. The Monster's Million Faces, by Rachel Swirsky
131. Portrait of Lisane da Patagnia, by Rachel Swirsky
132. Sing, by Karin Tidbeck
133. What Doctor Gottlieb Saw, by Ian Tregillis
134. Vilcabamba, by Harry Turtledove
135. The Star and the Rockets, by Harry Turtledove
136. The House That George Built, by Harry Turtledove
137. We Haven't Got There Yet, by Harry Turtledove
138. Shtetl Days, by Harry Turtledove
139. Lee at the Alamo, by Harry Turtledove
140. Running of the Bulls, by Harry Turtledove
141. The City Quiet as Death, by Steven Utley
142. The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland—For a Little While, by Catherynne M. Valente
143. Terrain, by Genevieve Valentine
144. Last Son of Tomorrow, by Greg van Eekhout
145. Errata, by Jeff VanderMeer
146. A Stroke of Dumb Luck, by Shiloh Walker
147. Last Train to Jubilee Bay, by Kali Wallace
148. Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction, by Jo Walton
149. The Nostalgist, by Daniel H. Wilson
150. Super Bass, by Kai Ashante Wilson
151. The Palencar Project, by Gregory Benford, L.E. Modesitt, Jr., James Morrow, Michael Swanwick, and Gene Wolfe, Edited by David G. Hartwell
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Begin Reading
Manhattan smells like rain. The last drops fall from the sky or else the rooftops, drifting down through the high air. With every step, her dress shoes throw out splashes from the thin, oily puddles. It’s ruining the leather, and she doesn’t care. Her fingers, wrapped around her smartphone, ache, and she wants to throw it, to feel the power flow through her arm, down out along the flat, fast trajectory, and then detonate like a hand grenade. She could do it. It’s her wild card power. She’s not in the outfit she uses at the exhibitions and fund-raisers. She doesn’t look like a hero now. She doesn’t feel like one.
The brownstone huddles between two larger buildings, and she stops, checking the address. The east side, north of Gramercy Park, but walking distance. She always forgets that he comes from money.
The steps leading to the vestibule are worn with time and dark green with the slime of decomposed leaves. An advertisement for a new season of American Hero covers the side of a bus with the soft-core come-ons of half a dozen young men and women. Sex sells. She walks up the steps and finds the apartment number.
Jonathan Tipton-Clarke, handwritten in fading green ink. When he’s being an ace, he calls himself Jonathan Hive. No one else does. Everyone calls him Bugsy. She stabs in the code on the intercom’s worn steel keypad.
For a moment, she thinks he’ll pretend he’s not there, and she wonders how far she’ll go. Rage and betrayal and embarrassment flow through her. Breaking down his door would be illegal. It would only make things worse.
But still …
“Hey, Kate,” Bugsy says from the intercom.
“Are you looking at me right now?”
“Yeah. I’ve got one on the wall. Just to your left.”
A tiny, acid-green wasp stares at her. Its black eyes are empty as a camera. Its wings shift, catching the morning light. Jonathan Hive, who can turn his body into a swarm of wasps. Jonathan Hive, who was there when they stopped the genocide in Egypt. Who fought the Radical in Paris and then again during the final battle in the Congo. Kate lifts her brows at the wasp, and Bugsy’s sigh comes from the intercom. The buzzer sounds resigned, the bolt clicks open. She pulls the door open, pauses, and flicks a tiny wad of pocket lint from between her fingers. It speeds to the wall and detonates like a firecracker. She can’t tell whether the wasp escaped.
His apartment is on the fourth floor and she takes the stairs three at a time. When she gets there, she’s not even winded. He’s waiting for her, the apartment door standing open. Hair wild from the pillow. Lichenous stubble. Bloodshot eyes. His bathrobe was white, is grey. Wasps shift under his skin they way they do when he’s nervous.
“Come on in. I’ll make you some coffee.”
She holds out her phone, and he takes it. The web browser is at the mobile site for Aces! magazine. In the image, she is standing on the street by a small park, kissing a man. His face is hard to make out. Hers is unmistakable. The headline is DANGEROUS CURVES.
Underneath it, the byline is his name. And then the first few lines of text:
There’s nothing more American than baseball, explosions, and first date hookups. Well lock up your sons, New York. Everyone’s sweetheart is on the town, and she’s looking for some man action!
“What the hell is this?” she asks.
“The end of a good night?” he says, and hands it back.
* * *
Twelve hours earlier, she’d stepped out of an off-off-Broadway theater onto the Sixth Avenue sidewalk. Traffic was stopped on Spring Street, and backed up for more than a block, the air filled with braying horns and the stink of exhaust. Clouds hung over the city so low, it seemed like someone on the Chrysler building could reach out a hand and scratch them. Above her, the marquee read MARAT/SADE, black letters on glowing white, then underneath it, NYC’S ONLY ALL-JOKER CAST! She paused on the sidewalk, her hands in the pockets of her jeans, cleared her throat. Outrage and disbelief warred in her mind, until she shook her head and started laughing.
“It’s always kind of a confrontational play,” a man’s voice said. She’d been aware of someone coming out to the street behind her, but hadn’t particularly taken notice of him. Middle twenties. Dark hair that looked good unruly. Friendly smile.
“Confrontational,” she said, laughing around the word.
“Not always that confrontational. This production was a little … yeah.”
Curveball pointed at the theater.
“Did I miss something,” she said, “or were they actually throwing shit at us?”
The man looked pained and amused at the same time.
“Cow pats. I think that technically makes it manure,” he said. “It’s always rough when you’re trying to out-Brecht Brecht.”
Tomorrow was her exhibition show, the last one on this leg of the tour. She’d been planning to go out with Ana as her local guide, but her friend had been called out of town on business at the last minute and wouldn’t be back until morning. Kate had decided to make it an adventure. Grab a cheap ticket from the same-day kiosk on Water Street, take herself out to dinner someplace, spend an evening on the town. She had enough money to splurge a little, and she wasn’t in Manhattan often enough anymore for it to seem normal. The title Marat/Sade had seemed interesting, probably because of the slash. She hadn’t known anything about it, going in. Then the lights had gone up, and things got weird fast. For instance, the Sade half was actually the Marquis de Sade.
And it was a musical.
“Was there a point to that?” Kate asked, leaning against the streetlamp.
“The cow pats in particular?”
“Any of it?”
“Sure, if you look at the script,” he said. “Marat’s heading up the Terror after the French Revolution. De Sade’s … well, de Sade. They’re kind of the worst of political life and the worst of private life put together for comparison. I actually wrote a paper on Peter Weiss back in college.”
“And the shit flinging?”
“The deeper structural message can be lost, yes,” he said with a grin.
From down the block, a young black man in a sand-colored shirt waved.
“Tyler!”
The dark-haired man turned and held up a finger in a just-a-minute gesture. Tyler. His smile was all apology.
“I’ve got to go,” he said, and
Curveball lifted a hand, half permission, half farewell. Tyler paused. She felt a moment’s tightness and the giddiness faded. She knew what came next. I’m a big fan. Can I get a picture with you? She’d say yes, because she always did because it was polite.
“Some of us are heading over to Myko’s for drinks and cheap souvlaki,” Tyler said. “If you want to come hang out, you’d be welcome.”
“Um.”
“They don’t throw manure. That I’ve noticed.”
Do you know who I am? slid to the back of her tongue and stopped there. He didn’t. Tyler’s friend called for him again.
“Sure,” she said. “Why not?”
* * *
Bugsy’s apartment smells stale. She wants to make the scent into old laundry or unwashed dishes, but it isn’t that. It’s air that has been still for too long. The kitchen is in the uncomfortable place between dirty and clean. A radio in a back room is tuned to NPR. In the main room, there are piles of books on the coffee table. Murder mysteries, crossword puzzles. The DVD of a ten-year-old romantic comedy perches on the armrest of the couch, neither box nor sleeve in sight. He starts a coffee grinder, and the high whining of hard beans being ripped apart makes speech impossible for a few seconds. The silence rushes in.
“You’re working for Aces!,” she says, even though they both already know it.
“I am. Reporting to the public at large which of their heroes are going commando to the Emmys. Keeping the world safe for amateur celebrity gynecologists.”
“Does the Committee know?”
The coffee machine burbles and steams. Bugsy grins.
“You mean the Great and Glorious Committee to Save Everyone and Fix Everything? I kind of stepped back from that.”
There is a pause. Just like you did hangs in the air like an accusation, but he doesn’t push it.
“What happened?”
She means What happened to you? but he seems to take it as What happened to your job? Maybe they’re the same question. He pours coffee into a black mug with the gold-embossed logo of a bank on the side and hands it to her. She takes it by reflex.
“Well, there was this thing. It was about six months after we took out the Radical,” he says. “Lohengrin called me and a few other guys in for this sensitive Committee operation at this little pit outside Assab.”
“I don’t know where Assab is,” she says. The coffee warms her hands.
“So you get the general idea,” he says, leaning against the counter. His fingernails are dirty. She’s known him for years, but she can’t remember if it’s normal for him. “Idea was to get some kind of industrial base going. Fight poverty by getting someone a job. You wouldn’t think there’d be a lot of push back on that, but there was. So essentially what you’ve got is this textile plant out in the middle of the desert with maybe two hundred guys working there, and five aces set up to do security until the locals can figure out what a police force would look like. I was half of the surveillance team.”