"An anthology celebrating hard science fiction presents a series of stories that emphasize science and technology, in a collection featuring such authors as Poul Anderson, Iain M. Banks, Stephen Baxter, and Nancy Kress."--Worldcat.

The best-ever anthology of one of science fiction's most vigorous subgenres

Featuring more than sixty groundbreaking short stories by modern science fiction's most important and influential writers, The Ascent of Wonder offers a definitive and incisive exploration of the SF genre's visionary core. From Poe to Pohl, Wells to Wolfe, and Verne to Vinge, this hefty anthology fully charts the themes, trends, thoughts, and traditions that comprise the challenging yet rich literary form known as "hard SF."

A banner year for speculative fiction has yielded a crop of superb short form SF. Now the very best to appear over the past twelve months has been amassed into one extraordinary volume by acclaimed editors and anthologists David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, offering bold visions of days to come that are bright, triumphant, breathtaking, and strikingly unique. Once more, celebrated masters of the field join with exciting new voices to sing of explorations and invasions, grand technological accomplishments, amazing flights into the unknown, horrors and miracles, and the human condition. Welcome to amazing worlds that could be -- and, perhaps, sooner than you have ever dared to imagine. New tales from: Gregory Benford Terry Bisson James Patrick Kelly Pamela Sargent Jack McDevitt Gene Wolfe and more

Alastair Reynolds pushes the boundaries of science fiction and “confirms his place among the leaders of the hard-science space-opera renaissance” (Publishers Weekly) in this novel in his Revelation Space universe. Late in the twenty-sixth century, the human race has advanced enough to accidentally trigger the Inhibitors—alien killing machines designed to detect intelligent life and destroy it. The only hope for humanity lies in the recovery of a secret cache of doomsday weapons—and a renegade named Clavain who is determined to find them. But other factions want the weapons for their own purposes—and the weapons themselves have another agenda altogether...

Fifteen original tales of magic and mayhem by fantasy's finest set in and around Renaissance Faires.

The 1987 publication of Iain M. Banks's Consider Phlebas helped trigger the British renaissance of radical hard science fiction and influenced a generation of New Space Opera masters. The thirteen SF novels that followed inspired an avid fandom and intense intellectual engagement while Banks's mainstream books vaulted him to the top of the Scottish literary scene. Paul Kincaid has written the first study of Iain M. Banks to explore the confluence of his SF and literary techniques and sensibilities. As Kincaid shows, the two powerful aspects of Banks's work flowed into each other, blurring a line that critics too often treat as clear-cut. Banks's gift for black humor and a honed skepticism regarding politics and religion found expression even as he orchestrated the vast, galaxy-spanning vistas in his novels of the Culture. In examining Banks's entire SF oeuvre, Kincaid unlocks the set of ideas Banks drew upon, ideas that spoke to an unusually varied readership that praised him as a visionary and reveled in the distinctive character of his works. Entertaining and broad in scope, Iain M. Banks offers new insights on one of the most admired figures in contemporary science fiction.

Blood will flow, heads will roll, dragons will soar, and the dead shall rise. Journey to ancient cities ruled by sinister mages, storm-tossed seas where monsters dwell, mysterious towers full of ancient secrets, and dark dungeons with untold treasures. From Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian to George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire, join the legendary heroes and villains in nineteen epic adventures that are sure to bring out the barbarian in you. Anti-hero Elric infiltrates a band of mercenaries to match wits with a powerful sorcerer. With her trio of dragons, Daenerys Stormbringer makes a fool’s bargain with slave traders. A mage’s apprentice, the young Grey Mouser uses newfound power to battle an evil duke. Conan breaks into the Tower of the Elephant to steal a spectacular jewel with a dark secret. Despite her drunkard’s ways, Malmury slays an old sea troll before facing his powerful daughter.

Greg Egan (1961- ) publishes works that challenge readers with rigorous, deeply-informed scientific speculation. He unapologetically delves into mathematics, physics, and other disciplines in his prose, putting him in the vanguard of the hard science fiction renaissance of the 1990s. A working physicist and engineer, Karen Burnham is uniquely positioned to provide an in-depth study of Egan's science-heavy oeuvre. Her survey of the author's career covers novels like Permutation City and Schild's Ladder and the Hugo Award-winning novella "Oceanic," analyzing how Egan used cutting-edge scientific theory to explore ethical questions and the nature of humanity. As Burnham shows, Egan's collected works constitute a bold artistic statement: that narratives of science are equal to those of poetry and drama, and that science holds a place in the human condition as exalted as religion or art. The volume includes a rare interview with the famously press-shy Egan covering his works, themes, intellectual interests, and thought processes.