Edge of Infinity (41 page)

Gwyneth Jones
was born in Manchester, England, and is the author of more than twenty novels for teenagers, mostly under the name Ann Halam, and several highly regarded SF novels for adults. She has won two World Fantasy awards, the Arthur C. Clarke award, the British Science Fiction Association short story award, the Dracula Society’s Children of the Night award, the Philip K. Dick award, and shared the first Tiptree award, in 1992, with Eleanor Arnason. Her most recent books are novel
Spirit
, essay collection
Imagination/Space
, and story collection
The Universe of Things
. She lives in Brighton, UK, with her husband and son, a Tonkinese cat called Ginger, and her young friend Milo.

Paul McAuley
worked as a research biologist in various universities, including Oxford and UCLA, and for six years was a lecturer in botany at St Andrews University, before he became a full-time writer. Although best known as a science-fiction writer, he has also published crime novels and thrillers. His SF novels have won the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award, and the Arthur C. Clarke, John W. Campbell, and Sidewise Awards; his story, ‘The Choice,’ won the 2012 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. His latest titles are
Cowboy Angels
and
In The Mouth Of The Whale
. He lives in North London.

Sandra McDonald’s
collection
Diana Comet and Other Improbable Stories
won the Lambda Literary award, was a Booklist Editor’s Choice, and was an American Library Association ‘Over the Rainbow’ book. A military veteran and former Hollywood assistant, she is the author of several science fiction adventures, including
Boomerang World
,
The Outback Stars
,
The Stars Down Under
, and
The Stars Blue Yonder
. As Sam Cameron, she writes a young adult GLBTQ series of mysteries including
Mystery of The Tempest
,
The Secret of Othello
, and
The Missing Juliet
. Her short fiction has appeared in
Asimov’s Science Fiction
,
Strange Horizons
, and dozens of other publications. Four of her stories have been noted on the James A. Tiptree Award Honor List or Short List. Originally from Massachusetts, she currently lives in Jacksonville, Florida, and teaches college.

An Owomoyela
is a neutrois author with a background in web development, linguistics, and weaving chain maille out of stainless steel fencing wire, whose fiction has appeared in a number of venues including Clarkesworld,
Asimov’s
, Lightspeed, and a pair of Year’s Bests. An’s interests range from pulsars and Cepheid variables to gender studies and nonstandard pronouns, with a plethora of stops in between. Se graduated from the Clarion West Writers Workshop in 2008, attended the Launchpad Astronomy Workshop in 2011, and doesn’t plan to stop learning as long as se can help it.

Hannu Rajaniemi
was born in Ylivieska, Finland, in 1978. He read his first science fiction novel at the age of six – Jules Verne’s
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
. At the age of eight, Hannu approached ESA with a fusion-powered spaceship design, which was received with a polite thank you note. Hannu studied mathematics and theoretical physics at the University of Oulu and completed a BSc thesis on transcendental numbers. He went on to complete Part III of the Mathematical Tripos at Cambridge University and a PhD in string theory at University of Edinburgh. Hannu is a member of an Edinburgh-based writers’ group which includes Alan Campbell, Jack Deighton, Caroline Dunford and Charles Stross. His first fiction sale was the short story ‘Shibuya no Love’ to
Futurismic.com
. Hannu’s first novel,
The Quantum Thief
, was published by Gollancz to great acclaim in 2011. The sequel,
The Fractal Prince
, is due shortly.

Alastair Reynolds
was born in Barry, South Wales, in 1966. He has lived in Cornwall, Scotland, and – since 1991 – the Netherlands, where he spent twelve years working as a scientist for the European Space Agency. He became a full-time writer in 2004, and recently married his long-time partner, Josette. Reynolds has been publishing short fiction since his first sale to
Interzone
in 1990. Since 2000 he has published ten novels: the
Inhibitor
trilogy, British Science Fiction Association Award winner
Chasm City
,
Century Rain
,
Pushing Ice
,
The Prefect
,
House of Suns
, and
Terminal World
. His most recent novel is
Blue Remembered Earth
, first in the
Poseidon’s Children
series. His short fiction has been collected in
Zima Blue and Other Stories
,
Galactic North
, and
Deep Navigation
. Coming up is a new Doctor Who novel,
The Harvest of Time
. In his spare time he rides horses.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch
started out the decade of the ’90s as one of the fastest-rising and most prolific young authors on the scene, took a few years out in mid-decade for a very successful turn as editor of
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
, and, since stepping down from that position, has returned to her old standards of production here in the 21st Century, publishing a slew of novels in four genres, writing fantasy, mystery, and romance novels under various pseudonyms as well as science fiction. She has published more than twenty novels under her own name, including
The White Mists of Power
,
The Disappeared
,
Extremes
, and
Fantasy Life
, the four-volume
Fey
series, the
Black Throne
series,
Alien Influences
, and several
Star Wars
,
Star Trek
, and other media tie-in books, both solo and written with husband Dean Wesley Smith and with others. Her most recent books (as Rusch, anyway) are the SF novels of the popular
Retrieval Artist
series, which include
The Disappeared
,
Extremes
,
Consequences
,
Buried Deep
,
Paloma
,
Recovery Man
, and a collection of stories,
The Retrieval Artist and Other Stories
. Her copious short fiction has been collected in
Stained Black: Horror Stories
,
Stories for an Enchanted Afternoon
,
Little Miracles: And Other Tales of Murder
, and
Millenium Babies
. In 1999, she won Readers Award polls from the readerships of both
Asimov’s Science Fiction
and
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine
, an unprecedented double honour! As an editor, she was honoured with the Hugo Award for her work on
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
, and shared the World Fantasy Award with Dean Wesley Smith for her work as editor of the original hardcover anthology version of
Pulphouse
. As a writer, she has won the Herodotus Award for Best Historical Mystery (for
A Dangerous Road
, written as Kris Nelscott) and the
Romantic Times
Reviewer’s Choice Award (for
Utterly Charming
, written as Kristine Grayson); as Kristine Kathryn Rusch, she’s won the John W. Campbell Award, been a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and took home a Hugo Award in 2000 for her story ‘Millennium Babies,’ making her one of the few people in genre history to win Hugos for both editing and writing.

After discovering planetary wireless broadband,
Bruce Sterling
united his time between Turin, Belgrade, and Austin. He also began writing some design fiction and architecture fiction, as well as science fiction. However, this daring departure from the routine made no particular difference to anybody. Sterling then started hanging out with Augmented Reality people, and serving as a guest curator for European electronic arts festivals. These eccentricities also provoked no particular remark. Sterling went on a Croatian literary yacht tour and lived for a month in Brazil. These pleasant interludes had little practical consequence. After teaching in Switzerland and Holland, Sterling realized that all his European students lived more or less in this manner, and that nobody was surprised about much of any of that any more. So, he decided to sit still and get a little writing done, and this story was part of that effort. Prior to this he had written ten novels and four short story collections. His most recent books are novel
The Caryatids
, major career retrospective
Ascendancies: The Best of Bruce Sterling
, and collection
Global High-Tech
.

The universe shifts and changes: suddenly you understand, you get it, and are filled with wonder. That moment of understanding drives the greatest science-fiction stories and lies at the heart of Engineering Infinity. Whether it's coming up hard against the speed of light - and, with it, the enormity of the universe - realising that terraforming a distant world is harder and more dangerous than you'd ever thought, or simply realizing that a hitchhiker on a starship consumes fuel and oxygen with tragic results, it's hard science-fiction where a sense of discovery is most often found and where science-fiction's true heart lies.

This exciting and innovative science-fiction anthology collects together stories by some of the biggest names in the field, including Gwyneth Jones, Stephen Baxter and Charles Stross.

www.solarisbooks.com

Solaris Rising
presents nineteen stories of the very highest calibre from some of the most accomplished authors in the genre, proving just how varied and dynamic science fi ction can be. From strange goings on in the present to explorations of bizarre futures, from drug-induced tragedy to time-hopping serial killers, from crucial choices in deepest space to a ravaged Earth under alien thrall, from gritty other worlds to surreal other realms, Solaris Rising delivers a broad spectrum of experiences and excitements, showcasing the genre at its very best.

‘What, then, are Solaris publishing? On the basis of this anthology, quite a wide-ranging selection of SF, some of it very good indeed.’

–
SF Site
on
The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction

‘A cliché it may be, but there really is something for everyone here... an ideal bait to tempt those who only read novels to climb over the short fiction fence.’

–
Interzone
on
The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Vol. 2

‘The stories presented in this latest volume are intended to showcase the diverse nature of science fiction. Does it succeed? Absolutely.’

–
SF Signal
on
The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Vol. 3