Singer from the Sea (71 page)

“There is no question about it!” Zhao said. For the first time, he was beginning to allow himself to be excited. “The Singer is responding in realtime to the sonar signals transmitted from the surface. Do you realize what this means?”

“If true,” Albert replied, “it means that The Singer is not a recording or automatic beacon of some sort, as current theory suggests, but represents an active intelligence.”

“It means,” Zhao said, excited, “a chance for
first contact….”

“It is likely that the CWS expedition has precisely that in mind. The Americans’ sudden interest in submarines
designed for extreme high-pressure operations suggest that they plan to visit The Singer in person.”

And that, Zhao thought, could well be a disaster for China.

“We will have to inform General Xiang, of course.” Albert reminded him. “With the current political situation, the Americans are unlikely to grant us access to this find.”

“Of course.”

It was imperative that Great
Zhongguo
be the first to make face-to-face contact with alien visitors from Beyond. The nation’s survival—as a world power, as a
technological
power—depended on it. China’s population, now approaching three billion, could not be sustained by the capricious handouts of foreign governments.

And so, China would go to Europa to meet for themselves these song-weaving visitors from the stars.

First, though, the Americans and their puppets would have to be taken out of the way….

Edited by Robert Silverberg

Greg Bear
sold his first short story at the age of fifteen. A Hugo and Nebula Award-winner, he has published seventeen novels. In “The Way of All Ghosts,” Greg Bear reexplores The Way, the artificial universe that leads to other times and other universes, from
Eon, Eternity
, and
Legacy
, and the life of the living myth, Olmy Ap Sennen.

Gregory Benford
is a professor of physics at UC Irvine, as well as the Nebula Award-winning author of eighteen novels. In “A Hunger for the Infinite,” Gregory Benford ponders the continual war of human and machine in the novels of the Galactic Center:
In The Ocean of Night, Across the Sea of Suns, Great Sky River, Tides of Light, Furious Gulf
, and
Sailing Bright Eternity
, and asks one essential question of humanity at the beginning of its decline.

David Brin
established himself as one of the premiere writers of hard science fiction with the
The Uplift Universe
, where humans are not the only sentient race on Earth, or in the universe, and there’s a billion-year conspiracy behind the uplifting of races to sentience … in this new story, “Temptation,” multiple award-winning author
Brin shows exactly how perilous it can be to be offered exactly what you have always wished for.

Multiple-award winning author Orson Scott Card is one of sf/f’s most best-known and most-loved writers, and the novels of
The Ender Series
are his most famous, and brilliant, works. In “Investment Calendar,” Orson Scott Card tells the last hidden secret of his time-and-planet hopping protagonist Ender Wiggin’s life: the momentous first meeting between Ender and Jane, Ender’s computer-based, soon-to-be companion.

Joe Haldeman
electrified the sf/f world with
Forever War
, the Nebula and Hugo Award-winning novel that brilliantly explored the experience of the Vietnam War, and war as a whole. In “A Separate War,” he relates the unknown story of Mary gay’s separation from William, and offers hints about the new
Forever War
novel to come …

What would you do if you never had to sleep again? And what would happen when everyone discovered that the same genes that kept you from needing sleep, also kept you eternally young? Nebula Award-winning author
Nancy Kress
questions the problems arising from genetic modification in her acclaimed trilogy
Beggars in Spain, Beggars and Choosers
, and
Beggars Ride
, and now in “Sleeping Dogs.”

A science fiction legend for her multiple award-winning classics
The Left Hand of Darkness
and
The Dispossessed
,
Ursula K. Le Guin
is known throughout the world for her novels of the Ekumen—brilliantly speculative novels that challenge the reader to reexamine their views of the worlds around them. In “Old Music and the Slave Women,” she takes another look at the wars of race and property.

Anne McCaffrey
is one of science fiction’s most beloved writers, and in “The Ship Who Returned,” she returns to the intriguing world of
The Ship Who Sang.
Helva, the
sentient Ship Who Sings, goes to warn a colony about invading marauders, only to discover that the colony worships
her …

The Heechee … Ancient, alien, unknown, the mysterious visitors dared humanity to come into the Gateway universe and claim the gifts of alien technology, if they could survive. In “The Boy Who Would Live Forever,” the multiple award-winning
Frederik Pohl
returns to the
Tales of the Heechee
and the dangerous, enthralling universe of
Gateway
and its mystifying legacies.

Robert Silverberg
is the multiple award-winning author of numerous science fiction novels, and best-selling editor of the fantasy anthology
Legends.
In “Getting to Know the Dragon,” he returns to the fascinating alternate-Rome universe of
Roma Eterna
, in which Christianity never existed, and Rome remained pagan, and unconquered throughout time.

Brilliantly-fantastic novels of metaphysical and scientific ingenuity,
David Simmon
’s
The Hyperion Cantos
has helped redefine science fiction in the last twenty years, challenging it to move further and faster. In “Orphans of the Helix,” Simmons revisits the award-winning
Hyperion
universe, and asks more questions about the salvation of the human soul.

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