The Year's Top Hard Science Fiction Stories 10
(2026)(The tenth book in the Year's Top Hard Science Fiction Stories series)
An anthology of stories edited by Allan Kaster
An unabridged collection spotlighting the best hard science fiction stories and novellas published in 2025 by current and emerging masters of the genre, edited by Allan Kaster.
- ‘Apartment Wars’ by Vera Brook—the widow of a physicist, residing in a country short of living space for its citizens, finds a device that creates small pocket dimensions.
‘ESRI’ by James Dick—the daughter of the woman who launched a failed second mission to Europa, launches the third mission to that moon.
‘Freediver’ by Isabel J. Kim—a two-man team risks a spacewalk to repair vital portal-spanning telecom cables hanging a hundred meters beneath the ocean . . . billions of light years away.
‘Reality Check’ by Nancy Kress—parents resort to deep brain stimulation to break their teenage son’s addiction to gaming.
‘Threat Assessment’ by Matthew Kressel & Mercurio D. River—a psychologist is recruited by the military to determine why a self-aware AI, secluded on the Moon, wants to destroy humankind.
‘The Last Lunar New Year’ by Derek Künsken—in the far future, descendants of humanity argue in a zero-G court to be allowed to live beyond both their time and beyond the habitat.
‘In the Slime of Life’ by Edward M. Lerner—humans and alien green scum antagonize each other on a malodorous, water world.
‘The Hunt for Lemuria 7’ by Allen M. Steele—robotic rovers search for the passengers and crew of a tourist-class lunar spacecraft that mysteriously vanished on the Moon.
‘Tenth Contact’ by Bruce Sterling & Paul Di Filippo—astronauts on Ganymede are caught in a once-in-twenty-million-years galactic aurora storm.
‘The Twenty-One Second God’ by Peter Watts—a man uniquely able to keep his sanity after joining a hivemind is interrogated by the government.
‘Infestation’ by Jay Werkheiser—borane life-forms discover a planet infested with carbon life-forms.
Genre: Science Fiction