Science Fiction: The Best of the Year (2008 Edition)
Language: English
Pages: 367
ISBN: 2:00233618
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Included in this volume:
INTRODUCTION, Rich Horton (Editor)
DARK INTEGERS, Greg Egan
A PLAIN TALE FROM OUR HILLS, Bruce Ster
AN EYE FOR AN EYE, Charles Coleman Finlay
ALWAYS, Karen Joy Fowler
AN OCEAN IS A SNOWFLAKE, FOUR BILLION MILES AWAY, John Barnes
VIRUS CHANGES SKIN, Ekaterina Sedia
WIKIWORLD, Paul Di Filippo
ARTIFICE AND INTELLIGENCE, Tim Pratt
JESUS CHRIST, REANIMATOR, Ken MacLeod
NIGHT CALLS, Robert Reed
EVERYONE BLEEDS THROUGH, Jack Skillingstead
ART OF WAR, Nancy Kress
THREE DAYS OF RAIN, Holly Phillips
BRAIN RAID, Alexander Jablokov
FOR SOLO CELLO, OP. 12, Mary Robinette Kowal
PERFECT VIOLET, Will McIntosh
VECTORING, Geoffrey Landis
THE SKYSAILOR’S TALE, Michael Swanwick
bigger, the dust sinks through the loose vacuum frost to the center. At Kuiper Belt velocities, hardly anything ever hits hard enough to cause vaporization, and anyway it’s too cold for anything to stay vapor for long. So over billions of years, the frost at the center packs slowly around the dust, and all of it sinks and compacts into a kind of sandy glacier. Frost on top of that sandy glacier packs in to form “fi zzy glacier”—water ice mixed with methane and carbon dioxide ice. And always the
unfathomable designs in skin and leaves, without interference from human meddlers. The Institute was empty, except for a security guard who gave her an indifferent look. No doubt, he was used to wild-haired scientists experiencing breakthroughs and running for their sequencers at any hour of the night. Willow waved at him and stumbled for the elevator. She stopped by the lab to load up a cart with cell cultures that harbored viruses of every stripe with every imaginable corn gene inserted into
the mainland, where I sold many of my salvaged goods in person. “Jinglehorse” wanted to extend the hours of operation on holidays. Competitively speaking, I’d feel compelled to be there if the booths were open extra. And since I liked my downtime, I voted no. Items three and four involved decriminalizing a newly designed recreational drug named “arp,” and increasing our region’s freshwater exports. I didn’t know enough about arp, so I got a search going for documents on the drug. I’d try to go
and snacks under a clear sunny sky. (Th is time, concrete pilings upheld the porch.) “What should we call it?” I asked. Cherry jumped right in. “How about the Phantom Blots?” FooDog laughed. I pulled up the reference on the ubik, and I laughed too. “Okay, we’re registered,” said FooDog. 169 PAUL DI FIL IPP O “Now what? How do we draw people to our cause? I don’t know anything about politics.” “You don’t have to. It would take too long to play by the rules, with no guarantees of success. So
instead. “Look, the bulldozers are coming today. Get in the damn stick already!” Rayvenn had visions of going to the local pagan potluck in a few days and summoning forth the marsh spirit from her staff, dazzling all the others as frogs manifested magically from the punch bowl and reeds sprouted up in the Jell-O and rain fell from a clear blue sky. It would be awesome. “Yes, okay,” the marsh spirit said. “If that’s the only way.” The frogs all jumped away in different directions, and Rayvenn