Author Description

This is a collection of the best science fiction stories set on planet Earth published in 2023 by leading authors of the genre, edited by Allan Kaster. - **"A Soul in the World" by Charlie Jane Anders**—A childless woman is given a most unusual child to raise as her own. - **"A Kingdom of Seagrass and Silk" by Cécile Cristofari**—An elderly couple fend for themselves on a deserted island while waiting out an epidemic. - **"LOL, Said the Scorpion" by Rich Larson**—Wealthy tourists wear bio-filtering suits to go on live vacations to impoverished countries. - **"A Borrowing of Bones" by Karin Lowachee**—Reality blurs as people become menageries of other lives. - **"Devil in the Deep" by Lucie Lukačovičová**—A Bolivian mining community blames lady scientists for their bad luck. - **"Gravesend, or, Everyday Life in the Anthropocene" by Paul McAuley**—An army veteran, suffering from the aftereffects of a psych bomb, convalesces in the eco-stressed marshes of the Thames. - **"Sigh No More" by Ian McDonald**—The show must go on despite a solar flare that has crashed London’s power grid. - **"Cuttlefish" by Anil Menon**—A family seeks to escape the modern world at an old fashioned Indian guesthouse. - **"Highway Requiem" by T. R. Napper**—A trucker’s way of life on the roads of the Outback is threatened by automation. - **"Contracting Iris" by Peter Watts**—A novel microbial infection changes the behavior of a woman diagnosed with MS. - **"Deep Blue Jump" by Dean Whitlock**—Children are forced to pick drug-like dreamberries in desert canyons under austere conditions.