Nancy Kress, winner of multiple awards for her science fiction and fantasy, ranges through space and time in this stunning collection. Anne Boleyn is snatched from her time stream--with unexpected consequences for two worlds. A far-future spaceship brings religion to a planet that already harbors shocking natives. People genetically engineered to never need to sleep clash with those who do. A scientific expedition to the center of the galaxy discovers more than anyone bargained for. A woman finds that ''people like us'' does not mean what she thinks it does. Praised for both her hard SF and her complex characters, Nancy Kress brings a unique viewpoint to twenty-one stories, the best of a long and varied career that has won her five Nebulas, two Hugos, a Sturgeon, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Table of Contents: Introduction And Wild For to Hold Out of All Them Bright Stars Pathways Dancing on Air Unto the Daughters Laws of Survival Someone To Watch Over Me Flowers of Aulit Prison Price of Oranges By Fools Like Me Casey's Empire Shiva in Shadow Grant Us This Day Kindness of Strangers End Game My Mother, Dancing Trinity People Like Us Evolution Margin of Error Beggars in Spain

Kress's best short stories of the decade are collected for the first time in this substantial anthology that includes many Nebula Award nominees.

By the middle of the twenty-first century the worldwide fertility rate has declined nearly eighty percent. No one knows why. Now the average age in the United States is fifty-four, and children are treasured and spoilt by those lucky enough to have them and coveted by the vast majority who can't. Maximum Light is the story of three people from different sections of this very different American society. Nick Clementi is seventy-five years old, a doctor, and an advisor to the Congressional Advisory Committee for Medical Crises. Shana Walders is twenty-six and has just finished her two years in the National Service Corps. Cameron Atuli is twenty-eight, a primcipal dancer with the National Ballet, and has willingly had a portion of his memory removed; what it was and why he did it, he doesn't know. In her last days of National Service, Shana witnesses something so horrible that it is immediately brought to the attention of Clementi's committee, but so shocking that even the committee would like to believe that it can't be true. And what Cameron can't remember may be the key to the mystery. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

"Leisha Camden is a genetically engineered 'Sleepless.' Her ability to stay awake all the time has not only made her more productive, but the genetic modifications have also given the 'Sleepless' a higher IQ and may even make them immortal. Are they the future of humanity? Or will the small community of 'sleepless' be hunted down as freaks by a world that has grown wary of its newest creation?"--Page [4] of cover.

While expanding out into interstellar space using star gates left by an ancient, long-vanished race, humanity encounters the Fallers, an alien race bent on genocide. In this fragile situation, a new planet is discovered. A team of human scientists is sent to investigate the pre-industrial race living there. But what the scientists don't know is that their mission of first contact is actually a covert military operation.

Nine new stories from a long-time star of the science fiction field including the Hugo Award winner "The Erdmann Nexus" and Nebula Award winner "The Fountain of Age." These stories have been reprinted in The Year's Best Science Fiction, Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, and Best of the Web. Kress unpacks the future the way DNA investigators unravelled the double helix: one gene at a time. In many of these stories gene sculpting is illegal yet commonplace and the effects range between slow catastrophe (“End Game”), cosmic (“First Rites”), and tragic (“Safeguard”). Then there’s the morning when Rochester disappears and Jenny has to rely on “The Kindness of Strangers.” There’s Jill, who is kidnapped by aliens and trying to learn the “Laws of Survival.” And there’s Hope, whose Grandma is regretting the world built “By Fools Like Me.”

Follows the arrival of alien embassies who meet with the United Nations amid human fear and speculation before obscure scientist Dr. Marianne Jenner is secretly invited to visit the aliens and prevent an imminent disaster.