Includes the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novella, Beggars in Spain "Every story of the thirteen reprinted in this volume has, in addition to the science--sometimes rigorous and detailed, sometimes extrapolated and fantastically ramified--compelling human beings (or other sentients) entangled with one another in ways that are psychologically real...There is much to admire and fascinate."--Publishers Weekly "The twenty-first century, it's often remarked, will transform our knowledge of biology, in the same way that the twentieth century transformed physics. With knowledge of course, comes application. And with the application of all we are learning about genetic engineering come social and ethical questions, some of them knotty. This is where science fiction enters, stage left. Scientific laboratories are where the new technologies are rehearsed. Science fiction rehearses the implications of those technologies. What might we eventually do with out new-found power? Should we do it? Who should do it? Who will be affected? How? Is that a good thing or not? For whom? Of the thirteen stories in this book, eight of them are concerned with what might come out of the beakers and test tubes and gene sequencers of microbiology. Not everything in these stories will come to pass. Possibly nothing in them will; fiction is not prediction. But I hope the stories at least raise questions about the world rushing in onus at the speed--not of light--but of thought." -- Nancy Kress from her introduction At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

PERIHELION EXPRESS Captain Gregory Desoto, his three capable protégés, and a computer genius, known as "Spider Web, Bruce," all of whom you will come to know and trust as if they are your brothers, plan and deliver miraculous three day voyages aboard the Perihelion Express, through phenomena in the skies, for their very lucky passengers who each pay a paltry sum of one half million dollars for the ride. Anyone who has taken the cruise will attest that it is the bargain of a lifetime, and you will soon understand why.