For decades, The Year's Best Science Fiction has been the most widely read short science fiction anthology of its kind. Now, after 35 annual collections comes the ultimate in science fiction anthologies. In The Very Best of the Best, legendary editor Gardner Dozois selects the finest short stories for this landmark collection, including short fiction from authors such as Charles Stross, Michael Swanwick, Nancy Kress, Greg Egan, Stephen Baxter, Pat Cadigan, and any many more.

Short novels are movie-length narratives that may well be the perfect length for science fiction stories. This audio collection presents the best-of-the-best short science fiction novels published in 2014 by current and emerging masters of this vibrant form of storytelling.

Short novels are movie-length narratives that may well be the perfect length for science fiction stories. This audio collection, nearly 16 hours long, presents the best-of-the-best science fiction novellas published in 2016 by current and emerging masters of this vibrant form of storytelling.

Beyond the Aquila Rift: It's shorthand for the trip no one ever hopes to make by accident. The one that will screw up the rest of your life, the one that creates the ghosts you see haunting the shadows of company bars across the whole Bubble. Men and women ripped out of time, cut adrift from families and lovers by an accident of an alien technology we use but rarely comprehend.

An unabridged audio collection of the "best of the best" science fiction stories published in 2014 by current and emerging masters of the genre, edited by Allan Kaster, as narrated by top voice talents.

The very far future: The galaxy is a drifting wreck of black holes, neutron stars, and chill white dwarfs. The age of star formation is long past. Yet there is life here, feeding off the energies of the stellar remnants, and there is mind, a tremendous galaxy-spanning intelligence each of whose thoughts lasts a hundred thousand years. And this mind cradles memories of a long-gone age when a more compact universe was full of light... The 27th century: Proxima Centauri, an undistinguished red dwarf star, is the nearest star to our sun. How would it be to live on such a world?

The Western Front, 1916. Private Percy Blakeney wakes up. He is lying on fresh spring grass. He can hear birdsong and the wind in the leaves. Where have the mud, blood, and blasted landscape of no-man's-land gone? For that matter, where has Percy gone? Madison, Wisconsin, 2015. Police officer Monica Jansson is exploring the burned-out home of a reclusive - some say mad, others allege dangerous - scientist who seems to have vanished. Sifting through the wreckage, Jansson find a curious gadget.

For eons, Earth has been under observation by the Firstborn, beings almost as old as the universe itself. The Firstborn are unknown to humankind - until they act. In an instant, Earth is carved up and reassembled like a huge jigsaw puzzle. Suddenly the planet and every living thing on it no longer exist in a single timeline.

Hackett, in his trusty ship the Perseus, is not just a space traveller—beginning his travels with an expedition to Neptune and back—but, thanks to the time-dilation effect, a time traveller as well. His new mission will take him to Andromeda, to get a close-up look at the constellation which will eventually crash into the Milky Way, and give humanity a heads-up about the challenges which are coming. A mission which will take him five million years to complete. Not only is Hackett exploring unknown space, but he will return to a vastly different time.

The best science fiction scrutinizes our culture and politics, examines the limits of the human condition, and zooms across galaxies at faster-than-light speeds, moving from the very near future to the far-flung worlds of tomorrow in the space of a single sentence. Neil Clarke has selected the short science fiction (and only science fiction) best representing the previous year's writing, showcasing the talent, variety, and awesome "sensawunda" that the genre has to offer.

Amahle is a Light Chaser—one of a number of explorers, who travel the universe alone (except for their onboard AI), trading trinkets for life stories. But when she listens to the stories sent down through the ages, she hears the same voice talking directly to her from different times and on different worlds. She comes to understand that something terrible is happening, and only she is in a position to do anything about it. And it will cost everything to put it right.

Consider Phlebas: Booktrack Edition adds an immersive musical soundtrack to your audiobook listening experience! The first audiobook in Iain M. Banks's seminal science fiction series, The Culture. Consider Phlebas introduces listeners to a utopian conglomeration of human and alien races that explores the nature of war, morality, and the limitless bounds of mankind's imagination.

On the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man, there waits the creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all.

Ambassador Mahit Dzmare arrives in the center of the multi-system Teixcalaanli Empire only to discover that her predecessor, the previous ambassador from their small but fiercely independent mining station, has died. But no one will admit that his death wasn't an accident - or that Mahit might be next to die, during a time of political instability in the highest echelons of the imperial court. Now, Mahit must discover who is behind the murder, rescue herself, and save her station from Teixcalaan's unceasing expansion.

The urge to explore and discover is a natural and universal one, and the edge of the unknown is expanded with each passing year as scientific advancements inch us closer and closer to the outer reaches of our solar system and the galaxies beyond them. Generations of writers have explored these new frontiers and the endless possibilities they present in great detail. The Final Frontier delivers stories from across this literary spectrum, a reminder that the universe is far large and brimming with possibilities than we could ever imagine, as hard as we may try.