Galactic Empires by Neil Clarke (Ed.)
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Overview: Neil Clarke is the Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Clarkesworld and Forever Magazine. His work at Clarkesworld has garnered three Hugo Awards for Best Semiprozine, a British Fantasy Award, and a World Fantasy Award. He’s also a four-time Hugo Nominee for Best Editor (Short Form) and editor of several anthologies, including The Best Science Fiction of the Year series, Upgraded, and Galactic Empires. Upcoming anthologies include The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 2, War Machines, and More Human Than Human. He currently lives in NJ with his wife and two sons.
Genre: Science Fiction
Neil Clarke, publisher of the award-winning Clarkesworld magazine, presents a collection of thought-provoking and galaxy-spanning array of galactic short science fiction.
From E. E. "Doc" Smith’s Lensman, to George Lucas’ Star Wars, the politics and process of Empire have been a major subject of science fiction’s galaxy-spanning fictions. The idiom of the Galactic Empire allows science fiction writers to ask (and answer) questions that are shorn of contemporary political ideologies and allegiances. This simple narrative slight of hand allows readers and writers to see questions and answers from new and different perspectives.
The stories in this book do just that. What social, political, and economic issues do the organizing structure of “empire” address? Often the size, shape, and fates of empires are determined not only by individuals, but by geography, natural forces, and technology. As the speed of travel and rates of effective communication increase, so too does the size and reach of an Imperial bureaucracy. Sic itur ad astra—“Thus one journeys to the stars.”
At the beginning of the twentieth century, writers such as Kipling and Twain were at the forefront of these kinds of narrative observations, but as the century drew to a close, it was writers like Iain M. Banks who helped make science fiction relevant. That tradition continues today, with award-winning writers like Ann Leckie, whose 2013 debut novel Ancillary Justice hinges upon questions of imperialism and empire.
Here then is a diverse collection of stories that asks the questions that science fiction asks best. Empire: How? Why? And to what effect?
Contains:
Winning Peace by Paul J. McAuley
Night’s Slow Poison by Ann Leckie
All the Painted Stars by Gwendolyn Clare
Firstborn by Brandon Sanderson
Riding the Crocodile by Greg Egan
The Lost Princess Man by John Barnes
The Waiting Stars by Aliette de Bodard
Alien Archeology by Neal Asher
The Muse of Empires Lost by Paul Berger
Ghostweight by Yoon Ha Lee
A Cold Heart by Tobias S. Buckell
The Colonel Returns to the Stars by Robert Silverberg
The Impossibles by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Utriusque Cosmi by Robert Charles Wilson
Section Seven by John G. Hemry
The Invisible Empire of Ascending Light by Ken Scholes
The Man with the Golden Balloon by Robert Reed
Looking Through Lace by Ruth Nestvold
A Letter from the Emperor by Steve Rasnic Tem
The Wayfarer’s Advice by Melinda M. Snodgrass
Seven Years from Home by Naomi Novik
Verthandi’s Ring by Ian McDonald
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