The Year's Top Short SF Novels 2

edited by Allan Kaster

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Short novels are movie length narratives that may well be the perfect length for science fiction stories. This collection presents the best-of-the-best science fiction novellas published in 2011 by current and emerging masters of this vibrant form of storytelling, edited by Allan Kaster.

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• "The Ice Owl" by Carolyn Ives Gilman — An adolescent, female, Waster in the iron city of Glory to God finds an enigmatic tutor who provides her with much more than academic instruction while a fundamentalist revolt is underway.

• "The Man Who Bridged the Mist" by Kij Johnson — In the HUGO AWARD winner, an architect from the capital builds a bridge over a dangerous mist that will change more than just the Empire.

• "Kiss Me Twice" by Mary Robinette Kowal — A detective, with the assistance of the police department's AI that takes on Mae West's persona, solves a murder with all the flair of an Asimov robot story.

• "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary" by Ken Liu — A moving chronicle of attempts to witness the history of Japanese atrocities against the Chinese in a World War II prison camp by traveling back in time using Bohm-Kirino particles.

• "The Ants of Flanders" by Robert Reed — A teenage boy, incapable of fear, takes center stage in an alien invasion of Earth that pits alien foes against each other in a war that has no regard for mankind's existence.

• "Angel of Europa" by Allen M. Steele — An arbiter aboard a space ship, exploring the moons of Jupiter, is resuscitated from a hibernation tank to investigate the deaths of two scientists that took place in a bathyscaphe underneath the global ocean of Europa.