Anne Charnock

Editor Donna Scott has selected the very best short fiction by British authors published during 2017. Twenty-two stories, from established names and rising stars of genre fiction. Introduction - Donna Scott Blinders - Tyler Keevil In the Night of the Comet - Adam Roberts The Walls of Tithonium Chasma - Tim Major 3.8 Missions - Katie Gray Over You - Jaine Fenn The Ghosts of Europa Will Keep You Trapped in a Prison You Make for Yourself - Matt Dovey Uniquo - Aliya Whiteley Looking for Laika - Laura Mauro A Good Citizen - Anne Charnock Mercury Teardrops - Jeff Noon The Nightingales in Pl tres - Natalia Theodoridou The Road to the Sea - Lavie Tidhar When I Close My Eyes - Chris Barnham Targets - Eric Brown London Calling - Philip A. Suggars The Last Word - Ken MacLeod After the Atrocity - Ian Creasey Voicemail - Karen McCreedy Green Boughs Will Cover Thee - Sarah Byrne Airless - N. J. Ramsden Product Recall - Robert Bagnall The Endling Market - E. J. Swift About the Authors.

Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award. In a near-future London, Millie Dack places her hand on her belly to feel her baby kick, resolute in her decision to be a single parent. Across town, her closest friend—a hungover Toni Munroe—steps into the shower and places her hand on a medic console. The diagnosis is devastating. In this stunning, bittersweet family saga, Millie and Toni experience the aftershocks of human progress as their children and grandchildren embrace new ways of making babies. When infertility is a thing of the past, a man can create a child without a woman, a woman can create a child without a man, and artificial wombs eliminate the struggles of pregnancy. But what does it mean to be a parent? A child? A family? Through a series of interconnected vignettes that spans five generations and three continents, this emotionally taut story explores the anxieties that arise when the science of fertility claims to deliver all the answers.

Finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award and the Kitschies Golden Tentacle (Debut Novel) AwardLate in the twenty-first century, big business is booming and state institutions are thriving thanks to advances in genetic engineering, which have produced a compliant population free of addictions. Violent crime is a rarity. Hyper-intelligent Jayna is a star performer at top predictive agency Mayhew McCline, where she forecasts economic and social trends. A brilliant mathematical modeler, she far outshines her co-workers, often correcting their work on the quiet. Her latest coup: finding a link between northeasterly winds and violent crime. When a string of events contradicts her forecasts, Jayna suspects she needs more data and better intuition. She needs direct interactions with the rest of society. Bravely--and naively--she sets out to disrupt her strict routine and stumbles unwittingly into a world where her IQ is increasingly irrelevant...a place where human relationships and the complexity of life are difficult for her to decode. And as she experiments with taking risks, she crosses the line into corporate intrigue and disloyalty. Can Jayna confront the question of what it means to live a "normal" life? Or has the possibility of a "normal" life already been eclipsed for everyone?

Nominated for the 2013 Philip K. Dick Award! Late in the twenty-first century, big business is booming and state institutions are thriving thanks to advances in genetic engineering, which have produced a compliant population free of addictions. Violent crime is a rarity. Hyper-intelligent Jayna is a star performer at top predictive agency Mayhew McCline, where she forecasts economic and social trends. A brilliant mathematical modeler, she far outshines her co-workers, often correcting their work on the quiet. Her latest coup: finding a link between northeasterly winds and violent crime. When a string of events contradicts her forecasts, Jayna suspects she needs more data and better intuition. She needs direct interactions with the rest of society. Bravely—and naively—she sets out to disrupt her strict routine and stumbles unwittingly into a world where her IQ is increasingly irrelevant…a place where human relationships and the complexity of life are difficult for her to decode. And as she experiments with taking risks, she crosses the line into corporate intrigue and disloyalty. Can Jayna confront the question of what it means to live a “normal” life? Or has the possibility of a “normal” life already been eclipsed for everyone?