The Final Frontier: Stories of Exploring Space, Colonizing the Universe, and First Contact

The vast and mysterious universe is explored in this anthology from award-winning editor and anthologist Neil Clarke (Clarkesworld magazine, The Best Science Fiction of the Year).

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. With galaxy-spanning adventures of discovery and adventure, from generations ships to warp drives, exploring new worlds to first contacts, science fiction writers have given readers increasingly new and alien ways to look out into our broad and sprawling universe. Stories include are:

• A Jar of Goodwill — Tobias S. Buckell
• Mono no aware — Ken Liu
• Rescue Mission — Jack Skillingstead
• Shiva in Shadow — Nancy Kress
• Slow Life — Michael Swanwick
• Three Bodies at Mitanni — Seth Dickinson
• The Deeps of the Sky — Elizabeth Bear
• Diving into the Wreck — Kristine Kathryn Rusch
• The Voyage Out — Gwyneth Jones
• The Symphony of Ice and Dust — Julie Novakova
• Twenty Lights to “The Land of Snow” — Michael Bishop
• The Firewall and the Door — Sean McMullen
• Permanent Fatal Errors — Jay Lake
• Gypsy — Carter Scholz
• Sailing the Antarsa — Vandana Singh
• The Mind is Its Own Place — Carrie Vaughn
• The Wreck of the Godspeed — James Patrick Kelly
• Seeing — Genevieve Valentine
• Travelling into Nothing — An Owomoyela
• Glory — Greg Egan
• The Island — Peter Watts

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.