An unabridged collection of the �best of the best� science fiction stories published in 2013 by current and emerging masters of the genre, edited by Allan Kaster. In �Zero for Conduct,� by Greg Egan, an Afghani teenager, living in a near-future Iran with her exiled grandfather, makes a game-changing superconductor discovery. A young girl struggles to survive on a planet, with a stringent class structure, where Doors are used to go off-world in �Exit, Interrupted,� by C. W. Johnson. �Pathways� by Nancy Kress, follows a teenage girl from a small Kentucky mountain town, in a near-future U. S., struggling with her family and culture as she seeks treatment for Fatal Familial Insomnia. In �Entangled,� by Ian R. MacLeod, an Indian woman, in a Britain turned upside down by a disease that links people�s minds, searches for answers to her personal catastrophe. In �The Irish Astronaut,� by Val Nolan, a colleague brings the ashes of an astronaut, who died in the Aquarius disaster, to Ireland for final burial. In �Among Us,� by Robert Reed, a government agency goes to extraordinary lengths to identify and track the aliens among us. �A Map of Mercury,� by Alastair Reynolds, showcases the plight of a failed artist dispatched to retrieve an artistic genius from a collective of cyborgs parading across the face of Mercury. In �Martian Blood,� by Allen M. Steele, a researcher from Earth goes on an expedition into the untamed regions of Mars to extract blood from its natives. �The She-Wolf�s Hidden Grin,� by Michael Swanwick, set in the same milieu as Gene Wolfe�s �The Fifth Head of Cerberus,� follows the childhoods of two sisters on a planet far from Earth. Finally, in �The Best We Can,� by Carrie Vaughn, a frustrated scientist pursues first contact among an apathetic populace.
