An illness cursing the land forces seventeen-year-old Vega, the Last Astronomer, to venture across the wilderness to discover the stars message that will save her people.

When Minna expresses an interest in stars, her mother suggests she invite a few friends to a star party, including a special dinner, a trip to the new Star Space at the Children's Museum, and star-gazing.

Special Forces are used to crazy ops, but orbiting a black hole to slow down time and fight Earth's dirty battles in the future? That's new, even for them. But that's the mission for Owen Quarry, Anaya Pretorius, and the rest of COG, a company of elite, disgraced, soldiers from around the globe. They join a defrocked company commander, an AI warship with self-confidence issues, and a crew of misfit troupers on a dizzying time-quest: prove the concept...

"The Amalgam spans the nearly entire galaxy, and is composed of innumerable beings from a wild variety of races, some human or near it, some entirely other. The one place that they cannot go is the bulge, the bright, hot center of the galaxy. There dwell the Aloof, who for millions of years have deflected any and all attempts to communicate with or visit them. So when Rakesh is offered an opportunity to travel within their sphere, in search of a lost...

"...[E]xploring an alternate history of science fiction, this ingenious anthology showcases eighteen brilliant authors leading the way to a new literature of the future...Two strangely-detached astronauts orbit Earth while a third world war rages on. A primatologist's lover suspects her of obsession with one of her simian charges. The horrors of trench warfare dovetail with the theoretical workings of black holes. A dissolving marriage and bitter...

"In the 1930s, William Sloane wrote two brilliant novels that gave a whole new meaning to cosmic horror. In To Walk the Night, Bark X and his college buddy Jerry Lister, a science whiz, head back to the old alma mater to catch a football game and to visit a cherished professor of astronomy. In the midst of the game, a strange inimical presence seems to grip the entire stadium; after, the two young men discover the body of their professor, consumed...

When a rainstorm prevents Nancy and her best friend, Robert, from getting to the planetarium the night of a class field trip, she has a brilliant idea for making things better.