HUMANITY 2.0
edited by
Alex Shvartsman

AUTHORS:
Robert J. Sawyer
John Varley
Robert Silverberg
Brenda Cooper
Ken Liu
Mike Rensick
Jody Lynn Nye
 Angus McIntyre
Nancy Fulda
Kenneth Schneyer
Martin L. Shoemaker
David Walton
Cat Rambo
Caroline M. Yoachim
 Alvaroi Zinos-Amaro

What will it mean to be human in the future? How will we evolve in order to reach the stars?

Fifteen short stories collected in this book examine how interstellar flight might change humanity itself. Will we choose to upload our minds into a singularity? Enhance ourselves with alien DNA? Will our bodies remain the same, but our culture and societal norms adapt to accommodate for effects of time dilation, or become subsumed by advanced alien cultures?

Hugo and Nebula award winning authors, bestsellers, and some of the hottest new writers in the field of hard science fiction imagine an array of possible futures—from bright to dystopian—and different permutations of what's in store for us as a species.

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RELEASE DATE: OCTOBER 30, 2016
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Table of Contents

Download Excerpt One (PDF) Click Here

Download Excerpt Two (PDF) Click Here

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REVIEWS

"Alex Shvartsman brings us another excellent anthology with Humanity 2.0, a collection of stories that explore how interstellar flight might alter the path of humanity. Fifteen diverse stories show what it means to be human in the future — often the far future, and sometimes with genetic code that no longer reads as homo sapiens."
Michelle Ristuccia, Goodreads.

Although most of the short stories in this anthology contain some thought-provoking ideas concerning the possible impact of space travel upon the human race, Robert Silverberg’s story stands out as unforgettable and of great importance in showing the potential danger of meeting extraterrestrial intelligent beings.
—Forrest Shultz, New Science Fiction and Fantasy Reviews

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ABOUT THE EDITOR

Alex Shvartsman is a writer, anthologist, translator, and game designer from Brooklyn, NY. He's the winner of the 2014 WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction and a finalist for the 2015 Canopus Award for Excellence in Interstellar Writing.

His short stories have appeared in Nature, Intergalactic Medicine Show, Daily Science Fiction, Galaxy's Edge, and a variety of other magazines and anthologies. His collection, Explaining Cthulhu to Grandma and Other Stories, and his steampunk humor novella H. G. Wells, Secret Agent were published in 2015.

In addition to the UFO series, he has edited the Funny Science Fiction, Funny Fantasy, Coffee: 14 Caffeinated Tales of the Fantastic and Dark Expanse: Surviving the Collapse anthologies

www.AlexShvartsman.com

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PARTICIPATING AUTHORS

Brenda Cooper writes science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories. Her most recent novel is Edge of Dark, from Pyr and her most recent story collection is Cracking the Sky from Fairwood Press. Spear of Light is forthcoming from Pyr in 2016. Brenda is a technology professional and a futurist, and publishes non-fiction on the environment and the future.
Her non-fiction has appeared on
 Slate and Crosscut and her short fiction has appeared in Nature Magazine, among other venues.

Brenda lives in the Pacific Northwest in a household with three people, three dogs, far more than three computers, and only one TV in it.

http://brenda-cooper.com

Nancy Fulda is a Phobos Award winner, a Jim Baen Memorial Award recipient, and a 2012 Hugo and Nebula nominee. During her graduate work at Brigham Young University she studied artificial intelligence, machine learning, and quantum computing. In the years since, she has grappled with the far more complex process of raising three small children. All these experiences sometimes infiltrate her writing.

http://nancyfulda.com/

Ken Liu is an author and translator of speculative fiction, as well as a lawyer and programmer. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, he has been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s, Analog, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Strange Horizons, among other places.

Ken’s debut novel, The Grace of Kings (2015), is a Nebula nominee and the first volume in a silkpunk epic fantasy series, The Dandelion Dynasty. He also released a collection of short fiction, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories (2016). He lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.

In addition to his original fiction, Ken is also the translator of numerous literary and genre works from Chinese to English. His translation of The Three-Body Problem, by Liu Cixin, won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2015, the first translated novel ever to receive that honor.

http://kenliu.name

Angus McIntyre grew up in London and lives in New York, where he makes his living as a software developer. He likes to believe that his degree in Artificial Intelligence will somehow keep him on the good side of our electronic masters when the inevitable robot revolution comes. His short fiction has appeared in Black Candies, the Mission: Tomorrow anthology, and on the BoingBoing website. He is a graduate of the 2013 Clarion UCSD writer’s workshop.

http://angus.pw/

Jody Lynn Nye lists her main career activity as “spoiling cats.” She lives near Chicago with her current cat, Jeremy, and her husband, Bill. She has published more than 45 books, including collaborations with Anne McCaffrey and Robert Asprin, and over 140 short stories. Her latest books are Rhythm of the Imperium (Baen), and Wishing On a Star (Arc Manor).

http://jodynye.net/

Cat Rambo lives, writes, and teaches atop a hill in the Pacific Northwest. Her 200+ fiction publications include stories in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld Magazine, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. She is a Compton Crook, Endeavour, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award nominee. Her 2016 works include Hearts of Tabat (novel), Neither Here Nor Here (collection), Altered America: Steampunk Stories (collection), and the updated edition of Creating an Online Presence for Writers (nonfiction). She is the current President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. It is her real name. For more about Cat, as well as links to her fiction and information about her online classes, visit her website.

http://kittywumpus.net

Mike Resnick is, according to Locus, the all-time leading award winner, living or dead, for short science fiction. He is the winner of five Hugos (from a record thirty-seven nominations), a Nebula, and other major awards in the USA, France, Japan, Croatia, Catalonia, Poland and Spain. He is the author of seventy-five novels, almost 300 stories, and three screenplays, and has edited forty-two anthologies. He currently edits Galaxy’s Edge magazine and the Stellar Guild series.

http://mikeresnick.com

Robert J. Sawyer has won the best-novel Hugo Award (for Hominids), and has twelve other Hugo nominations to his credit. He’s also won the best-novel Nebula Award (for The Terminal Experiment), the John W. Campbell Memorial Award (for Mindscan), and the Audio Publishers Association’s Audie Award for Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Audiobook of the Year (for Calculating God), plus Spain’s Premio UPC de Ciencia Ficción (at 6,000 euro, the world’s largest ongoing science-fiction prize; Rob has won it a record-setting three times), Canada’s Aurora (a record-setting fourteen times), Japan’s best-foreign-novel Seiun Award (three times), China’s Galaxy Award, Analogmagazine’s AnLab, the Hal Clement Memorial Award, and NESFA’s Edward E. Smith Memorial Award (“the Skylark”). In 2014, he was one of the initial nine inductees into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. His 23 novels include Starplex, Rollback, Wake, Triggers, Red Planet Blues, and the just published Quantum Night. The ABC TV series FlashForward was based on his novel of the same name, and Rob—a member of both the Writers Guild of America and the Writers Guild of Canada—was one of the scriptwriters for that series. His work has hit #1 on the Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca, Audible, and Locus science-fiction bestsellers’ lists. Rob holds two honorary doctorates and has published in both the world’s top scientific journals, Science (guest editorial) and Nature (fiction). He lives just outside Toronto.

http://sfwriter.com

Kenneth Schneyer was a finalist for both the Nebula and Sturgeon Awards in 2014. His stories, which often employ odd voicing, appear in Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, Analog, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, the Clockwork Phoenix series, Daily Science Fiction, all three Escape Artists podcasts, and elsewhere. A proud member of the Clarion class of 2009, he now works with both Codex Writers and the Cambridge Science Fiction Workshop. At one time or another, Ken has been an actor, a dishwasher, a corporate lawyer, an assistant dean, a clerk-typist, and an IT project manager; nowadays he teaches legal studies and science fiction literature at Johnson & Wales University, where he also runs the speaker series. He’s interested in astronomy, feminist theory, presidential history, and practically everything else, and he cooks better than you do.

Born in Michigan, he now lives in Rhode Island with one singer, one dancer, one actor, and something with fangs.

http://ken-schneyer.livejournal.com/

Martin L. Shoemaker is a programmer who writes on the side…or maybe it’s the other way around. Programming pays the bills, but a second place story in the Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest earned him lunch with Buzz Aldrin. Programming never did that!

His short story “Today I Am Paul” (from Clarkesworld #107) has been nominated for a Nebula award, has been selected for four Year’s Best anthologies, and will be translated into seven languages in 2016. His work has also appeared in Analog, Galaxy’s Edge, Digital Science Fiction, and Writers of the Future Volume 31. His novella “Murder on the Aldrin Express” was reprinted in Year’s Best Science Fiction Thirty-First Annual Collection and in Year’s Top Short SF Novels 4.

http://martinlshoemaker.com/

Robert Silverberg has been a professional science-fiction writer since 1955. He has won many Hugo and Nebula awards and among his best-known books are Lord Valentine’s Castle, Dying Inside and Nightwings. In 2004 he was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America.

http://robert-silverberg.com/

John Varley is a three time Hugo Award winner and a two time Nebula award winner. He is an author of thirteen novels and counting. Many of his novels and short stories (including the story in this book) take place in the Eight Worlds setting. His latest novel, Dark Lightning (part of the Thunder and Lightning series) was published by Ace Books in 2014.

http://varley.net

David Walton is a native of Pennsylvania and recipient of the 2008 Philip K. Dick Award for his first novel, Terminal Mind. His latest books, Superposition and Supersymmerty, are quantum physics murder mysteries with the same mind-bending feel as films like Inception and Minority Report. He is also the author of Quintessence, a science fantasy in which the Earth really is flat, and its sequel, Quintessence Sky. He lives near Philadelphia with his wife and seven children.

http://davidwaltonfiction.com/

Caroline M. Yoachim lives in Seattle and loves cold cloudy weather. She is the author of dozens of short stories, appearing in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, Asimov’s, and Lightspeed, among other places. Her debut short story collection, Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World & Other Stories, is coming out with Fairwood Press in 2016.

http://carolineyoachim.com

Alvaro Zinos-Amaro is co-author, with Robert Silverberg, of When the Blue Shift Comes, and Traveler of Worlds: Conversations with Robert Silverberg. Alvaro’s fiction, Rhysling-nominated poetry, and non-fiction have appeared in markets like Asimov’s, Analog, Apex, Clarkesworld, Nature, Strange Horizons, Galaxy’s Edge, Lackington’s, The Los Angeles Review of Books and anthologies such as The Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Moriarty, The Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper Stories, This Way to the End Times and The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016.

http://myaineko.blogspot.com/

 

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