SF readers have come to expect the universe from Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Gregory Benford: fascinating multilayered characters, thrilling plots, and mind-bending scientific speculations firmly based in cutting-edge technological fact. When it comes to literate, human, unassailably possible science fiction, Benford is in a class by himself--as he proves once again in a stunning array of tales that have never been collected in one volume before.

A time-traveler on an illegal trip into the past learns a chilling truth about her own destiny... As a deadly Superflu runs rampant through a polluted, overpopulated Earth, a husband-and-wife scientific team races to salvage a livable future...On a planet where the laws of physics are strangely twisted, a brilliant scientist work undermines an ancient faith and leads to a shattering revelation...An ore-hauler on Mercury, desperate to save her endangered ship and career findsa remarkable way out: a wormhole trapped in the hellish flux of magnetic fieldsand fiery plasma generated by the nuclear furnace of the sun...

These are but a few of the various worlds the respected astrophysicist and SF luminary now transports us to in ships constructed of evocative words and ingenious ideas. Astonishing, provocative, and intellectually stimulating, each selection is a glittering star in the vast cosmos of Gregory Benford's unparalleled imagination.