Author: Mike Resnick

Length: short story

First Publication: Asimov’s, 2011

Awards: Hugo nominee, best short story

What the Story is About: A man returns from the stars to visit his aging ailing parents. His homecoming is difficult as his mother’s memory is failing and he has changed considerably…

Note: pdf version only

Author: Marissa Lingen

Length: short story

First Publication: Clarkesworld, 2009

What the Story is About: A biologist and her granddaughter try to find evidence that squid-like aliens are intelligent.

Author: John Moran

Length: short short story

First Publication: Nature Futures, 2011 doi:10.1038/473550a

What the Story is About: Is a space explorer fated to join with aliens?

Author: Alastair Reynolds

Length: short story

First Publication: The Guardian, 2009 (Podcast)

What the Story is About: Soldiers are changed by war – how will war change them?

Listen to the audio version in the Guardian Books Podcast.

Author: Ian McDonald

Length: short story

First Publication: Interzone, 1996

What the Story is About: A reporter witnesses the demise of the famed Treehouse Hotel in the face of an alien bioform that devours everything in its path.

A continent is being devoured by some thing from the stars, and I am sent to write the obituary of a hotel.

See the interview with McDonald in Lightspeed Magazine for background about the story.

Author: Liz Coleman

Length: short story

First Publication: Lightspeed Magazine, 2011

What the Story is About: Derek has married two aliens. Will his human family accept that? Especially when they learn he is carrying their child?

Ngoraich hadn’t slept that whole month we were in transit. She was a pupating larva, soft and pearly. The spacers didn’t know how to put her into stasis, and even if they could, she wouldn’t notice the difference.

Also see Lightspeed’s interview with Coleman about the background for her story.

Author: Charlie Jane Anders

Length: short story

First Publication: Tor.com, 2010

What the Story is About: Very long-lived aliens have a long-term business strategy: create civilizations across the galaxy and let them develop technologically to the point where their creations can mine and refine the natural resources of their planet. Once the civilization inevitably destroyed itself, the aliens could then swoop in and use the resources for their own commercial gain. It worked for millions of years, until … the pesky creatures on Earth failed to destroy themselves as expected.

In case you were wondering about the title, the Fermi Paradox says:

The apparent size and age of the universe suggest that many technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations ought to exist.
However, this hypothesis seems inconsistent with the lack of observational evidence to support it.

Author: Brian Brown

Length: Short story

First Publication: Popcorn Fiction, 2011?

What the Story is About: A horrifying tale of waking up from cryo-sleep, expecting the normal routine but finding the unexpected instead.

Author: Mike Resnick

Length: short story

First Publication: Asimov’s, 2010

What the Story is About: The Frankenstein’s monster story told from a slightly different point of view…

Well, finally I saw the results of all those months’ work today. Victor was so damned proud of this hideous monster he’d created. Let me tell you: it is ugly as sin, it can barely speak, you’d need a microscope to find its IQ, and it smells worse than Igor. This is what he’s been spending my fortune on?

Note: story is a pdf file.

An audio version is available at Escape Pod.

Author: William Meikle

Length: short story

First Publication: Wrongworld, 2008

Awards:

What the Story is About: Something goes very wrong in a high school biology class…

It started nearly two weeks ago. Teaching biology is difficult when you’ve got a teenage audience. Almost every topic on the syllabus has something about reproduction in it, and that reduces your typical youngster to giggles, rude jokes or hysteria. I’ve got used to it over the last twenty years, and have come to expect the reactions. I’ve even come to know who to expect them from.

So when Jack Doyle was quiet during my “Asexual reproduction in amoeba” spiel, I knew immediately that something was wrong.

Author: Frank Herbert

Length: short story

First Publication: Astounding Science Fiction (Analogue), 1959

What the Story is About: Primate-like aliens captures an exploratory ship and the Rediscovery & Re-education agent sent to solve the problem uses the aliens’ biology to help solve the problem.

The Romantics used to say that the eyes were the windows of the Soul. A good Alien Xenologist might not put it quite so poetically … but he can, if he’s sharp, read a lot in the look of an eye!

• Find alternate text formats at FeedBooks.
• Listen to the Audio version from Libravox.

Author: Tobias S. Buckell

Length: short story

First Publication: Clarkesworld Magazine, 2010

What the Story is About: What do you do when you find a brand new planet with a patentable ecosystem and possibly intelligent life?

Listen to the Audio version at Clarkesworld Magazine.