New Anthology Released

Athena’s anthology, The Other Half of the Sky, is now available. Here are some bits from my story, “Landfall,” which picks up where The Highest Frontier left off:

Most college sophomores spent their summer running toyworlds while catching sun at air-conditioned disappearing beaches. Jenny Ramos Kennedy spent hers at the Havana Institute for Revolutionary Botany, which students called the Botánica. At the Botánica, Jenny worked with ultraphytes, Earth’s cyanide-emitting extraterrestrial invaders. Could she discover how to  engineer ultraphyte chromosomes—to control them genetically, before they poisoned the planet?

In a tank on the sixth floor swam an ultraphyte. The creature’s golden cells soaked up ultraviolet, each eyespot scanning the lab. Around the sealed tank, air vents hissed continually in case the alien life form panicked and put out cyanide.

Out the window, beyond the Malecón, a bright streak reached the sea. Kessler debris, from near-Earth orbit, where Homeworld Security was burning the derelict platform. The platform could be seen at night crossing the sky, a silvery moon. The little moon shone in her toybox, the window hovering above her right eye, where Homeworld’s lasers methodically burned into it. But occasional bits broke off and fell toward Earth….

And here is a taste of “Mimesis,” an alien anthropology story by Martha Wells:

Jade spotted Sand as he circled down from the forest canopy, a grasseater clutched in his talons. She said, “Finally.” It would be nice to eat before dark, so they could clear the offal away from the camp without attracting the night scavengers.

It was Balm who said, “I don’t see Fair.”

Jade frowned, scanning the canopy again. They were standing in the deep grass of the platform they had chosen to camp on, and it was late afternoon in the suspended forest and getting difficult to hunt by sight. The open canyons under the heavy canopies of the immense mountain-trees were filled with green shadow. The breeze stirred jungles of foliage that grew on the platforms formed and supported by the immense intertwined tree branches. Raksuran eyes were designed to track movement, and between flocks of colorful birds, treelings, flying frogs and lizards and the myriad of other life, the whole forest was moving. But after a heartbeat’s concentration, Jade could see there was no one else flying anywhere near Sand….