Neil Clarke is the editor of the acclaimed Clarkesworld magazine, as well as the Best Science Fiction of the Year series from Night Shade Books, now in its third year. He also dabbles in themed anthologies, and they have been excellent. They include Galactic Empires and a splendid collection of robot stories, More Human Than Human.

His anthologies pretty rigorously exclude any classic SF, and in fact tend to focus almost exclusively on stories published after 2002 (which I assume is when he began reading the magazines regularly). This laser focus on modern writers makes him almost unique among modern genre anthologists and — for me at least — means that his books have been an invaluable tool for discovering great new writers. If, like me, your exposure to science fiction skews pretty heavily towards the 20th Century, Neil’s fine books may be just the antidote you need to bring you up to date on where SF is headed today.

So I was very excited to see Night Shade announce a brand new reprint anthology from Neil. The Final Frontier arrives in three weeks and includes tales from Nancy Kress, Ken Liu, James Patrick Kelly, Carrie Vaughn, Peter Watts, Greg Egan, Vandana Singh, Michael Swanwick, Tobias S. Buckell, and many others. Here’s the description.

The vast and mysterious universe is explored in this reprint anthology from award-winning editor and anthologist Neil Clarke (Clarkesworld magazine, The Best Science Fiction of the Year).

The urge to explore and discover is a natural and universal one, and the edge of the unknown is expanded with each passing year as scientific advancements inch us closer and closer to the outer reaches of our solar system and the galaxies beyond them.

Generations of writers have explored these new frontiers and the endless possibilities they present in great detail. With galaxy-spanning adventures of discovery and adventure, from generations ships to warp drives, exploring new worlds to first contacts, science fiction writers have given readers increasingly new and alien ways to look out into our broad and sprawling universe.

The Final Frontier delivers stories from across this literary spectrum, a reminder that the universe is far large and brimming with possibilities than we could ever imagine, as hard as we may try.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

[Click the images for frontier-sized versions.]

“A Jar of Goodwill” by Tobias S. Buckell (Clarkesworld, May 2010)
“Mono no aware” by Ken Liu (The Future is Japanese, edited by Nick Mamatas and Masumi Washington)
“Rescue Mission” by Jack Skillingstead (The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume 3, edited by George Mann)
“Shiva in Shadow ” by Nancy Kress (Between Worlds, edited by Robert Silverberg)
“Slow Life” by Michael Swanwick (Analog, December 2002)
“Three Bodies at Mitanni” by Seth Dickinson (Analog, June 2015)
“The Deeps of the Sky” by Elizabeth Bear (Edge of Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan)
“Diving into the Wreck” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (Asimov’s, December 2005)
“The Voyage Out” by Gwyneth Jones (Periphery: Erotic Lesbian Futures, edited by Lynne Jamneck)
“The Symphony of Ice and Dust” by Julie Novakova (Clarkesworld, October 2013)
“Twenty Lights to “The Land of Snow”” by Michael Bishop (Going Interstellar, edited by Les Johnson and Jack McDevitt)
“The Firewall and the Door” by Sean McMullen (Analog, March 2013)
“Permanent Fatal Errors” by Jay Lake (Is Anybody Out There? edited by Nick Gevers and Marty Halpern)
“Gypsy” by Carter Scholz (PM Press, November 2015)
“Sailing the Antarsa” by Vandana Singh (The Other Half of the Sky, edited by Athena Andreadis)
“The Mind is Its Own Place” by Carrie Vaughn, LLC (Asimov’s, September 2016)
“The Wreck of the Godspeed” by James Patrick Kelly (Between Worlds, edited by Robert Silverberg)
“Seeing” by Genevieve Valentine (Clarkesworld, November 2010)
“Travelling into Nothing” by An Owomoyela (Bridging Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan)
“Glory” by Greg Egan (New Space Opera, edited by Jonathan Strahan and Gardner Dozois)
“The Island” by Peter Watts (New Space Opera 2, edited by Jonathan Strahan and Gardner Dozois)

If you don’t already, you should make it a habit to regularly check out Neil’s excellent magazine Clarkesworld, one of the finest SF magazines available.

Neil Clarke’s previous anthologies include:

Galactic Empires
More Human Than Human
The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume One
The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume Two
The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume Three
Clarkesworld: Year Six edited by Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace
Clarkesworld: Year Seven, edited by Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace
Clarkesworld: Year Eight, edited by Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace

Final Frontier will be published by Night Shade Books on July 10, 2018. It is 600 pages, priced at $17.99 in trade paperback and $14.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Fred Gambino.

Get more details at the Night Shade website here.

See all of our coverage of the best upcoming SF & fantasy here.