PREFACE The legendary planetary scientist Carl Sagan noted in Cosmos that the heavier elements in our bodies--nitrogen, carbon, calcium, iron--are pure starstuff, made in the interiors of imploding stars. In that sense, the periodic table of elements is both perfectly ordinary and mythically huge. The building blocks of your own teeth were forged in the heart of a dying star. So were the elements of apples that those teeth bite into. You can taste a supernova. Science fiction blends vast ideas with everyday things--and both the vast and the everyday are transformed when they mix together. The stories in this hard science fiction collection may seem wildly unreal compared to everyday life in the 2020s, but all of them follow the rules of physics and biology--at least as far as we currently understand those rules. Our sense of the universe and how it works is constantly evolving to fit the new discoveries we make.
These stories explore how science and technology change our world and challenge our assumptions. Changes and challenges are sometimes terrifying. Plenty of recent science fiction offers a steady stream of climate despair, collapsing societies, postapocalyptic combat, and radioactive kaiju. Starstuff is different. These stories are hopeful vaccines against a pandemic of dystopian expectations. The world is changing, and not all of those changes are awful. Our understanding of the world will also change. New possibilities will always explode from the collapse of worldviews that no longer fit, just as calcium and carbon spread through the universe after stars go nova.
The ten stories in this book are part of that expanding wave of possibility. They feature kids of different classes, genders, nationalities, ethnicities, and orientations who call out problems, find solutions, and help transform the planets, moons, space stations, and fleets of starships where they live. All of us are made of the same extraordinary stuff. - - - - - - - - - - To-Do List for the Apocalypse Jenn Reese There''s an asteroid headed straight for Earth, on a head-on collision course, and yet my parents still decided to get a divorce. At least with the asteroid, the end of the world will come pretty quick. Kaplow! Boom! I like that idea better than the slow, ongoing apocalypse I''m living through now. Today is October 13, 2032, aka "moving day." I''ve been dreading it for months, and it''s finally here.
Mom is shoving the last box into the back of the car. It won''t fit. Dad is standing in the shade of the garage, watching, his arms crossed, and calling out suggestions. Mom hated when he did this, even when things were good. Now I watch her eyes narrow into slits and her nose flare. If Dad keeps this up, she''ll start breathing fire. I can''t blame her. I grab my multi-tool and pull out the knife.
"Here, Mom. We can open the box and tuck the stuff into the gaps." Mom looks at me and the flames in her eyes cool to embers. "Good idea, River." She holds the box, and I slice the tape. Together, we find spots for spatulas and sauté pans and a beat-up kettle that Mom needs for her morning tea. It has to be that kettle. No other kettle will do.
I''ve tried explaining that hot water is hot water no matter how you make it, but Mom is stubborn. I end up wedging it into the footwell in the passenger seat. Me and that kettle are going to be best friends by the time we get to California. "You could have fit the box if you rearranged the ones in the back seat," Dad says, and this time even I glare at him. His eyes are red, and he doesn''t want us to go, but Mom''s new job starts in January. I''m the one who should be crying. I''m leaving all my friends, all my summer camps and clubs, my entire life. Which is pointless because of the asteroid.
Because everything is about to change. TO-DO LIST 1. Invent a time machine. 2. Go back six months and stop Dad from cheating on Mom. The car is packed. Dad pulls me aside and hands me a massive book. I stare at the cover and see the word atlas.
"It''s got every road, so we can always find each other," he says. I let him hug me, but all I''m really thinking about is where this book is going to fit in our overstuffed car. Who gives people books when they''re about to road-trip across the country? Who uses books to navigate in a world with universal, free Wi-Fi and up-to-date GPS systems in every car? Dad, that''s who. I climb into the passenger seat with the atlas. Mom raises an eyebrow, and I roll my eyes. "We can ditch the tea kettle if you want to stow that by your feet," she says. "No way." Me and the tea kettle are already ride or die.
We stop at a charging station in Potts Grove, Pennsyl-vania, to get road trip slushies and stretch our legs. I dump Dad''s atlas in a recycling bin, then notice Mom watching me. She doesn''t say a single word as I get back in the car. "Your turn to pick the playlist," she says. "I picked last time." She shrugs. "So pick again." The trees in Pennsylvania have stopped producing chlorophyll and are showing off their carotenoids, a fact that I relay to Mom with great relish.
Mom laughs. "You''re going to wow ''em in California, kid." I look out the window and watch the red and orange and yellow trees speed by. Maybe the trees aren''t showing off. Maybe they''re getting ready for the asteroid. Maybe when it hits, everything will be on fire, not just the trees. "Maybe we won''t make it to California," I say. She doesn''t realize it''s wishful thinking on my part.
She says, "Don''t worry. There are some very smart people working on the asteroid. They''ll find something else to try. I have faith." When Mom says she has faith, she doesn''t mean in a "higher power"--she means that she believes in science, and in humanity. She teaches psychology and she spends her free time doing "citizen science," which is when regular people without training get to help scientists with big projects. Whenever a volunteer opportunity takes her to an observatory, she calls it "going to church." I think I know what she means.
My friends and I went to a robotics conference at Princeton once and it was so cool that I thought my head was going to explode. Totally worth it if it had. Me and my friends used to do that sort of thing whenever we could, back when my parents were still together and I was on the robotics team and lived in New Jersey and the world wasn''t about to end. Pennsylvania becomes Ohio, then Ohio blends into Indiana and Illinois and Iowa. Mom and I don''t talk about Dad. I can tell she''s trying to cheer me up, because she asks me all about my latest robot and my Dungeons & Dragons characters and my video game progress. I wonder if I''ll finish any of those games. My friends and I can play online, but it won''t be the same.
When I get tired of talking, we listen to the news. Everyone listens to the news now. That''s what happens when the world is about to end. There are two clusters of asteroids called Trojans orbiting the sun out by Jupiter, one group racing ahead of the planet and the other group lagging behind. The Lucy probe, a little piano-size robot with big solar panel ears, launched in 2021 and grabbed data from four asteroids in the lead group. Then Lucy looped around Earth for a speed boost and is now headed for the Trojan called Patroclus in the trailing cluster. But out there between Earth and Patroclus, Lucy spotted something strange: an asteroid heading toward Earth and traveling much faster than an asteroid should. Lucy grabbed what data it could, but it wasn''t much.
The mysterious asteroid, named something respectable by the scientists but quickly renamed "Doomsday" by all the news outlets, was on its way. Here''s the part where things go from bad to worse to "We''re all going to die!": the faster an asteroid moves, and the bigger it is, the greater the damage it can cause if it hits something. Like, say, if it hits Earth. Just ask the dinosaurs how much they enjoyed the asteroid that almost wiped them out. That asteroid was probably several miles wide and traveling over sixty-five thousand miles per hour. It was BIG and it was FAST. And Doomsday makes it look like a Ping-Pong ball. We''re most of the way through Nebraska when notifications start lighting up the car''s vid screen.
Something big is going down with one of Mom''s citizen-science groups. The car starts to read them aloud, but Mom pulls into the closest charging station and grabs her phone to read them faster. "Doomsday''s trajectory has shifted," she tells me. "It''s not going to hit Earth?" "No, sorry," Mom says, her brow furrowing. "It''s still headed for us. But a normal asteroid should not be able to change course. We knew Doomsday was a strange duck, but it''s even stranger than we imagined. You up for a side trip to Colorado, kiddo?" "What for?" "Doomsday is going to pass in front of Aldebaran, the brightest star in the constellation Taurus.
We''ve got a chance for an occultation." Her eyes light up. I haven''t seen them do that for months. I''m up for any side trip that delays our arrival in California, but I don''t tell her that. I don''t want the light to go out of her eyes because of me. "Sure, Mom. Me and my best friend, Kettle, are up for anything." Mom laughs and gives the nav system the new coordinates.
I''ve never gone with Mom to an occultation. She''s offered before but I always took a pass. Mom is cool and all, but sitting out in a park or a stranger''s yard with a telescope and a laptop in the freezing cold never sounded like much fun. Guess I''ll get a crash course now. And hopefully not an.