Homo Sapiens Declared Extinct
BRUCE STERLING
A History of the Human and Post-Human Species
GEOFFREY A. LANDIS
The Great Goodbye
ROBERT CHARLES WILSON
In closing, appropriately enough, dancing here as we are on beginning brink of the new century, there follow three very short and conceptually daring looks ahead to what the human race may have in store for it during the twenty-first century. Which of them, if any of them, comes the closest to predicting what actually will happen, of course will be for future scholars (if there are any) to decide, looking back at this book as a historical curiosity from the brink of the next century. (My own guess, for what it’s worth, is that, imaginative as they are, none of them will turn out to have come even close to what really happens.)
Bruce Sterling’s “Spook” appears elsewhere in this anthology, and his biographical information can be read there.
Geoffrey A. Landis is a physicist who works for NASA, and who has recently been working on a Martian Lander program. He’s a frequent contributor to Analog and to Asimov’s Science Fiction, and has also sold stories to markets such as Interzone, Amazing, and Pulphouse. Landis is not a prolific writer by the high-production standards of the genre, but he is popular. His story, “A Walk in the Sun” won him a Nebula and a Hugo Award in 1992; his story, “Ripples in the Dirac Sea” won him a Nebula Award in 1990; and his story, “Elemental” was on the Final Hugo Ballot a few years back. His first book was the collection Myths, Legends, and True History, and he has just published his first novel, Mars Crossing. He lives in Brook Park, Ohio.
Robert Charles Wilson made his first sale in 1974, to Analog, but little more was heard from him until the late eighties, when he began to publish a string of ingenious and well-crafted novels and stories that have since established him among the top ranks of the writers who came to prominence in the last two decades of the twentieth century. His first novel A Hidden Place appeared in 1986. He won the
Philip K. Dick Award for his 1995 novel Mysterium, and the Aurora Award for his story, “The Perseids.” His other books include the novels Memory Wire, Gypsies, The Divide, The Harvest, A Bridge of Years, and
Darwinia. His most recent book is a new novel, Bios. He lives in Toronto, Canada.