The Fountain of Age (53 page)

These stories were originally published as follows:

“By Fools Like Me,”
Asimov’s,
2007

“End Game,”
Asimov’s,
2007

“The Erdmann Nexus,”
Asimov’s,
2008

“First Rites,”
Jim Baen’s Universe,
2008

“The Fountain of Age,”
Asimov’s,
2007

“Images of Anna,”
Fantasy Magazine,
2009

“The Kindness of Strangers,”
Fast Forward 2,
2008

“Laws of Survival,”
Jim Baen’s Universe,
2007

“Safeguard,”
Asimov’s,
2007

Nancy Kress is the author of thirty books, including four collections of short stories, and three books on writing. For sixteen years she was the fiction columnist for
Writers Digest
magazine. She is perhaps best known for the “Sleepless” trilogy that began with
Beggars in Spain
. Her work has won four Nebulas, two Hugos, a Sturgeon, and the John W. Campbell Award. Most recent books are an SF novel,
Steal Across the Sky
; a YA fantasy written under the name Anna Kendall,
Crossing Over
; and a short novel of eco-terror,
Before the Fall, During the Fall, After the Fall
. Kress lives in Seattle with her husband, SF writer Jack Skillingstead, and Cosette, the world’s most spoiled toy poodle.

Nine new stories from a long-time star of the science fiction field. Includes the Hugo Award winner “The Erdmann Nexus” and the caper-inspired Nebula Award winning title story, “Fountain of Age.”

Kress unpacks the future the way DNA investigators unravelled the double helix: one gene at a time. In many of these stories gene sculpting is illegal yet commonplace and the effects range between slow catastrophe (“End Game”), cosmic (“First Rites”), and tragic (“Safeguard”). Then there’s the morning Rochester disappears and Jenny has to rely on “The Kindness of Strangers.” And Jill, kidnapped by aliens, trying to learn the “Laws of Survival.” And Hope, whose Grandma is regretting the world built “By Fools Like Me.”

“Kress’s villains are not diabolical conspirators but willfully ignorant hypocrites, shortsighted and greedy dunderheads, the well-intentioned half-baked—in short, us. But we are also the heroes whose generosity, honesty, and energy could turn our lemming tribe away from the polluted waters ahead.”—
Washington Post

“The plotting is fast-paced, the characterization is good, and science explained in easily digestible portions.”—
New Scientist

“The kind of thriller that continually makes you want to turn the pages faster than you can read them.”—
SF Site

“That Kress remains a master is everywhere evident.”—
Booklist

“The keeness of vision to . . . see the possibilities for the future very clearly, and they are both fascinating and frightening.”—
San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle

“Kress can reach beyond mastery of technique and generate provocative and complex art.”—Gary Wolfe,
Locus

“A glimpse into the mind of someone who is interpreting our rapidly changing world as it changes.”—
SFRA Review

“An important and unique writer.”—
Denver Post

“A new book from Nancy Kress is always a cause for celebration.”—
Connie Willis

“It should now be clear to all that Nancy Kress is a dominant figure in science fiction.”—
Analog

“Nancy Kress has the true storyteller’s Gift—the ability to make her characters and what happens to them so vital that the reader’s heart aches.”—Stephen R. Donaldson

“Nancy Kress comprehends the grimy relationships among bioscience, technology, and politics; and soon we will too, if only enough of us read her. Too soon it cannot be.”—Gene Wolfe

Joan Aiken,
The Monkey’s Wedding and Other Stories

“The stories inside . . . make the commonplace sinister.”—
Bookslut

John Crowley,
The Chemical Wedding*

Peter Dickinson,
Earth and Air: Tales of Elemental Creatures*; Death of a Unicorn*

Hal Duncan,
An A–Z of the Fantastic City

Karen Joy Fowler,
What I Didn’t See and Other Stories

“Gripping. . . . We are can never be sure where we are or what each page might bring.”—
The Short Review

Angélica Gorodischer (Trans. by Amalia Gladheart),
Trafalgar*

Elizabeth Hand,
Errantry: Strange Stories*

Kij Johnson,
At the Mouth of the River of Bees: Stories*

Kathe Koja,
The Mercury Waltz*

Maureen F. McHugh,
After the Apocalypse

“Incisive, contemporary, and always surprising.”
—
Publishers Weekly,
Top 10 Best Books of the Year

Sofia Samatar,
A Stranger in Olondria*

Delia Sherman,
The Freedom Maze

“Adroit, sympathetic, both clever and smart.”—Gregory Maguire, author of
Wicked

Greer Gilman,
Cloud & Ashes: Three Winter’s Tales

“Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”—Paul Kincaid,
SF Site

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet