The online magazine Jim Baen’s Universe is now in its third successful year, and fans of science fiction and fantasy agree that it’s the place on the internet to find great reading both by top-selling established writers and talented new arrivals. And now JBU editors Eric Flint and Mike Resnick select the very best of the stories that have appeared in the magazine.

Flint himself, with his frequent collaborator Dave Freer, return to their popular series that began with Rats, Bats & Vats in a story set on a hollow asteroid where someone killing women of the oldest profession. Mike Resnick, the all-time leading award winner for short fiction tells what happens when a pro basketball team gets the best player that money can buy—or that science can manufacture. Hugo and Nebula winner Nancy Kress looks at the aftermath of World War III, and the aliens who have arrived, but not to help the human survivors—they’re only interested in Man’s Best Friend.

Also on board: Award-winning writer Elizabeth Bear; another award-winner and New York Times best-selling writer, Garth Nix, and much more in a generous serving of the best science fiction and fantasy being written today.

Contents:

• Preface
• SCIENCE FICTION STORIES
  • Crawlspace by Eric Flint and Dave Freer
  • The Big Guy by Mike Resnick
  • Murphy's War by James P. Hogan
  • Laws of Survival by Nanct Kress
  • War Stories by Elizabeth Bear
  • A Stranger in Paradise by Edward M. Lerner
  • NEWTS by John Barnes
  • An Ocean is a Snowflake, Four Billion Miles Away by John Barnes
  • Dark Corners by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
  • The Ten Thousand Things by Mark L. Van Name
  • A Better Sense of Direction by Mike Wood
  • Tweak by Jack McDevitt
  • Squish by S. E. Ward
• FANTASY STORIES
  • Touching the Dead by J. Kathleen Cheney
  • The Spiral Road by Louise Marley
  • Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz Go to War Again by Garth Nix
  • Creation: The Launch! by Laura Resnick
  • Midnight at the Quantum Cafe K. D. Wentworth
  • Swing Time by Carrie Vaughn
  • The Lord Protector's Daughter by L. E. Modesitt Jr,
  • Palm Sunday by Ian Watson
  • The Necromancer in Love by Wil McCarthy

Edited by Eric Flint and Mike Resnick.