Life Beyond Us: An Original Anthology of SF Stories and Science Essays

How would first contact—on earth, in space, on another planet—transform our understandings of technology, philosophy, and what it means to be human? What kind of cognitive dissonance would society experience, if we discovered a previously unrecognized sentience on Earth?

What would life be like if it originated in a frigid ocean beneath an impenetrable shell of ice? Or on a world whose haze obscures any view of the universe beyond? Or on an unfathomable scale in the depths of space? Or . . .

Life—beyond us.

Dive in as the European Astrobiology Institute presents fifty-four original SF Stories and Science Essays on life, from microbial to macro, from automatic to sagacious. Each speculative story is followed by a professional essay illuminating the scientific underpinnings of the story and providing a new window into the cutting-edge knowledge about exploration for life in the universe.

Stories by Eugen Bacon, Gregory Benford, Tobias S. Buckell, Julie E. Czerneda, Mary Robinette Kowal, Geoffrey A. Landis, Premee Mohamed, Malka Older, Bogi Takács, Peter Watts, and more

Introduction by Stephen Baxter