International bestselling editor and writer with over 35 million books in print, Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in many genres, from science fiction to mystery, from western to romance. She has written under a pile of pen names, but most of her work appears as Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov's Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award.

Publications from The Chicago Tribune to Booklist have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award.

She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series Fiction River, published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith, and edits at least two anthologies in the series per year on her own.

To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com and sign up for her newsletter. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com).

Fiction River Presents: Among the Stars edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Editor Kristine Kathryn Rusch reaches for the stars with this latest volume of Fiction River Presents. With stories that take the reader from pulse-pounding terror and utter darkness, to sheer joy and wish fulfillment, this volume runs the gamut of the space opera genre. So, get ready for a wonderful journey and see why Adventures Fantastic says: "If you haven't checked out Fiction River yet, you should. There's something for everyone."

Table of Contents
"Get Inside" by Dayle A. Dermatis
"Sole Survivor" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
"The Mooring Buoy" by Jamie McNabb
"Schrodinger's Bar" by Kim May
"Upon_A_Starship.png" by Brigid Collins
"Jelly's Heroes" by Louisa Swann
"Dreams of A Moon" by Dean Wesley Smith
"Charlie Company" by JC Andrijeski
"H-Hour" by Steven Mohan, Jr.

 

REVIEWS

  • "[Fiction River] is one of the best and most exciting publications in the field today. Check out an issue and see why I say that."

    – Keith West, Adventures Fantastic
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

Introduction

Whoosh!

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Sometimes I label the space opera subgenre of science fiction as stories in which spaceships go whoosh! That's not an entirely fair description, but people seem to understand it. We all know that spaceships make no audible noise as they travel through space, because there is no air in space, and what we hear as sound is actually vibrations in air.

I say the description isn't fair because a lot of space opera is filled with silent spaceships and modern science. Military science fiction often gets lumped into space opera as well, because military sf is concerned more with the military tropes than the hard science tropes.

What I love about space opera is its inventiveness. It doesn't shy away from whooshing spaceships—and might even come up with a way that spaceships would make that noise (maybe for the passengers inside the ship, if nothing else).

Space opera is more concerned with the adventure and the gosh-wow aspect of space travel than it is with the how-tos of space travel. If a space opera story has a group of colonists who are trying to get to a planet, we won't read about how they put their ship together or the details of the colonization. We'll probably read about the colonists trying to survive the trip when they get invaded by pirates or the colonists having a revolt on the ship.

Space opera is something adventurous and innovative, something that makes us want to go to space, rather than looking at space as something only the most brilliant and athletic among us can do.

I also like the problem aspect of space opera—what if teenagers go to space? Would they do teenage things to each other? What if there's a nifty bar at a space station that everyone wants to go to? What if the best people to travel in space are the ones who can survive created by relativity?

Those ideas and more fill this book. All of the stories come from Fiction River—different volumes of Fiction River, since Fiction River mixes genres a lot.

Fiction River also mixes moods, and so does this volume. From the pulse-pounding terror of Dayle A. Dermatis's "Get Inside" to the darkness of JC Andrijeski's "Charlie Company" to the sheer inventive joy of Louisa Swann's "Jelly's Heroes," we pretty much cover the light and the dark of space. We have plausible military sf stories, like former Naval officer Steven Mohan, Jr's "H-Hour" to wonderful wish-fulfillment like Dean Wesley Smith's "Dream of a Moon."

A number of other stories inspire or will make you smile. Or, at least, they made me smile.

So settle in your chair and prepare to join some marvelous folks on their journeys to the stars. You'll have a great time.

I promise.

—Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Las Vegas, Nevada
February 24, 2019