Gregory Benford, one of the great SF writers of our day, has assumed the mantle of editor to produce this ambitious hard SF anthology, with works by Poul Anderson, Greg Bear, Joe Haldeman, Donald M. Kingsbury, and Charles Sheffield. The five original novellas--all set at least 10 thousand years in the future--cover vast panoramas in a vigorously scientific approach and confront the very largest issues of cosmology, evolution and biology.