Reading more like a news report from the future than contemporary fiction, this collection of short stories combines hard science with rich emotionalism to explore myriad realities. Stories in this collection include 'Into the Blue Abyss', where the seas of Uranus are explored. There are stories detailing a space freighter and its encounter with space pirates, the 'marsforming' of Mars, mathematical theorems from a very unlikely source, how Sherlock Holmes deals with a parasitic alien, the horrors of a hopeless war, and a voyage into a black hole.