“Orphans of The Helix” is a 1991 science fiction novella by Dan Simmons. It is about a group of deep space settlers who drop out of hyper-space to help some aliens protect their orbital forest ring.

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“Bow Shock” is a 2006 science fiction novelette by Gregory Benford. It is about an astronomer who discovers a very strange object on the other side of the galaxy.

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“Harrison Bergeron” is a 1961 science fiction short story by Kurt Vonnegut. It is about a future society in which talented and gifted people are forced to wear handicapping equipment to make them “more normal.”

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“A Woman’s Best Friend” is a 2008 science fiction short story by Robert Reed. It is about an alternate reality George Bailey who shows up on a strange world after jumping into a river to save an angel.

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“Scanners Live in Vain” is a 1950 science fiction novelette by Cordwainer Smith. It is about a sensory deprived man who tries to stop his Scanner brothers from killing a human who has just made a great scientific breakthrough.

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“Approaching Perimelasma” is a 1998 science fiction novelette by Geoffrey A. Landis. It is about a tiny downloaded human who agrees to take his spaceship into a black hole and hopes that an untested scientific trick can pull him back out again.

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