Product Description <br/>Award-winning author James Alan Gardner evokes a sense of wonder that is synonymous with great speculative fiction. Now, in his first short-story collection, he brings together the numerous tales that have made his reputation, ranging from the everyday experience to the cosmic, from peanut butter sandwiches to space drives. There are stories of wonder, imagination, humanity, and the unknown and tales that remind us of the importance of possibility. <br/>Some of the stories in this collection have won the Aurora Award and the grand prize in the prestigious Writers of the Future contest and been nominated for both Hugo and Nebula Awards, while others are completely new and undiscovered.<br/> About the Author <br/>James Alan Gardner (born January 10, 1955) is a Canadian science fiction author.<br/>Raised in Simcoe and Bradford, Ontario, he earned bachelor's and master's degrees in applied mathematics from the University of Waterloo.<br/>Gardner has published science fiction short stories in a range of periodicals, including  The Magazine  of Fantasy  and Science Fiction and . In 1989, his short story "The Children of Creche" was awarded the Grand Prize in the  contest. Two years later his story "Muffin Explains Teleology to the World at Large" won a ; another story, "Three Hearings on the Existence of Snakes in the Human Bloodstream," won an Aurora and was nominated for both the  and .<br/>He has written a number of novels in a "" universe in which murderers are defined as "dangerous non-sentients" and are killed if they try to leave their solar system by aliens who are so advanced that they think of humans like humans think of bacteria. This precludes the possibility of interstellar wars.<br/>He has also explored themes of gender in his novels, including  in which people change sex every year, and  in which group marriages are traditional.<br/>Gardner is also an educator and technical writer. His book Learning UNIX is used as a textbook in some Canadian universities.