In a world where the slightest edge can mean the difference between success and failure, Leisha Camden is beautiful, extraordinarily intelligent ... and one of an ever-growing number of human beings who have been genetically modified to never require sleep.

Once considered interesting anomalies, now Leisha and the other Sleepless are outcasts -- victims of blind hatred, political repression, and shocking mob violence meant to drive them from human society ... and, ultimately, from Earth itself.

But Leisha Camden has chosen to remain behind in a world that envies and fears her gift -- a world marked for destruction in a devastating conspiracy of freedom ... and revenge.

Leisha Camden is a genetically engineered 'Sleepless.'

Her ability to stay awake all the time has not only made her more productive, but the genetic modifications have also given the 'Sleepless' a higher IQ and may even make them immortal.

Are they the future of humanity? Or will the small community of 'sleepless' be hunted down as freaks by a world that has grown wary of its newest creation?

Get Your Readers' Attention--And Keep It--From the First World to the Final Page

Translating that initial flash of inspiration into a complete story requires careful crafting. So how do you keep your story from beginning slowly, floundering midway, and trailing off at the end? Nancy Kress shows you effective solutions for potential problems at each stage of your story--essential lessons for strong start-to-finish storytelling.

• Hook readers, agents, and editors in the first three paragraphs.
• Make and keep your story's implicit promise to the reader.
• Build drama and credibility by controlling your prose.
• Consider the price a writer pays for flashbacks.
• Reveal character effectively throughout your story.

Get the tools you need to get your story off to an engaging start, keep the middle tight and compelling, and make your conclusion high impact. You'll also find dozens of exercises to help strengthen your short story or novel. Let this resource be your guide to successful stories--from the first word to the last.

Create Complex Characters

How do you create a main character readers won't forget? How do you write a book in multiple-third-person point of view without confusing your readers (or yourself)? How do you plant essential information about a character's past into a story?

Write Great Fiction: Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint by award-winning author Nancy Kress answers all of these questions and more This accessible book is filled with interactive exercises and valuable advice that teaches you how to:

- Choose and execute the best point of view for your story
- Create three-dimensional and believable characters
- Develop your characters' emotions
- Create realistic love, fight, and death scenes
- Use frustration to motivate your characters and drive your story

With dozens of excerpts from some of today's most popular writers, Write Great Fiction: Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint provides you with the techniques you need to create characters and stories sure to linger in the hearts and minds of agents, editors, and readers long after they've finished your book.

Tomorrow's Kin is the first volume in and all new hard science fiction trilogy by Nancy Kress based on the Nebula Award-winning Yesterday's Kin.

Locus 2017 Recommended Reading List

The aliens have arrived... they've landed their Embassy ship on a platform in New York Harbor, and will only speak with the United Nations. They say that their world is so different from Earth, in terms of gravity and atmosphere, that they cannot leave their ship. The population of Earth has erupted in fear and speculation.

One day Dr. Marianne Jenner, an obscure scientist working with the human genome, receives an invitation that she cannot refuse. The Secret Service arrives at her college to escort her to New York, for she has been invited, along with the Secretary General of the UN and a few other ambassadors, to visit the alien Embassy.

The truth is about to be revealed. Earth's most elite scientists have ten months to prevent a disaster--and not everyone is willing to wait.

In this original bio-thriller from the author of Beggars in Spain, the threat of terrorism and biological warfare is all too real when the danger comes from a family's most cherished pets.

Tessa Sanderson, ex-FBI agent, has moved to a sleepy Maryland town to escape her tragic past. When the town's beloved dogs begin viciously attacking pet owners and their children, federal CDC agents determine that the dogs are carrying a mutated flu affecting the aggression center of their brains, for which there is no known cure. Tessa offers her unofficial assistance to Animal Control Officer Jess Langstrom, who has been ordered to round up all the dogs and quarantine them. Meanwhile, some of the locals, unconvinced of the threat, are preparing to protect their pets by any means necessary. But Tessa, the widow of an Arab who roused the suspicions of her FBI colleagues, has another secret: Someone is sending her threatening e-mails in Arabic that claim responsibility for the virus, and she resolves to go deep undercover to expose a deadly conspiracy.

Leisha Camden is a genetically engineered 'Sleepless.'

Her ability to stay awake all the time has not only made her more productive, but the genetic modifications have also given the 'Sleepless' a higher IQ and may even make them immo

An unabridged collection spotlighting the best hard science fiction stories published in 2020 by current and emerging masters of the genre, edited by Allan Kaster. Aliens, who believe that observing the stars causes dark energy, freeze intelligent beings to prevent the end of the universe in Salvage, by Andy Dudak. In You and Whose Army?, by Greg Egan, a hive mind is disturbed when one of four neurally linked brothers unexpectedly breaks his connection. Creatures that feed on time threaten Earth in Time's Own Gravity, by Alexander Glass. In Brother Rifle, by Daryl Gregory, a Marine receives a brain implant to help him deal with a brain injury that has left him void of feelings and unable to make decisions. A married couple discover that their adopted daughter had been genetically modified before birth in Invisible People, by Nancy Kress. Tool Use by the Humans of Danzhai County, by Derek Künsken, is an epic story of a man and his illegitimate daughter separately trying to revolutionize AI and bioengineering from rural China. In How Quini the Squid Misplaced His Klobučar, by Rich Larson, a high-tech gene art heist in a future Spain is undertaken by a professional thief more interested in revenge than money. The obituary for an AI provides a list of advice for other advanced AIs in 50 Things Every AI Working with Humans Should Know, by Ken Liu. In A Mastery of German, by Marian Denise Moore, a biotech company is concerned with the ethics of passing memories between people as it develops this capability. Human explorers struggle to survive in the deadly, primeval forest of an alien planet in Eyes of the Forest, by Ray Nayler. In Beyond the Tattered Veil of Stars, by Mercurio D. Rivera, a scientist creates a virtual world so other species can evolve and solve humankind's problems in the real world. An ancient polymorph constructed being, fleeing a failed utopia, returns to a familiar world to find an old friend in Bereft, I Come to a Nameless World, by Benjamin Rosenbaum. In When God Sits in Your Lap, by Ian Tregillis, a fallen angel in a noir-like Los Angeles is hired by a man to persuade his wealthy mother to leave her new husband and keep his aerospace empire inheritance intact. An AI helps a family cope with the death of its father in Mediation, by Cadwell Turnbull. In Test 4 Echo, by Peter Watts, a damaged, semi-independent component on an autonomous undersea drone on Enceladus shows signs of emerging consciousness.

Epic in scope, peopled by characters from every strata of profoundly different societies, An Alien Light is an unflinching look at the strengths and weaknesses of the genetic, evolutionary, and historical inheritance that all of us share.

Arys, a glassblower and outcast.

Jehane, a skilled female warrior.

Dahar, with a deeply inquisitive mind.

Grax, an alien with profound doubts.

These four and hundreds of others are thrown together in an experiment to determine the fate of humanity, both on Earth and in her galactic colonies. For the Ged, the stakes are nothing less than the outcome of a war. For the humans, ignorant of the larger situation, the rewards for participating are incredible riches. But no one except the alien Ged understands the criteria for being chosen.

When that knowledge comes, there is no agreement about if, how, or when to use it. Some will betray others. Some will sacrifice. Some will die.

And some must succeed, no matter the price.

One of the best of the year...a compelling novella about a once-famous actress and her devoted manager who get much more publicity of an unfortunate sort when they inadvertently become embroiled with an act of biological terrorism with potentially world-changing results.-Gardner Dozois, Locus ****

Nancy Kress is famous for creating realistic near-future societies based on technological advances and then studying the impact those technological changes have on our society. Here is a collection of three outstanding stories that deal with innovations in medical science and how they affect our lives.

Two stories about artificial intelligence from one of the most respected names in hard science fiction. Multiple Hugo and Nebula winner Nancy Kress gives us a fascinating look into the evolution of artificial intelligence and the impact it has on human society.

2012 Nebula Award Winner
2012 Locus Award Winner
2013 Hugo Nominee
2013 Sturgeon Award Nominee

In the year 2035, all that is left of humanity lives in the Shell.

No one knows why the Tesslies attacked in 2014, devastated the environment, and nearly destroyed humanity. Or why the aliens imprisoned twenty-six survivors in a sterile enclosure built on the barren remains of the Earth.

Fifteen-year-old Pete, one of only six children born in the Shell, is determined to lead humanity to a new beginning. But Pete struggles to control his anger as, one by one, the survivors sicken and die. Although the Earth appears to be slowly healing, the Shell's inhabitants may not live long enough to see it. The only chance for humanity lies within brief time portals. Peter and the survivors hatch a desperate plan: to increase their numbers by abducting children from the past.

In the year 2013, a brilliant CIA consultant sees a pattern in seemingly unrelated kidnappings. As Julie Kahn's predictive algorithms reveal that the world is in imminent danger, she discovers that she may also play a role in its possible rebirth. Julie and Pete are rapidly converging in time?a chance encounter between them may be the Earth's only hope.

New from the Nebula Award winning author of Beggars in Spain, a riveting climate-change technothriller of espionage, conspiracy, and stakes so high they could lead to the destruction of humanity itself.

Kress wisely keeps her global catastrophe on a human scale, eschewing superheroic action for tense realism. This urgent, deeply satisfying story is as tenacious and inspiring as its heroine.--Publishers Weekly

Operative Renata Black has an unusual problem: an ordinary self-driving house. But this particular house, which is causing a traffic snarl, also has the Org's teal paint on the windowsill.

In 2022, GMOs were banned. A biopharmaceutical drug caused the Catastrophe: worldwide economic and agricultural collapse, and personal tragedy for lawyer Caroline Denton and her son. Ten years later, as Renata Black, she is a member of the Org, an underground group of scientists hunted by the feds. But the Org's illegal research might just hold the key to rebuilding the worlds' food supply.

Now there's a mole in the Org, and Renata is the only one who can find out who it is. Will there be time to reveal the solutions that the world has not been willing to face?

NEW SPACE OPERA FROM MULTIPLE NEBULA- AND HUGO-WINNING AUTHOR NANCY KRESS

WHAT LIES BEYOND THE ELEVENTH GATE . . .

Despite economic and territorial tensions, no one wants the city-states of the Eight Worlds to repeat the Terran Collapse by going to war. But when war accidentally happens, everyone seeks ways to exploit it for gain. The Landry and Peregoy ruling dynasties see opportunities to grab territory, increase profits, and settle old scores. Exploited underclasses use war to fuel rebellion. Ambitious heirs can finally topple their elders' regimes--or try to.

But the unexpected key to either victory or peace lies with two persons uninterested in conquest, profits, or power. Philip Anderson seeks only the transcendent meaning of the physics underlying the universe. Tara Landry, spoiled and defiant youngest granddaughter of dynasty head Rachel Landry, accidentally discovers an eleventh stargate, with a fabulous find on the planet behind it. Her discovery, and Philip's use of it, alter everything for the Eight Worlds.

About The Eleventh Gate:

Warring families and philosophies drive this complex science fiction thriller from Hugo and Nebula award-winner Kress (Sea Change.)...This swift, political story proves a rip-roaring diversion. --Publishers Weekly

About Nancy Kress:

Nancy Kress at her very best . . . A first-contact novel like no other.--Greg Bear on Tomorrow's Kin

It's a rare and desirable hybrid: a literary, military, hard-SF novel.--Amazon.com on Probability Moon

Nancy Kress is one of the best science-fiction writers working today.--Kim Stanley Robinson

Nancy Kress is unrivaled in her treatment of genetic engineering. In 1991 she wrote the ground-breaking classic novella Beggars in Spain (Hugo/Nebula) and since then has only enhanced her outstanding reputation of telling stories set in the near-future an

In a deep crevice awaits an alien parasite, dormant till the accidental fall of a small girl awakens it. Annabel does not realize how serious the consequences of her fall really are...and how her little misstep may change the future of humanity itself. *** A remarkable new tale in the highly acclaimed Stellar Guild Series.

Judy Kozinski needs answers. Her husband, a prominent genetic scientist, has been found murdered and no one can find a motive. *** In Las Vegas, a showgirl sends a cryptic message to FBI agent Robert Cavanaugh from a murdered friend. *** How are the two related and what does it have to with the mysterious drug company Verico in New Jersey? Judy Kozinski and Robert Cavanaugh must work together to solve an intricate maze of deceit, murder and mysteries before the life of a whole town is put at risk.

Nebula Award Winner
Locus Award Winner

Aliens have landed in New York. After several months of no explanations, they finally reveal the reason for their arrival.

The news is not good.

Geneticist Marianne Jenner is having a career breakthrough, yet her family is tearing itself apart. Her children Elizabeth and Ryan constantly bicker, agreeing only that an alien conspiracy is in play. Her youngest, Noah, is addicted to a drug that keeps temporarily changing his identity. The Jenner family could not be further apart. But between the four of them, the course of human history will be forever altered.

Earth's most elite scientists have ten months to prevent a disaster?and not everyone is willing to wait.

FBI Special Agent Robert Cavanaugh has been consigned to a backwater office in Southern Maryland where he can stay out of trouble. Yet trouble follows him as a special strain of malaria is discovered in Maryland that selectively kills African Americans with the sickle-cell trait.**** Melanie Anderson is an epidemiologist who is travelling across the world trying to find the cause of this highly selective disease. But as evidence starts pointing toward a man-made cause and a possible government cover-up, she and Cavanaugh must work alone to try and uncover the truth and a cure.