Kathleen Ann Goonan burst into prominence with "Queen City Jazz," the start of her Nanotech Quartet. "The Bones of Time," her widely acclaimed second novel, was a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2000. "In War Times "is deeply satisfying SF. Sam, the protagonist, is a young enlisted man in 1941 when his older brother Keenan is killed at Pearl Harbor. Seduced by a mysterious woman, Sam gives her plans for a device that will end not just the war, but perhaps even the human predilection for war. Sam spends his war years trying to construct the device and discovers only later that it worked. Sam falls in love with a spy, and they both become involved in preventing the JFK assassination in the 1960s. Over the decades it becomes deeply meaningful that his world is strangely transformed by the enigmatic device.

The universe shifts and changes: suddenly you understand, you get it, and are filled with wonder. That moment of understanding drives the greatest science-fiction stories and lies at the heart of Engineering Infinity. Whether it's coming up hard against the speed of light - and, with it, the enormity of the universe - realising that terraforming a distant world is harder and more dangerous than you'd ever thought, or simply realizing that a hitchhiker on a starship consumes fuel and oxygen with tragic results, it's hard science-fiction where a sense of discovery is most often found and where science-fiction's true heart lies. This exciting and innovative science-fiction anthology collects together stories by some of the biggest names in the field, including Gwyneth Jones, Stephen Baxter and Charles Stross.