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Sturgeon Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, October-November 2009 and was reprinted in Clarkesworld, Issue 113, February 2016. The story can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Seventh Annual Collection (2010), edited by Gardner Dozios.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

Brilliantly conceived and multilayered, Divining Light is a high-concept thriller that questions what it really means to be human

In Ted Kosmatka's wildly original and genre-busting Divining Light, a groundbreaking new discovery changes the world forever.

Out of a job and struggling with depression and alcohol abuse after a breakdown, the brilliant quantum physicist Eric Angus is given a second chance after he's hired on a probationary basis by an old friend who runs Hansen, a prestigious Boston-area research lab. Unable to find inspiration for a project, Eric stumbles upon old equipment used for Feynman's double-slit experiment and decides to re-create the test in order to see the results for himself.

Eric probes deeper into Feynman's theory, with the help of fellow scientists Satish and Mi Chang. After extensive tests on frogs, dogs, chimps, working their way up every phylum, class, and order in the animal kingdom, Eric and his team establish a link between conscious observation and an evolutionary trait that is distinctly human: the soul. Mass chaos ensues after they publish the results of their experiment and Eric is bombarded by reporters angling for exclusive interviews and wanting to debate the varying implications. Questions arise when certain people appear to be "soulless," and after Satish mysteriously disappears, Eric risks everything to answer them.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, December 2010. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Eighth Annual Collection (2011), edited by Gardner Dozios and Lightspeed: Year One (2011), edited by John Joseph Adams.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Seeds of Change (2008), edited by John Joseph Adams. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 14 (2009), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Kramer, and The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection (2009), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Read the full story ofr free at io9.

Paul Carlson, a brilliant young scientist, is summoned from his laboratory job to the remote Indonesian island of Flores to collect DNA samples from the ancient bones of a strange, new species of tool user unearthed by an archaeological dig. The questions the find raises seem to cast doubt on the very foundations of modern science, which has proven the world to be only 5,800 years old, but before Paul can fully grapple with the implications of his find, the dig is violently shut down by paramilitaries.

Paul flees with two of his friends, yet within days one has vanished and the other is murdered in an attack that costs Paul an eye, and very nearly his life. Back in America, Paul tries to resume the comfortable life he left behind, but he can't cast the questions raised by the dig from his mind. Paul begins to piece together a puzzle which seems to threaten the very fabric of society, but world's governments and Martial Johnston, the eccentric billionaire who financed Paul's dig, will stop at nothing to silence him.

This short story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 2008. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Three (2009), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2009, edited by Rich Horton.

This novelette originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January-February 2012. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Seven (2013), edited by Jonathan Strahan.

A quantum physicist shocks the world with a startling experiment, igniting a struggle between science and theology, free will and fate, and antagonizing forces not known to exist

Eric Argus is a washout. His prodigious early work clouded his reputation and strained his sanity. But an old friend gives him another chance, an opportunity to step back into the light.

With three months to produce new research, Eric replicates the paradoxical double-slit experiment to see for himself the mysterious dual nature of light and matter. A simple but unprecedented inference blooms into a staggering discovery about human consciousness and the structure of the universe.

His findings are celebrated and condemned in equal measure. But no one can predict where the truth will lead. And as Eric seeks to understand the unfolding revelations, he must evade shadowy pursuers who believe he knows entirely too much already.

This stunning first novel from Nebula Award and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award finalist Ted Kosmatka is a riveting tale of science cut loose from ethics. Set in an amoral future where genetically engineered monstrosities fight each other to the death in an Olympic event, The Games envisions a harrowing world that may arrive sooner than you think.

Silas Williams is the brilliant geneticist in charge of preparing the U.S. entry into the Olympic Gladiator competition, an internationally sanctioned bloodsport with only one rule: no human DNA is permitted in the design of the entrants. Silas lives and breathes genetics; his designs have led the United States to the gold in every previous event. But the other countries are catching up. Now, desperate for an edge in the upcoming Games, Silas's boss engages an experimental supercomputer to design the genetic code for a gladiator that cannot be beaten.

The result is a highly specialized killing machine, its genome never before seen on earth. Not even Silas, with all his genius and experience, can understand the horror he had a hand in making. And no one, he fears, can anticipate the consequences of entrusting the act of creation to a computer's cold logic.

Now Silas races to understand what the computer has wrought, aided by a beautiful xenobiologist, Vidonia João. Yet as the fast-growing gladiator demonstrates preternatural strength, speed, and-most disquietingly-intelligence, Silas and Vidonia find their scientific curiosity giving way to a most unexpected emotion: sheer terror.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, July 2016. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection (2017), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This novelette originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, September 2007. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection (2008), edited by Gardner Dozois, The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Two (2008), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and Twenty-First Century Science Fiction (2013), edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden and David G. Hartwell.