Galactic Empires

As editor Clarke points out in his introduction, when most people hear the term galactic empire, they immediately picture Darth Vader and Star Wars. But there is a long history of star-faring empires in the genre, with stories that imagine our human tendencies to explore and conquer among the stars. While some of the writers here consider the human-alien conflict, as in Paul J. McAuley's "Winning Peace," there are other tales about the attempts to communicate and cooperate as recounted in Ruth Nestvold's "Looking Through Lace" and Gwendolyn Clare's excellent "All the Painted Stars." Standouts from authors' established worlds include Ann Leckie's "Night's Slow Poison," set in the universe of her "Ancillary" novels, and Kristine Kathryn Rusch's "The Impossibles," about an overworked lawyer in the world of Rusch's "Retrieval Artists" series.