Presents fictional and non-fictional stories written by American authors that discuss topics in science and nature.

"A Mariner original."

Foreword / Tom Fogler -- Introduction: On tenderness / Siddhartha Mukherjee -- False idyll from Orion / J.B. MacKinnon -- The last distinction from Harper's magazine / Benjamin Hale -- Talk to me from Outside / Tim Zimmerman -- Beyond the quantum horizon from Scientific American / David Deutsch and Artur Ekert -- Is space digital? from Scientific American / Michael Moyer -- The sweet spot in time from Virginia quarterly review / Sylvia A. Earle -- Machines of the infinite from Scientific American / John Pavlus -- Which species will live? from Scientific American / Michelle Nijhuis -- The larch g from Orion / Rick Bass -- Shattered genius from Playboy / Brett Forrest -- The T-cell army from New Yorker / Jerome Groopman -- The artificial leaf from New Yorker / David Owen -- The deadliest virus from New Yorker / Michael Specter -- Our place in the universe from Harper's magazine / Alan Lightman -- Out of the wild from Popular science / David Quammen -- Altered states from New Yorker / Oliver Sachs -- Recall of the wild from New Yorker / Elizabeth Kolbert -- Polar express from New Yorker / Keith Gessen -- The crisis of big science from New York review of books / Steven Weinberg -- Autism inc. from New York times magazine / Gareth Cook -- The life of pi and other infinities from New York times / Natalie Angier -- Super humanity from Scientific American/ Robert M. Sapolsky -- The patient scientist from Scientific American / Katherine Harmon -- Can a jellyfish unlock the secret of immortality? from New York times magazine / Nathaniel Rich -- Is Facebook making us lonely? from Atlantic / Stephen Marche -- The measured man from Atlantic / Mark Bowden -- The wisdom of psychopaths from Scientific American / Kevin Dutton -- Contributors' notes -- Other notable science and nature writing of 2012.