A is for Alien is award-winning author Caitlín R. Kiernan s first collection devoted entirely to her science-fiction work. It includes the critically acclaimed novelette Riding the White Bull (chosen for The Year s Best Science Fiction, 22nd Annual Collection), along with seven other tales of a less-than-utopian future. Ranging from the wastelands and mountains of Mars to the streets of a late 21st-Century Manhattan, from the moons of Europa and Saturn to an iceless Antarctica, these tales bring Kiernan s trademark brand of the eco-gothic to bear on what it means to be human and the paths and decisions that may face mankind only a little farther along.