What happens when emotions like love and friendship span vast distances — in space, in time, and in the heart?

Science fiction often focuses on future technology and science without considering the ways social structures will change as tech changes — or not. What will relationships look like in a complicated future of clones, uploaded intelligences, artificial brains, or body augmentation? What stories emerge when we acknowledge possibilities of new genders and ways of thinking about them?

The Reinvented Heart presents stories that complicate sex and gender by showing how shifting technology may affect social attitudes and practices, stories that include relationships with communities and social groups, stories that reinvent traditional romance tropes and recast them for the 21st century, and above all, stories that experiment, astonish, and entertain.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Cat Rambo

HEARTS

Poem: They: A Grammar Lesson by Jane Yolen

Retrospect by Seanan McGuire

Lockpick, Locked Heart by AnaMaria Curtis

Touch Has a Memory by Lisa Morton

Ping-Pong Dysphoria by Madeline Pine

In Our Masks, the Shadows by Sam Fleming

Ships of Theseus by Felicity Drake

With All Souls Still Aboard by Premee Mohamed

More than Nine by Beth Cato

HANDS

Poem: There Is a Hand by Jane Yolen

The Shape of the Particle by Naomi Kritzer

No Want to Spend by Sophie Giroir

Little Deaths and Missed Connections by Maria Dong

Sincerely Yours by Lyda Morehouse

Photosynthesis, Growth by Devin Miller

No Pain but That of Memory by Aimee Ogden

Go Where the Heart Takes You by Anita Ensal

MINDS

Poem: Mars Conquest by Jane Yolen

The Star-Crossed Horoscope for Interstellar Travelers by Fran Wilde

Canvas of Sins by Mercedes M. Yardley

If My Body Is a Temple, Raze It to the Ground by Lauren Ring

PerfectMate™ by Xander Odell

Etruscan Afterlife by Rosemary Claire Smith

Our Savage Heart Calls to Itself (Across the Endless Tides) by Justina Robson

Afterword by Jennifer Brozek

Biographies