My story “The Fall of the House of Kepler” appears in the brand new anthology Extrasolar, edited by the estimable Nick Gevers, which is themed around the many discoveries of spectacular and surprising exoplanets which have been made in recent years, and the many more which will surely be discovered in the years to come. The list of other contributors is, in itself, pretty stellar. As someone who grew up in an era when astronomers and physicists found it hard to come up with good reasons why planets should be a common feature of other solar systems, this whole idea still feels pretty extraordinary, and makes what once seemed like wishful thinking in SF much more probable and real. As to how we reach those places, well, that’s another matter. And, as my story – whose pessimistic nature is signalled by the nod to Edgar Allan Poe in its title – suggests, we shouldn’t get too yet confident about ever making that leap.