Earth is no longer humanity's only home. Slowly they have colonised the galaxy, spreading ever outwards into the darkest reaches of Terran space. To some Earth is now a myth, a fairy-tale; stories told to them by their grand parents when they were children. To others the Earth is still the place they call home: a bleak, inescapable fact that must be endured in order to survive. In this exciting collection of stories chronicling the turbulent events of humanity's struggle for survival six hundred years in our future, some of today's leading science fiction writers take us from the vast depths of uncharted space to the surface of a shockingly different planet Earth, where civilisation is desperately trying to preserve the last shreds of its human identity.