"A Braver Thing" is a science fiction novelette by English-American writer Charles Sheffield. It was first published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine in February 1990, and subsequently republished in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighth Annual Collection (1991), in Sheffield's collection Dancing With Myself (1993), and in Visions of Wonder (1996); it was also translated into Italian and published (as "Qualcosa di eccezionale") in Supernovæ (1993) and Millemondi Primavera 1996 (1996).[1]