Search Worlds Without End

Contains:

• A Sleep and a Forgetting
• A Thousand Deaths
• Skipping Stones
• Second Chance
• Breaking the Game
• Lifeloop
• Burning
• And What Will We Do Tomorrow?
• Killing Children
• When No One Remembers His Name Will God Retire?
• The Stars That Blink

The book follows Jason Worthing, also known as Jazz, who is a boy growing up on Capitol, the capital planet of the Empire. Jas has "the swipe", which is a genetic mutation that enables telepathy. The swipe is feared in the Empire, so those who possess it are executed. After being found out as a swipe, Jas tries to escape, which leads to his capture by Abner Doon, who helps him rise to prominence as a space pilot. Eventually, Abner sends Jason away as the head of a colony so that the swipe would become more widespread, but when his ship reaches the planet, he is attacked, and the memories of all but one of the three-hundred eleven colonists are destroyed and two-third of the colonist are killed or damaged beyond awakening.

Gathering every story about Jason Worthing, this volume includes "The Worthing Chronicle," as well as all of the other stories set on Capitol and later on Jason's colonized planet.

It was a miracle of science that permitted human beings to live, if not forever, then for a long, long time. Some people, anyway. The rich, the powerful--they lived their lives at the rate of one year every ten. Somec created two societies: that of people who lived out their normal span and died, and those who slept away the decades, skipping over the intervening years and events. It allowed great plans to be put in motion. It allowed interstellar Empires to be built.

It came near to destroying humanity.

After a long, long time of decadence and stagnation, a few seed ships were sent out to save our species. They carried human embryos and supplies, and teaching robots, and one man. The Worthing Saga is the story of one of these men, Jason Worthing, and the world he found for the seed he carried.

Table of Contents:

• Author's Introduction - essay by Orson Scott Card
• The Worthing Chronicle - (1983) - novel
• Skipping Stones - (1979) - short story
• Second Chance - (1979) - short story
• Lifeloop - (1978) - short story
• Breaking the Game - (1979) - novelette
• Killing Children - (1978) - novelette
• And What Will We Do Tomorrow? - (1979) - short story
• Worthing Farm - short story
• Worthing Inn - short story
• The Tinker - (1980) - novelette
• Afterword - essay by Michael R. Collings