Search Worlds Without End

It's an age where high tech rules supreme. Computers do all the work while humans spend their lives enjoying drug-induced fantasies. Only a handful live and work in the traditional sense?managing the few affairs that still need attention. At the center of this system is the Mnemonist, the man who directs everything that happens. But now he has reached an advanced age and must carefully choose a dreamer capable of taking over his crucial position.

They are the Watchers: pale laboratory creatures living in a remote, sealed-off world. Their game, their religion, their release is to dream, and their dreams carry across the galaxy to lodge in the minds of the inhabitants of another world: the planet Earth. But as the human race approaches a dream of their own--traveling beyond their own planet to other worlds--the Watchers step in. For escape from Earth is an impossible dream, one that the Watchers will go to any length to destroy.

Contents:

• ix - Introduction (The Expert Dreamers) - (1962) - essay by Frederik Pohl
• 1 - At the End of the Orbit - (1961) - short story by Arthur C. Clarke (variant of Hate)
• 21 - On the Feasibility of Coal-Driven Power Stations - (1956) - short story by O. R. Frisch
• 25 - A Feast of Demons - (1958) - novelette by William Morrison
• 51 - The Heart on the Other Side - short story by George Gamow
• 62 - Lenny - [Susan Calvin] - (1958) - short story by Isaac Asimov
• 80 - The Singers - (1956) - short story by W. Grey Walter
• 84 - The Invasion - (1940) - novelette by Willy Ley
• 102 - To Explain Mrs. Thompson - (1951) - short story by R. S. Richardson
• 125 - Adrift on the Policy Level - (1959) - short story by Chan Davis
• 149 - The Black Cloud (Excerpt) - (1957) - short fiction by Fred Hoyle
• 167 - Chain Reaction - (1956) - short story by Lyle G. Boyd and William C. Boyd
• 183 - The Miracle of the Broom Closet - (1952) - short story by Norbert Wiener
• 190 - Heavy Planet - (1939) - short story by Milton A. Rothman
• 203 - The Test Stand - (1955) - short story by G. Harry Stine
• 217 - Amateur in Chancery - (1961) - short story by George O. Smith
• 235 - The Mark Gable Foundation - (1961) - short story by Leo Szilard

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Swords v. Cthulhu (2016), edited by Jesse Bullington and Molly Tanzer, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, March 2018.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

One night in an isolated college town in the hills of Southern California, a first-year student stumbles into her dorm room, falls asleep--and doesn't wake up. She sleeps through the morning, into the evening. Her roommate, Mei, cannot rouse her. Neither can the paramedics, nor the perplexed doctors at the hospital. When a second girl falls asleep, and then a third, Mei finds herself thrust together with an eccentric classmate as panic takes hold of the college and spreads to the town. A young couple tries to protect their newborn baby as the once-quiet streets descend into chaos. Two sisters turn to each other for comfort as their survivalist father prepares for disaster.

Those affected by the illness, doctors discover, are displaying unusual levels of brain activity, higher than has ever been recorded before. They are dreaming heightened dreams--but of what?

The Blind Worm

Bizarre struggles for power consumed the mutated inhabitants of Earth, a planet who oceans had dried into salt beds and whose densely vegatated plains had become the impregnable entity the Wildland.

The black king, John Tamerlane, black of body and of blood, was the first to claim Earth. But Sum, a powerful aggregate mind, controlled Earth through the Wildland, and sought to keep it as the base of its universe. Only a demon's price would pry the prize from Sum. And only the Blind Worm, a massive, misfit creation of a deranged mind, could satisfy Sum's demands.

viciously they battled through time and the universe--pseudo-man and animal-machine. Their quest was Earth, but they were willing to ravage even that for power.

Seed of the Dreamers

Brad Mantee, starcop on the galazy's rim, was on a routine mission when everything started to go wrong. His perfect record with star control, the vast network of galactic dictatorship, slipped suddenly into oblivion as he found himself in hot pursuit of the madman who had stolen his ship and with it, the secret that could cost him his career--at the very least.

Unfortunately, Brad's best chance was through the madman's daughter, a girl from the one organization Star Control most detested. Their search led them ultimately to a primitive and uncharted planet where fiction became fact and dreams became flesh, but where also lurked a threat of universal slavery more total than man had ever known...

In this major publishing event, David and Leigh Eddings--two of the most important names in epic fantasy--offer the first of a four-book series.While most continents float freely on the face of Mother Sea, the Land of Dhrall survives anchored by the will of the Gods. All Gods, Elder and Younger, share the people and the land of Dhrall equally. But the one place they never enter is The Wasteland: a barren and hideous wilderness ruled by the Vlagh--a god-like creature whose young are evil spawn. Now, as the Elder Gods are about to transfer their power to the Younger Gods, the Vlagh plans to take advantage of their weakened state and neutralize them, eventually conquering the world. To do so, it is breeding a terrible force borne of monsters and demons. But one ray of hope shines through the darkness: four children called the Dreamers. They alone hold the power to change the course of history...and stop the Vlagh in its quest for total world domination.

New York Times bestselling authors David and Leigh Eddings, creators of such grand fantasy epics as The Belgariad and The Malloreon, continue the national bestselling saga of The Dreamers with an epic new novel of gods and mortals who must defy the dark forces that would destroy them all... Flush from their narrow victory over the horrific Vlagh, Longbow and his companions are drawn to a pastoral territory in south Dhrall, confident that they will thwart the next assault by their inhuman foe. But on the border of the Wasteland, the Vlagh is breeding a monstrous new army of venomous bat-bugs and armored spiders. These grotesque legions threaten to overwhelm the allies, who are further shocked by a prophecy delivered by the Dreamers: an invasion by a new, second army. A force of armed acolytes approaches to plunder this unspoiled land in a global holy war. Now farmers and hunters, soldiers and madmen, mortals and gods-all charge to a battle that will decide the fate of the world.

A magical, on-the-grandest-scale, action-packed, totally engaging and characterful fantasy novel from the bestselling authors David and Leigh Eddings.

The Dreamers are children teetering on the brink of divinity. They have the power to change the world with their dreams.

The Elder Gods have defeated the Vlagh twice – with the aid of the Dreamers and the mysterious Treasured One who seems, worryingly, to be controlling them – but the unspeakable Creature of the Wasteland is on the fast track to world domination as the time approaches for the Younger Gods to take their place.

Now all the varied resources of the domains of the Gods are marshalled to bring a halt to the spread of evil. But there is pestilence and skirmishing, and suddenly the balance of power shifts.

The Ruler of the Wasteland has infiltrated another domain of the Gods, the land of short summers, where bison and deer roam. There the strange and marvellous crystal gorge, which can be no natural formation of rock, is destined to become a battleground of great beauty and great terror.

The enemy is closer to knowing the secrets of the Treasured One and the Dreamers are in grave danger of delivering a nightmare to the world of the Elder Gods.

The exciting final volume in the glorious fantasy series The Dreamers...

The attacks of the dreadful insect queen known as the Vlagh have been repelled in three of the Elder Gods' realms. Now, only the land ruled by the Goddess Aracia remains for the Vlagh to send her hordes to attack.

But while the Gods, their younger avatars and their human comrades have emerged victorious from all previous encounters, this time the Goddess herself may be their greatest foe – she craves worship and hates the idea of being replaced by a younger God when her time comes to an end... and that time is approaching fast.

A mighty conclusion to a fabulous series!

The Forge School is the most prestigious arts school in the country. The secret to its success: every moment of the students' lives is televised as part of the insanely popular Forge Show, and the students' schedule includes twelve hours of induced sleep meant to enhance creativity. But when first year student Rosie Sinclair skips her sleeping pill, she discovers there is something off about Forge. In fact, she suspects that there are sinister things going on deep below the reaches of the cameras in the school. What's worse is, she starts to notice that the ridges of her consciousness do not feel quite right. And soon, she unearths the ghastly secret that the Forge School is hiding--and what it truly means to dream there.

From Caragh M. O'Brien, author of the Birthmarked trilogy comes the first book in a new series, The Vault of Dreamers, a fast-paced, psychologically thrilling novel about what happens when your dreams are not your own.