Search Worlds Without End

Contains:

• Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons
• The Dead Lady of Clown Town
• Drunkboat
• The Ballad of Lost C'Mell
• A Planet Named Shayol

Finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Short Story

This short story originally appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1955. It has been reprinted many times and can be found in the anthologies:

• The Best Science Fiction Stories and Novels: 1956 (1956), edited by T. E. Dikty
• Best SF Three: Science Fiction Stories (1958), edited by Edmund Crispin
• The Third Galaxy Reader (1958), edited by H. L. Gold
• The Mirror of Infinity: A Critics' Anthology of Science Fiction (1970), edited by Robert Silverberg
• A Science Fiction Argosy (1972), edited by Damon Knight
• Supernatural Cats (1972), edited by Claire Necker
• As Tomorrow Becomes Today (1974), edited by Charles W. Sullivan
• Science Fiction: Contemporary Mythology: The SFWA-SFRA Anthology (1978), edited by Patricia Warrick, Martin Harry Greenberg and Joseph Olander
• The Road to Science Fiction 3: From Heinlein to Here (1979), edited by James Gunn
• Fantastic Creatures (1981), edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh
• Magicats! (1984), edited by Jack Dann and Garder Dozois
• The Great SF Stories 17 (1955) (1988), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Isaac Asimov
• Space-Fighters (1988), edited by Charles G. Waugh, Martin Harry Greenberg and Joe Haldeman
• A Century of Science Fiction 1950-1959 (1997), edited by Robert Silverberg
• The Best Military Science Fiction of the 20th Century (2001), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Harry Turtledove
• The Ultimate Cyberpunk (2002), edited by Pat Cadigan
• The Space Opera Renaissance (2006), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer
• The Mammoth Book of SF Wars (2012), edited by Ian Watson and Ian Whates
• The Big Book of Science Fiction (2016), edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
• Infinite Stars (2017), edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

The story is included in the collections:

• You Will Never Be The Same (1963)
• Under Old Earth and Other Explorations (1970)
• The Best of Cordwainer Smith (1975), reissued as The Rediscovery of Man in the SF Masterworks series in 1999.
• The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith (1993)
• When the People Fell (2007)

A collection of 14 short science fiction stories by the author of "Norstrilia" and "The Rediscovery of Man". Each tale is set in an extraordinary universe of scanners, planoforming ships and animal-derived Underpeople.

Table of Contents:

• Timeline from The Instrumentality of Mankind - (1975) - essay by John J. Pierce
• Introduction - essay by Frederik Pohl
• No, No, Not Rogov! - (1959)
• War No. 81-Q - (1928)
• Mark Elf - (1957)
• The Queen of the Afternoon - (1978)
• When the People Fell - (1959)
• Think Blue, Count Two - (1963)
• The Colonel Came Back from the Nothing-at-All - (1979)
• From Gustible's Planet - (1962)
• Drunkboat - (1963)
• Western Science Is So Wonderful - (1958)
• Nancy - (1959)
• The Fife of Bodidharma - (1959)
• Angerhelm - (1959)
• The Good Friends - (1963)

Welcome to the strangest, most distinctive future ever imagined by a science fiction writer. An insterstellar empire ruled by the mysterious Lords of the Instrumentality, whose access to the drug stroon from the planet Norstrilia confers on them virtual immortality. A world in which wealthy and leisured humanity is served by the underpeople, genetically engineered animals turned into the semblance of people. A world in which the great ships which sail between the stars are eventually supplanted by the mysterious, instantaneous technique of planoforming. A world of wonder and myth, and extraordinary imagination.

(Note that this collection was originally published in 1975 as The Best of Cordwainer Smith, the 3rd book in Ballantine's Classic Library of Science Fiction. It was then republished as The Rediscovery of Man in 1988 as VGSF Classics #25, then again in 1999 as a Gollancz SF Masterworks edition. It is a different collection from the NESFA press collection The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith, which has different contents).

Table of Contents:

• Cordwainer Smith: The Shaper of Myths - essay by John J. Pierce
• The Instrumentality of Mankind (timeline) - essay by John J. Pierce
• Scanners Live in Vain (1950) - novelette
• The Lady Who Sailed the Soul (1960) - novelette by Genevieve Linebarger and Cordwainer Smith
• The Game of Rat and Dragon (1955) - short story
• The Burning of the Brain (1958) - short story
• Golden the Ship Was -- Oh! Oh! Oh! (1959) - short story by Genevieve Linebarger and Cordwainer Smith
• The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal (1964) - short story
• The Dead Lady of Clown Town (1964) - novella
• Under Old Earth (1966) - novelette
• Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons (1961) - novelette
• Alpha Ralpha Boulevard (1961) - novelette
• The Ballad of Lost C'mell (1962) - novelette
• A Planet Named Shayol (1961) - novelette

A cosmos of beauty and terror on the far side of time

The universe you will explore in these stories by a famous science fiction author is surely one of the most colourful and weird ever conceived.

Untold millennia in the future, a thousand planets throughout the galaxy acknowledge one ruler – the Instrumentality of Mankind. Giant planoforming ships travel the hazardous spaceways. Men and women genetically 'built' from animals do civilization's labour – and plot in secret, planning revolution. But the hell-planet Shayol with its bizarre torments awaits those who rebel against the dictatorial yoke of the Instrumentality...

Table of Contents

• Introduction - essay by Anthony Cheetham
• The Game of Rat and Dragon (1955) - short story
• On the Sand Planet (1965) - novelette
• Under Old Earth (1966) - novelette
• Alpha Ralpha Boulevard (1961) - novelette
• The Ballard of Lost C'Mell (1962) - novelette
• The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal (1964) - short story
• A Planet Named Shayol (1961) - novelette

Table of Contents:

• No, No, Not Rogov! - (1959)
• The Lady Who Sailed the Soul - (1960) - novelette by Cordwainer Smith and Genevieve Linebarger
• Scanners Live in Vain - (1950)
• The Game of Rat and Dragon - (1955)
• The Burning of the Brain - (1958) -
• Golden the Ship Was - Oh! Oh! Oh! - (1959) - shortstory by Cordwainer Smith and Genevieve Linebarger
• Alpha Ralpha Boulevard - (1961)
• Mark Elf - (1957)

Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Galaxy Magazine, February 1965. The story can also be found in the anthologies A Day in the Life (1972) edited by Gardner Dozois, The Arbor House Treasury of Great Science Fiction Short Novels (1980), edited by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg, and Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction (1994), edited by Gardner Dozois. It is included in the collections Quest of the Three Worlds (1966) and When the People Fell (2007).

Four novellas with the same main character Caher O'Neill.

Contains:

• On the Gem Planet
• On the Storm Planet
• On the Sand Planet
• Three to a Given Star

Norstrilia tells the story of a boy form the planet Old North Australia (where rich, simple farmers grow the immortality drug Stroon), how he bought Old Earth, and how his visit to Earth changed both him and Earth itself.

When his ultra-logical computer tells him that to survive he must become the richest man in the universe, Rod McBan the hundred and fifty-first thought he had a good plan. A telepathic cripple, rejected by many of his people, owner of the Station of Doom, the safety of wealth would keep him safe. In one crowded, unbelievable night he achieved the impossible, became the richest boy in the galaxy.

But Rod McBan will soon discover that money brings trouble. A galaxy of people and other beings – out to rob him, use him or kill him!

Rod McBan owned Earth.

One night of frenzied manipulation had made an obscure rancer on a far planet the richest man in history, and the sole owner of Man's home planet. It had also made him the target of every criminal in the Universe.

There was one way Rod McBan could reach the planet he owned - alive. But it meant he would have to die first...

The Planet Buyer and The Underpeople were combined into the novel Norstrilia.

The Underpeople were mutated from animal stock to serve mankind. They lived Deepdown in the forgotten corridors and caverns of Old Earth, servants to the men who bred them in their own image.

But even the Underpeople dream - and often have strange powers. And now they have a strange ally in the richest man who ever lived: the man who owned the whole planet.

The Planet Buyer and The Underpeople were combined into the novel Norstrilia.