Search Worlds Without End

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Moon Shots (1999), edited by Peter Crowther. It can also be found in the anthologies Year's Best SF 5 (2000), edited by David G. Hartwell, The Eagle Has Landed: 50 Years of Lunar Science Fiction, (2019), edited by Neil Clarke. The story is included in the collection The Cure for Love and Other Tales of the Biotech Revolution (2007).

The eleven stories in Designer Genes showcase the latest volume in this intriguing science fiction series that explores intriguing future possibilities in biotechnology, ranging from stories of imminent technology reflecting issues that are already controversial, to stories that feature drastically altered worlds. Most of the stories are domestic dramas in which ordinary people are trying to get on with their everyday lives in circumstances that are altering in confusing ways by the year or by the day. Most of them have an element of comedy, because the human predicament is essentially comic, and most of them sound a powerful note of optimism, or at least of hope, because, the world being what it is, biotechnology is the one realistic source of optimism and hope that we have, if we are to come through the present ecocatastrophe relatively unscathed. Great, thought-provoking entertainment by a major SF writer!

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Brian Stableford
• What Can Chloë Want? - (1994) - short story
• The Invisible Worm - (1991) - novelette
• The Age of Innocence - (1995) - short story
• Snowball in Hell - (2000) - novelette
• The Last Supper - (2000) - short story
• The Facts of Life - (1993) - novelette
• Hot Blood - (2002) - short story
• The House of Mourning - (1996) - short story
• Another Branch of the Family Tree - (1999) - novelette
• The Milk of Human Kindness - (2001) - short story
• The Pipes of Pan - (1997) - novelette

BSFA and Hugo Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, October 1994. The story can also be found in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twelth Annual Collection (1995), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1991) - essay
• Bedside Conversations - (1990) - short story
• A Career in Sexual Chemistry - (1987) - novelette
• Cinderella's Sisters - (1989) - short story
• The Magic Bullet - (1989) - novelette
• The Invertebrate Man - (1990) - novelette
• The Furniture of Life's Ambition - (1990) - novelette
• The Fury That Hell Withheld - (1990) - short story
• The Engineer and the Executioner - (1975) - short story
• The Growth of the House of Usher - (1988) - novelette
• And He Not Busy Being Born... - (1986) - short story
• Mankind in the Third Millennium - (1988) - essay

This novelette originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, December 2000. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighteenth Annual Collection (2001), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collection Designer Genes: Tales of the Biotech Revolution (2004).

Sturgeon Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, June 1995. The story is included in the collection Designer Genes: Tales of the Biotech Revolution (2004).

A scientist visits a dying colleague at his house in the Orinoco river delta, to discover more about his life and scientific discoveries in genetics.

This novelette originally appeared in Interzone, #24 Summer 1988. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Sixth Annual Collection (1989), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collection Sexual Chemistry: Sardonic Tales of the Genetic Revolution (1991).

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Off Limits: Tales of Alien Sex (1996), edited by Ellen Datlow. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 2 (1997), edited by David G. Hartwell. The story is included in the collection Designer Genes: Tales of the Biotech Revolution (2004).

This short story originally appeared in Science Fiction Age, March 2000. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 6 (2001), edited by David G. Hartwell. The story is included in the collection Designer Genes: Tales of the Biotech Revolution (2004).

This novelette originally appeared in Interzone, #29 May-June 1989. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Seventh Annual Collection (1990), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The 1990 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha. The story is included in the collection Sexual Chemistry: Sardonic Tales of the Genetic Revolution (1991).

This novelette originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 1997, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, November 2015. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifteenth Annual Collection (1998), edited by Gardner Dozios, Year's Best SF 3 (1998), edited by David G. Hartwell, and Genometry (2001), edited by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann. The story is included in the collection Designer Genes: Tales of the Biotech Revolution (2004).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.