Search Worlds Without End

Selena and Julie are sisters. As children they were closest companions, but as they grow towards maturity, a rift develops between them.

There are greater rifts, however. Julie goes missing at the age of seventeen. It will be twenty years before Selena sees her again. When Julie reappears, she tells Selena an incredible story about how she has spent time on another planet. Selena has an impossible choice to make: does she dismiss her sister as a damaged person, the victim of delusions, or believe her, and risk her own sanity in the process? Is Julie really who she says she is, and if she isn't, what does she have to gain by claiming her sister's identity?

In the far reaches of space, a tour group embarks on what will be the trip of a lifetime--in more ways than one...

At Sigma Station, a remote mining facility and luxury hotel in deep space, a group of tourists boards a small vessel to take in the stunning views of the Horsehead Nebula.

But while they're out there, a mysterious ship with devastating advanced technology attacks the station. Their pilot's quick thinking means that the tourists escape with their lives--but as the dust settles, they realise they may be the only survivors...

Adrift in outer space on a vastly under-equipped ship, they've got no experience, no weapons, no contact with civilisation. They are way out of their depth, and if they can't figure out how to work together, they're never getting home alive.

Because the ship that destroyed the station is still out there. And it's looking for them...

Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in If, June 1967. The story can also be found in the anthologies:

• World's Best Science Fiction: 1968, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr
• A Day in the Life (1972), edited by Gardner Dozois
• Worlds of If: A Retrospective Anthology (1986), edited by Joseph D. Olander, Martin Harry Greenberg and Frederik Pohl
• Mermaids! (1986), edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois
• Modern Classics of Science Fiction (1991), edited by Gardner Dozois
• Mermaids and Other Mysteries of the Deep (2015), edited by Paula Guran

It is included in the collections Driftglass (1971), Driftglass/Starshards (1993) and Aye, and Gomorrah: And Other Stories (2003).

Table of Contents:

• Of Doubts and Dreams - (1981) - essay
• The Star Pit - (1967) - novella
• Corona - (1967) - short story
• Aye, and Gomorrah... - (1967) - short story
• Driftglass - (1967) - short story
• We, in Some Strange Power's Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line - (1968) - novella
• Cage of Brass - (1968) - short story
• High Weir - (1968) - novelette
• Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones - (1968) - novelette
• Omegahelm - (1981) - short story
• Prismatica - (1977) - novelette
• Ruins - (1968) - short story
• Dog in a Fisherman's Net - (1971) - short story
• Night and the Loves of Joe Dicostanzo - (1970) - short story
• Among the Blobs - (1988) - short story
• Citre et Trans - novelette
• Eric, Gwen, and D. H. Lawrence's Esthetic of Unrectified Feeling - (1991) - novelette

Hugo and Locus Award winning novelette. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1974. The story can also be found in the anthology The Hugo Winners, Volume 3: (1970-75) (1977), edited by Isaac Asimov. it is included in the collections Deathbird Stories: A Pantheon of Modern Gods (1975), The Essential Ellison: A 35-Year Retrospective (1987), and The Top of the Volcano: The Award-Winning Stories of Harlan Ellison (2015).

In the deepest canyon in the inhabited worlds, giant mantas soar through the air and leave patterned structures behind. A team of sapiologists seek to prove that these delicate filaments are true language, not just bee's dance. But time has run out, and their reckoning is upon them. Will they prove that their research is valid, or will they be scattered to the corners of the galaxy?

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Nature abhors a straight line. The natural world is a place of curves and softened edges, of gentle mists and welcoming spirals. Nature remembers deviation; nature does not forgive.

For Harlowe Upton-Jones, life has never been a straight line. Shipped off to live with her paternal grandparents after a mysterious cult killed her mother and father, she has grown up chasing the question behind the curve, becoming part of a tight-knit teen detective agency. But "teen" is a limited time offer, and when her friends start looking for adult professions, it's up to Harlowe to find them one last case so that they can go out in a blaze of glory.

Welcome to Spindrift House.

The stories and legends surrounding the decrepit property are countless and contradictory, but one thing is clear: there are people willing to pay a great deal to determine the legal ownership of the house. When Harlowe and her friends agree to investigate the mystery behind the manor, they do so on the assumption that they'll be going down in history as the ones who determined who built Spindrift House--and why. The house has secrets. They have the skills. They have a plan. They have everything they need to solve the mystery.

Everything they need except for time. Because Spindrift House keeps its secrets for a reason, and it has no intention of letting them go.

Nature abhors a straight line.

Here's where the story bends.

Before she was betrayed and left for dead, Tenny was many things: prodigal daughter of the Driftwood City underworld. Leader of the Thorn Orphans, the gang fighting for a better tomorrow. City shaman, able to bend her home's boroughs to her will. Partner-in-crime to Cole, the runaway rich boy with powers just like hers.

But that was all before.

Four years later, Tenny is an exile, sleepwalking through life and waiting to die. But a chance encounter puts her on a bloody path back to the life she left behind. Friendless and powerless, she returns to Driftwood City, only to find a world where the Thorn Orphans have finally won. A better tomorrow, today.

And all that progress tethered to the heartbeat of the friend who ordered her death.

Her city. Her vengeance. It's an impossible choice.

But if Tenny wants to survive, she'll have to choose one.

It is January 1879, and the British Empire and the Zulu Kingdom are at war. Lord Carnarvon, Secretary of State for the Colonies, who had successfully brought about federation in Canada in 1867, had believed a similar scheme would work in South Africa. But such plans are rejected by Boer leaders. Lord Chelmsford leads a British military expeditionary force to enter the Zulu Kingdom uninvited. A bloody battle ensues on 22 January 1879 at Isandlwana. The Zulus are the unexpected victors.

After that brutal defeat, the British Army are at Rorke's Drift on the Buffalo River in Natal Province, South Africa. A few hundred British and colonial troops led by Lieutenants John Chard of the Royal Engineers and Gonville Bromhead face the might of the Zulu army of thousands led by Prince Dabulamanzi kaMpande (CORR). Against the odds the British are victorious and this defeat marks the end of the Zulu nation's dominance of the region.

The Defence of Rorke's Drift would go down in history as an iconic British Empire Battle and inspired Victorian Britain. Eleven Victoria Crosses were awarded to military personnel. But what if the Zulus had defeated the British at Rorke's Drift and invaded Natal?

In the first ever alternate history of the Anglo-Zulu War, historian John Laband asks that question. With his vast knowledge of the Anglo-Zulu War he turns history on its head and offers a tantalizing glimpse of a very different outcome weaving a compelling and never-before told story of what could have been.

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, #76 January 2013. It can also be found in the anthology Clarkesworld: Year Seven (2015), edited by Sean Wallace and Neil Clarke.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

Driftwood is a strange, ever-changing place of slow apocalypses, where remnants of nearly-destroyed worlds appear out of the Mist at the rim, are gradually pushed farther toward the center by newer arrivals, eventually crumble into mere neighborhoods in the inner Shreds, and are pulled inexorably towards the center – like stars into a black hole – where they are destroyed in the Crush. What remains are those who migrated to newer worlds out of curiosity or self-preservation – and the descendants of various races who have interbred until many of them share the same physical characteristics in their giant melting pot.

A long-lived member of a long-destroyed world – he is known as “Last” – has traveled amongst the worlds of the Driftwood for many generations, learning their languages and customs and histories, and serving as a guide to those whose quests he is willing to accept. Now it is rumored that Last, at long last, has finally died, and these are the stories of a diverse group of people whose lives he has touched, at a memorial service to remember and honor him.

This is a short novel of 44,600 words, so within the +/- threshold for Hugo Novella

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, July 1993. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eleventh Annual Collection (1994), edited by Gardner Dozios and The Hard SF Renaissance (2002), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer.

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Constellations: The Best of New British SF (2005), edited by Peter Crowther. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Third Annual Collection (2006), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Year's Best SF 11 (2006), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Kramer. The story is included in the collections Zima Blue and Other Stories (2006) and Beyond the Aquila Rift: The Best of Alastair Reynolds (2016).

This is an amazing collection of some of the best short fiction ever written in the SF genre, by an author acclaimed as 'the mastersinger of space opera' THE TIMES.

With an introduction by noted SF critic Johnathan Strahan, this collection of twenty short stories, novellettes and novellas includes MINLA'S FLOWERS, SIGNAL TO NOISE, TROIKA, and seven previous uncollected stories, including TRAUMA POD, THE WATER THIEF and IN BABELSBERG.

Alastair Reynolds has won the Sidewise Award and been nominated for The Hugo Awards for his short fiction. One of the most thought-provoking and accomplished short-fiction writers of our time, this collection is a delight for all SF readers.

Table of Contents:

• "Great Wall of Mars"
• "Weather"
• "Beyond the Aquila Rift"
• "Minla's Flowers"
• "Zima Blue"
• "Fury"
• "The Star Surgeon's Apprentice"
• "The Sledge-Maker's Daughter"
• "Diamond Dogs"
• "Thousandth Night"
• "Troika"
• "Sleepover"
• "Vainglory"
• "Trauma Pod"
• "The Last Log of the Lachrymosa"
• "The Water Thief"
• "The Old Man and the Martian Sea"
• "In Babelsberg"
• Story notes

1904. On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there is a colonial settlement called The Old Drift. In a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy. This sets off a cycle of unwitting retribution between three Zambian families (black, white, brown) as they collide and converge over the course of the century, into the present and beyond. As the generations pass, their lives--their triumphs, errors, losses and hopes--emerge through a panorama of history, fairytale, romance and science fiction.

From a woman covered with hair and another plagued with endless tears, to forbidden love affairs and fiery political ones, to homegrown technological marvels like Afronauts, microdrones and viral vaccines, this gripping, unforgettable novel is a testament to our yearning to create and cross borders, and a meditation on the slow, grand passage of time.

Truly successful science fiction does two things: it gives credible glimpses into the future while entertaining the reader. With this in mind, noted anthologist Jonathan Strahan (who is also the reviews editor of Locus magazine) asked sixteen of today's most inventive, compelling writers to look past the horizon of the present day. Neil Gaiman (Anansi Boys), Kelly Link (Magic for Beginners), Garth Nix (the Abhorsen Trilogy), Scott Westerfeld (Uglies; Pretties; Specials) and their colleagues have crafted a dazzling range of stories. Whether on spaceships, in suburbia, or in simulated gaming worlds, whether about cloning, battle tactics, or corporate politics, the stories of The Starry Rift will give every reader something to consider. This original anthology is crucial reading for those who want to see where the future (and the future of science fiction) is headed.

Table of Contents:

• "Ass-Hat Magic Spider" by by Scott Westerfeld
• "Cheats" by Ann Halam
• "Orange" by Neil Gaiman
• "The Surfer" by Kelly Link
• "Repair Kit" by Stephen Baxter
• "The Dismantled Invention of Fate" by Jeffrey Ford
• "Anda's Game" By Corey Doctorow
• "Sundiver Day" by Kathleen Ann Goonan
• "The Dust Assassin" by Ian McDonald
• "The Star Surgeon's Apprentice" by Alastair Reynolds
• "An Honest Day's Work" By Margo Lanigan
• "Lost Continent" by Greg Egan
• "Incomers" by Paul McAuley
• "Post--Ironic Stress Syndrome" by Tricia Sullivan
• "Infestation" by Garth Nix
• "Pinocchio" by Walter Jon Williams

When a meltdown at Three Mile Island creates a death zone known as the Drift, the area becomes a terrible place of eerie skies, body-mutilating boneseekers, monsters, and mutants, who fight to escape the island for their own vengeful purposes.

Paris was supposed to save Hallie. Now...well, let's just say Paris has other ideas.

There's a strange woman called The Chronometrist who will not leave her alone. Garbled warnings from bizarre creatures keep her up at night. And there's a time portal in the keg room of the bar where she works.

Soon, Hallie is tumbling through the turbulent past and future Paris, making friends, changing the world -- and falling in love.

But with every trip, Hallie loses a little of herself, and every infinitesimal change she makes ripples through time, until the future she's trying to save suddenly looks nothing like what she hoped for.

Skillfully combining complex science with finely executed prose, these edgy, award-winning tales explore the always-shifting border between the known and the alien.

The beauty and peril of technology and the passion and penalties of conviction merge in stories that are by turns dark, satiric, bold, and introspective. A seemingly humanized monster from John Carpenter's The Thing reveals the true villains in an Antarctic showdown. An artificial intelligence shields a biologically-enhanced prodigy from her overwhelmed parents. A deep-sea diver discovers that her true nature lies not within the confines of her mission but in the depths of her psyche. A court psychologist analyzes a psychotic graduate student who has learned to reprogram reality itself. A father tries to hold his broken family together in the wake of an ongoing assault by sentient rainstorms.

Gorgeously saturnine and exceptionally powerful, these collected fictions are both intensely thought-provoking and impossible to forget.

Table of Contents:

• The Things - (2010) - shortstory
• The Island - (2009) - novelette
• The Second Coming of Jasmine Fitzgerald - (1998) - novelette
• A Word for Heathens - (2004) - novelette
• Home - (1999) - shortstory
• The Eyes of God - (2008) - shortstory
• Flesh Made Word - (1994) - shortstory
• Nimbus - (1994) - shortstory
• Mayfly - (2005) - shortstory by Peter Watts and Derryl Murphy
• Ambassador - (2001) - shortstory by Peter Watts
• Hillcrest v. Velikovsky - (2008) - shortstory
• Repeating the Past - (2007) - shortstory
• A Niche - (1990) - novelette
• Outtro: En Route to Dystopia with the Angry Optimist - (2013) - essay

FRACTURE LINES PERMEATE THE CENTRAL UNITED STATES. Some comprise the New Madrid fault, the most dangerous earthquake zone in the world. Other fracture lines are social -- economic, religious, racial, and ethnic.

What happens when they all crack at once?

Caught in the disaster as cities burn and bridges tumble, young Jason Adams finds himself adrift on the Mississippi with African-American engineer Nick Ruford. A modern-day Huck and Jim, they spin helplessly down the river and into the widening faults in American society, encountering violence and hope, compassion and despair, and the primal wilderness that threatens to engulf not only them, but all they love...

A bizarre breed of planet-hopping humans sell their sexless, neutered bodies. Far beneath the Earth, a man lives out the rest of his years in a life-sustaining coffin in a world where not dying is the ultimate punishment. These are two of the short stories in this science fiction collection.

Table of Contents:

• The Star Pit - (1967)
• Dog in a Fisherman's Net - (1971)
• Corona - (1967)
• Aye, and Gomorrah... - (1967)
• Driftglass - (1967)
• We, in Some Strange Power's Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line - (1968)
• Cage of Brass - (1968)
• High Weir - (1968)
• Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones - (1968)
• Night and the Loves of Joe Dicostanzo - (1970)

There is a fine line between transformation and ruin....

Twenty-four-year-old Reeve Calder has spent his life on a high-tech space station, watching as terraforming gradually fails on his home planet of Lithia--a failure that has doomed the colonists stranded there to short, brutish lives. Reeve's dream has always been to rebuild Lithia. But when a mysterious explosion destroys the station, forcing Reeve to crash-land on Lithia's blood-hued soil, he soon learns that the reality of saving a dying planet is quite different from what he imagined. For Gabriel Bonhert, former captain of the space station, has set in motion a world cataclysm, using a fatal probe that will travel down the fiery pathway of a deep mantle plume.

Now, to save the homeland he has never known, Reeve is caught in a race against time to reach Bonhert's base in the Rift Valley, a remote volcanic gateway to the hidden heart of Lithia. His staunchest ally may be a feral girl who alone seems enthralled by what Lithia is becoming, and whose enigmatic past holds the key to startling possibilities. As the old Lithia struggles to be reborn in a tide of toxic red flora creeping across the oxygen-starved planet, Reeve forges onward, coming into conflict with savage enclaves of colonists, a doomsday genemorphing cult, and a mysterious alien race with its own intentions for the planet--intentions that may include humanity's slavery or their terrible transformation....

When nuclear war breaks out and the nations of the Earth are destroyed, a group of US astronauts are marooned on the lunar surface. Using the "torsion field generator", a WWII Nazi Wunderwaffe previously known as the Bell, they hope to find an alternate Earth that did not suffer nuclear armageddon. But once they do discover one, how will they return home? They have a single Lunar Module, which can carry only four astronauts into lunar orbit...

With his friends and family dead and his father's regiment destroyed, Grayson Death Carlyle, a MechWarrior, must learn to fight for justice in a world turned hostile.

The EASS Galileo disappeared decades ago while investigating an unidentified object, code-named Spindrift. Now the Galileo's shuttle has returned carrying three surviving expedition members, who still appear to be the same age they were when they departed. They report that they have, indeed, made contact with an extraterrestrial race-and become enmeshed in a conflict that brought them face to face with the most apocalyptic force in the galaxy.

The nuclear cataclysm that maimed America altered the rules of existence. The new reality guarantees a grim battle for survival, but the higher human instinct to exist in peace and good will lives on. Legends endure and Ryan Cawdor is a warrior of his time. When the good fight needs to be won, Ryan and his band take a stand.

In the nuke-altered region of the Great Lakes, Ryan and his group face the spectrum--from the idyllic to the horrific--of a world reborn. Close to enclaves of peace and sanctuary, Deathlands' most distorted spawn of humanity, cannibals, spread terror. Against the battered shoreline of Lake Michigan, an encounter with an old friend leads to a battle to save Milwaukee from a force of deadly mutant interlopers--and to liberate one of their own.

The Maritime Unit had landed in paradise. After a terrifying 10-year transit from Solar System aboard the Ashanti, the small band of oceanographers and marine scientists were finally settled. Perched on a reef five hundred kilometers out from shore, they were about to embark on the first exploration of Donovan's seas. For the 22 adults and nine children, everything is new, exciting, and filled with wonder as they discover dazzling sea creatures, stunning plant life, and fascinating organisms.

But Donovan is never what it seems; the changes in the children were innocuous - oddities of behavior normal to kids who'd found themselves in a new world. Even then it was too late. An alien intelligence, with its own agenda, now possesses the children, and it will use them in a most insidious way: as the perfect weapons.

How can you fight back when the enemy is smarter than you are, and wears the face of your own child?

Welcome to Donovan.

The Axiom Diamond is a mythical relic, with the power to show its bearer any truth they desire. Men have sought for it across many continents for centuries, but in vain. When trainee sorceress Aimee de Laurent's first ever portal-casting goes awry, she and her mentor are thrown into the race to find the gem, on the skyship Elysium. Opposing them are the infamous magic-wielding knights of the Eternal Order and their ruthless commander, Lord Azrael, who will destroy everything in their path...

A murderous plot aboard a city-sized flying ship must be averted before a crazed cult sends a million people to their deaths.

When portal-mage Harkon Bright and his apprentice are asked to help select a new captain for the immense skyship Iseult, they quickly find themselves embroiled in its Machiavellian officer's court. Meanwhile, their new recruit, Elias, struggles to adapt to his unexpected gift of life while suffering dark dreams of an ancient terror.

As the skies darken and storm-clouds gather on the Dragon Road, the crew of the Elysium come face to face with deadly intrigues, plots from beyond death, and a terrible darkness that lurks in the heart of a thousand-year storm.

From Pirate to Emperor... - Young Brandon Arkad has been brought by war and disaster to a duty he never expected: Pananch of the Thousand Suns, Emperor of the human worlds beyond the Rift. But his Empire is in shambles, as the implacable Jerrod Eusabian and his Rifter allies continue to pillage whole planets, and the Emerald Throne is out of reach on occupied Arthelion. The surviving nobility of the Panarchy have gathered aboard Ares, the headquarters of the Panarchic Fleet. Now Brandon must grasp the power given him in the moment of his father's death, and wield it to wrest his empire from the hands of the usurper. But he must win the faith of his people before he can hope to win a war, and that will not be easy. For there is a traitor at the heart of the Panarchy, thwarting Brandon's every move with poisonous rumor and murderous plots - a traitor at the center of Brandon's councils, close enough to be invisible - a traitor who will stop at nothing to destroy the Arkad dynasty.

Kate Beacham had had a bad day. After almost being assaulted in an alley by three masked bigots, she arrived home to find her beloved stallion lying dead in her driveway with a note reading YoU'Re nExt. Too tough a cookie to crumble, Kate got out her shotgun and loaded it. Then she saw the book on her nightstand -- a guide book to a place she had never heard of: Glenraven.

When she opened it, words magically appeared: Get out of the house, quick. Still holding the shotgun, she obeyed; and saw riders on horseback gallop from a hole in midair, pursued by a nightmarish flying thing like a cross between a dragon and a shark. Good thing she had the shotgun, or there would have been no hope for Kate, the riders, and both their worlds.Once before a woman from our world had saved the realm of Glenraven. Now another must do it again -- or her own world will be forfeit, too....

In a galactic culture that extends from quasi-Utopian worlds like New Alexandria to vermin-infested slums like Old Earth, starship pilots have become the great romantic heroes of the day. When Star-Pilot Grainger is rescued from a shipwreck, he finds himself pressed into reluctant service to fly the Hooded Swan, the prototype of a new kind of interstellar ship. He's also picked up an alien parasite that's determined to share his brain. Under these dire circumstances, can Grainger possibly stay out of trouble? Not a chance!

Hooded Swan, Book One.

In the frozen northlands of the embattled realm of Midkemia, fate can form strange alliances.

It is nine long, bloody years into the ongoing Riftwar that is tearing Midkemia asunder. Having survived a disastrous encounter with their sworn enemy, the Tsurani, Dennis Hartraft's cold, hungry, and exhausted Marauders arrive at a frontier garrison-at the same time as a Tsurani patrol. But a more devastating threat resides within the stronghold: moredhel, a migrating horde of dark elves so deadly and vicious that the only hope for survival is if bitter enemies band together and fight as one.

Now two hostile groups must make their way to freedom, facing a common foe, braving the merciless elements, and haunted by the voice of conscience demanding, "what is more important, a man's life . . . or his honor?"

In Midkemia, there are no easy roads . . .

For twenty years the mercenaries Durine, Kethol, and Pirojil have fought other people's battles. Having already defeated the Tsurani, the Bugs, and the goblins, it seems there are no more enemies for them to vanquish-even as the Riftwar rages on in the west. What lies ahead for the able trio are a few welcomed months of restful garrison duty.

When ordered to accompany the promiscuous Lady Mondegreen, her aging husband, and her current lover to a summit in the city of LaMut, the Three Swords willingly comply, expecting an uncomplicated and undemanding assignment. But nothing is straightforward in this land of violence and treachery. And when the fury of a winter's storm traps them inside a castle teeming with ambitious, plotting lords and ladies, the mercenaries suddenly find themselves with a series of cold-blooded murders to solve . . . and the political future of Midkemia resting in their hands.

Jimmy the Hand, boy thief of Krondor, lived in the shadows of the city. The sewers were his byways and a flea-ridden, rat-infested cellar his home. Although gifted beyond his peers, he was still but a nimble street urchin, a pickpocket with potential. Until the day he met Prince Arutha.

Aiding the Prince in his rescue of Princess Anita from imprisonment by Duke Guy du Bas-Tyra, Jimmy runs afoul of Black Guy's secret police. Given the choice of disappearing on his own or in a weighted barrel at the bottom of Krondor's harbor, Jimmy flees the only home he's ever known, venturing south to the relatively safe haven of Land's End. Suspecting that the rural villagers have never encountered a lad with his talent and nose for finding wealth-other people's wealth-he's fairly optimistic about his broadening horizons. But Jimmy is completely unprepared for what greets him.

For Land's End is home to others who tread the crooked path, and more, to a much darker secret: a dangerous presence unknown even to the local thieves and smugglers. And Jimmy's youthful bravado and courage will plunge him deep into the maw of chaos and even-if he isn't careful-death.

In Monument 14: Savage Drift, the stunningly fierce conclusion to the Monument 14 trilogy, author Emmy Laybourne ups the stakes even higher for a group of kids who have continually survived the unthinkable. Can they do so one last time?

It's over.
Dean, Alex, and the other survivors of the Monument 14 have escaped the disaster zone and made it to the safety of a Canadian refugee camp. Some of the kids have been reunited with their families, and everyone is making tentative plans for the future. And then, Niko learns that his lost love, Josie, has survived!

Or is it?
For Josie, separated from the group and presumed dead, life has gone from bad to worse. Trapped in a terrible prison camp with other exposed O's and traumatized by her experiences, she has given up all hope of rescue. Meanwhile, scared by the government's unusual interest in her pregnancy, Astrid--along with her two protectors, Dean and Jake--joins Niko on his desperate quest to be reunited with Josie.

White consumes the New Hampshire landscape, as US troops close like a platoon of ghosts on an armed cult, following a spate of unnaturally severe blizzards. Screams are carried on the frosty winds, but as the troops break in they find the house deserted. A gunfight with no victims.

The Fourth Doctor, hoping to give Leela a taste of life among the tribes of Native America, finds he has fractionally misjudged his coordinates, and they too are trapped in the frozen wastes, for he has strangely lost his homing affinity with the TARDIS. In the nearby small town of Winnipesaukee, a little girl called Amber Mailloux, distressed by the disappearance of her father, frustrated with her mother's roaming, unsettled life, feels almost at one with the heartless, lonely raging of the storm. But none of them know that the snow, the ice is not just a backdrop, but the real enemy. At the heart of the drift is a living presence, glorying in the cold, inhuman structures of the ice. And it's hungry...

They have gathered now on Damien and are about to witness the last rising of a manmade nova. They are 16 humans in a distant world about to be enveloped by an eruption of violence--horror and murder oddly complemented by a bizarre unforgiving love. But justice is not all that's about to be found. Judgment is coming and the 16 unsuspecting ones are on the threshold of the murdered star.

Locus Award winning and Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1985. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection (1986), edited by Gardner Dozois and Best SF of the Year #15 (1986), edited by Terry Carr. It is included in the collection The Starry Rift (1986).

Table of Contents:

• In the Great Central Library of Deneb University - (1986)
• The Only Neat Thing to Do - (1985)
• Good Night, Sweethearts - (1986)
• Collision - (1986)

The Undivided are divided.

The psychic twins, Ronan and Darragh, have been separated by the traitor Druid, Amergin, who has kidnapped Ronan and thrown him through a rift into another reality.

Now time is running out for Darragh. If Ronan isn't found soon, they will both die. But his twin brother is lost in a fae reality where Druids are legend, and there is no magic. Somehow, before the Autumn Equinox, they must find one young man in a world of six billion people...

Meanwhile, Ren Kavanaugh has no notion of where he comes from. He is plagued by strange injuries that appear from nowhere and everyone is convinced he is deliberately harming himself for attention. Then he meets the enticing and mysterious Trasa, and before he can figure out how it happened, he is in serious trouble - arrested for arson and possibly murder.

Rescue will come from a completely unexpected direction. Ren is about to discover more about his origins than he bargained for, meet the twin brother he never knew he had, and discover nobody is what they seem, especially his new friend, the half-faerie, half-human Trasa... Amergin's daughter.

Time is running out for Rónán and his psychically-linked twin brother, Darragh. In two weeks, at the Autumn Solstice in their own reality, the Queen of the Faerie will transfer the Undivided power to the new-found heirs and the older twins will die.

But Darragh is trapped in 2001 Dublin and Rónán in a reality where the Undivided are not Druids, but Shinto warriors. The twins need to get home before the transfer takes place - not only to save their own lives, but to break the curse on Trása, who is destined to remain trapped by Marcroy Tarth's spell, and to rescue Hayley from the Faerie Lord's seductive embrace.

With Darragh caught in a reality without magic, and Ronan stranded in one with plenty of magic but no idea how to use it, the brothers must prove that even across realities, they truly are the Undivided.

It's been several years since the Druid Prince, Ren of the Undivided, and his half-Faerie companion, Trása, stumbled into to the reality where the Faerie are all to be eradicated by the Matráchái. With the help of the Pete and Logan Doherty, the unsuspecting human twins stranded with them, Ren must find a way back to our reality to save his twin brother, Darragh, from a fate worse than death. Not even the additional help of a dispossessed Merlin, a loyal pixie or a ninja leprechaun is much use in a world without magic. Not when you're wanted by the police and helping your brother involves busting him out of the toughest prison in Europe. To make matters worse, the Matráchái have their own plans that threaten every magical race in existence.

Only the Undivided hold the key to stopping them, and even the Faerie Brethren have turned to Ren for help. Ren will have to risk accessing the memories of long dead, Matráchái, which might send him mad, long before he learns anything useful. And under no circumstances, can he allow Brydie, trapped by the Djinn in a stolen gem, to be released to fulfill the prophesy he has seen. But the cost may prove too high, because Ren's nightmares have returned and the closer he comes to saving Darragh and stopping the Matráchái, the more likely the nightmare, that has haunted him since childhood - the nightmare where he murders two innocent children - will come to pass.

A huge international corporation has developed a facility along the Juan de Fuca Ridge at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to exploit geothermal power. They send a bio-engineered crew--people who have been altered to withstand the pressure and breathe the seawater--down to live and work in this weird, fertile undersea darkness.

Unfortunately the only people suitable for long-term employment in these experimental power stations are crazy, some of them in unpleasant ways. How many of them can survive, or will be allowed to survive, while worldwide disaster approaches from below?

This is the way the world ends:

A nuclear strike on a deep sea vent. The target was an ancient microbe-voracious enough to drive the whole biosphere to extinction-and a handful of amphibious humans called rifters who'd inadvertently released it from three billion years of solitary confinement.

The resulting tsunami killed millions. It's not as through there was a choice: saving the world excuses almost any degree of collateral damage.

Unless, of course, you miss the target.

Now North America's west coast lies in ruins. Millions of refugees rally around a mythical figure mysteriously risen from the deep sea. A world already wobbling towards collapse barely notices the spread of one more blight along its shores. And buried in the seething fast-forward jungle that use to be called Internet, something vast and inhuman reaches out to a woman with empty white eyes and machinery in her chest. A woman driven by rage, and incubating Armageddon.

Her name is Lenie Clarke. She's a rifter. She's not nearly as dead as everyone thinks.

And the whole damn world is collateral damage as far as she's concerned....

Starfish lit the fuse. Maelstrom was the explosion. But five years into the aftermath, things aren't quite so simple as they once seemed...

Lenie Clarke-rifter, avenger, amphibious deep-sea cyborg-has destroyed the world. Once exploited for her psychological addiction to dangerous environments, she emerged in the wake of a nuclear blast to serve up vendetta from the ocean floor. The horror she unleashed-an ancient, apocalyptic microbe called ßehemoth- has been free in the world for half a decade now, devouring the biosphere from the bottom up. North America lies in ruins beneath the thumb of an omnipotent psychopath. Digital monsters have taken Clarke's name, wreaking havoc throughout the decimated remnants of something that was once called Internet. Governments have fallen across the globe; warlords and suicide cults rise from the ashes, pledging fealty to the Meltdown Madonna. All because five years ago, Lenie Clarke had a score to settle.

But she has learned something in the meantime: she destroyed the world for a fallacy.

Now, cowering at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, rifters and the technoindustrial "corpses" who created them hide from a world in its death throes. But they cannot hide forever: something is tracking them, down amongst the lightless cliffs and trenches of the Midatlantic Ridge. The consequences of past acts reach inexorably towards the very bottom of the world, and Lenie Clarke must finally confront the mess she made.

Redemption doesn't come easy with the blood of a world on your hands. But even after five years in purgatory, Lenie Clarke is still Lenie Clarke. There will be consequences for anyone who gets in her way-and worse ones, perhaps, if she succeeds....

Lenie Clarke-amphibious cyborg, Meltdown Madonna, agent of the Apocalypse-has grown sick to death of her own cowardice.

For five years (since the events recounted in Maelstrom0, she and her bionic brethren (modified to work in the rift valleys of the ocean floor) have hidden in the mountains of the deep Atlantic. The facility they commandeered was more than a secret station on the ocean floor. Atlantis was an exit strategy for the corporate elite, a place where the world's Movers and Shakers had hidden from the doomsday microbe ßehemoth-and from the hordes of the moved and the shaken left behind. For five years "rifters" and "corpses" have lived in a state of uneasy truce, united by fear of the outside world.

But now that world closes in. An unknown enemy hunts them through the crushing darkness of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. ßehemoth- twisted, mutated, more virulent than ever-has found them already. The fragile armistice between the rifters and their one-time masters has exploded into all-out war, and not even the legendary Lenie Clarke can take back the body count.

Billions have died since she loosed ßehemoth upon the world. Billions more are bound to. The whole biosphere came apart at the seams while Lenie Clarke hid at the bottom of the sea and did nothing. But now there is no place left to hide. The consequences of past acts reach inexorably to the very floor of the world, and Lenie Clarke must return to confront the mess she made.

Redemption doesn't come easy with the blood of a world on your hands. But even after five years in pitch-black purgatory, Lenie Clarke is still Lenie Clarke. There will be consequences for anyone who gets in her way-and worse ones, perhaps, if she succeeds...

The fabric of space and time is torn asunder and the Earth becomes a nexus - a stepping stone - to countless alien worlds. 300 years later, humankind struggles against inhuman invaders and dark magic from the Rifts. Alien beings from other dimensions, known as "D-Bees" share our planet, as do monsters and supernatural horrors. Earth has become an alien world unto itself. A place awash by an ever shifting tide of magic, madness and chaos. Magic and technology collide, and treachery and revenge reign in the age old battle between the forces of good and evil. The only problem is telling which is which.

The fabric of space and time is torn asunder and the Earth becomes a nexus - a stepping stone - to countless alien worlds. 300 years later, humankind struggles against inhuman invaders and dark magic from the Rifts. Alien beings from other dimensions, known as "D-Bees" share our planet, as do monsters and supernatural horrors. Earth has become an alien world unto itself. A place awash by an ever shifting tide of magic, madness and chaos.

The Coalition soldiers under the command of Lieutenant Michael Sorenson fight their way back to civilization where they are faced with startling revelations, court-martial and treachery. The lives they have known and the people they trust collide with events and realizations that will strain friendships and test their loyalty to the Coalition States. Hard choices, strange bedfellows, a living enigma, and the hand of evil all play a role...

The Coalition platoon continues to pursue the Army of the New Order in Maryland, as the ANO retools with the aid of demons and mercenaries. Other factors revolve around the platoon, as supernatural elements and independent warriors.

Meanwhile, some of the soldiers under Greg Merrick, including Merrick himself, are beginning to question their motives and beliefs, doubting the role of the Coalition's rigid views.

Adrift in the Stratosphere, aimed at a juvenile audience, has a young protagonists accidentally take off in a professor's experimental Spaceship and they soon find themselves attacked by irrationally hostile Martians with various Rays and a madness-inducing Basilisk radio broadcast; there are subsequent tours of Utopias set on space Islands.

Nell Ingram draws her powers from deep in the earth, and uses them to help Psy-LED, the Psychometric Law Enforcement Division, which solves paranormal crimes. When a local vampire calls to report a dead body on her compound, Nell knows she and her team have to be ready for anything.

But the dead body is just the beginning of a mystery that involves supernaturals of all kinds, including some of the most powerful vampires in the country. As Nell gets closer to the truth, she begins to understand that the perpetrator is tracking her too--and that there is something personal about this crime. Something with roots that go almost as deep as those in Soulwood.

When the ancient warship Wolf of Fenris emerges from the warp, Imperial forces find that it has been overrun by the dreaded Red Corsairs. However, this is no mere raiding party - Huron Blackheart and his entire renegade fleet soon follow, intent on conquering the Gildar Rift and tightening their grip on the sector. Lance batteries and torpedo salvos burn fiery contrails through the void, and only Captain Arrun of the Silver Skulls Space Marine Chapter can halt the renegades' advance. The fate of the Rift will not be decided in the heavens but on the surface of Gildar Secundus below.

Prometheus-nominated Novel

Every 33 years, a rift in space connects the Federation with a mysterious race called the Calligar who live on a planet hundreds of light years away, much too far to travel in a Starship. Captain Kirk and the USS Enterprise are dispatched to transport a Federation delegation of diplomats, scholars and scientists who will travel to Calligar directly during the brief period of time that the rift will be open.

Mr. Spock leads the Federation party as they travel by shuttle through the rift just as a group of the aliens arrive in Federation space. The meetings go smoothly until the Calligar take Spock's party hostage and Kirk discovers that the aliens are keeping a deadly secret. With angry Tellarite and Andorian fleets ready to attack the Calligar, Kirk must save Spock and the others before war breaks out and the rift closes for another 50 years.

Truth and lies...

With Earth's Ancient weapons chair at the center of an international dispute, Dr. Daniel Jackson is sent to Antarctica to sooth diplomatic tensions. Meanwhile, General Jack O'Neill reluctantly takes charge of a radical new weapons chair training program.

But when a natural disaster hits Antarctica, the future of the Ancient outpost – and of Earth itself – is thrown into jeopardy. Yet again, Earth's fate lies in the hands of SG-1, but this time the team are lost and powerless to help.

Trapped within a strange reality, SG-1 encounter old friends and enemies as they struggle to escape and stop the Ancient cataclysm that's threatening to destroy the planet.

Despite good intentions, the Om-ray of Cersi can't resist moving through space using the M-hir dimension. To prevent the disruption of the Agreement and the destruction that it would unleash, the M-hiray, as they now call themselves, agree to leave Cersi forever to establish their own haven within the Trade Pact worlds-only to learn that not everybody wants peace.

Fergus Ferguson, professional finder, always knew his semi-voluntary exile wouldn't last, but he isn't expecting a friend to betray him. One of the galaxy's most dangerous space pirates, Bas Belos, wants him, and what Belos wants, he gets. Belos needs help finding out what happened to his twin sister, who mysteriously disappeared at the edges of space years ago, and he makes Fergus an offer he can't refuse.

Mysterious disappearances and impossible answers are Fergus' specialties. After he reluctantly joins Belos and his crew aboard the pirate ship Sidewider, he discovers that Belos is being tracked by the Alliance. Seeking to stay one step ahead of the Alliance, Fergus and Belos find themselves marooned in the middle of the Gap between spiral arms of our galaxy, dangerously near hostile alien territory, and with an Alliance ship in hot pursuit.

That's just the beginning of the complications for Fergus' newest - and possibly last - job. The puzzle is much bigger than just Belos's lost sister, and the question of his future, retirement or not, depends on his ability to negotiate a path between aliens, criminals, and the most powerful military force he's ever encountered. The future of entire planets hangs in the balance, and it remains to be seen if it's too big for one determined man and his cranky cat.

The sorceress has broken free of her shackles.

Months of imprisonment have forged Gwyn into something new; something dangerous. Eight dead sorceresses whisper in her ear, hungry for blood and vengeance - and after unleashing the red magic to make her escape, she fears she won't be able to stop.

All Gwyn really wants is to go home. But as she soon discovers, escaping the Clockwork City may prove an impossible task. The wizards of the Syndicate wage a silent, bloody war over her fate, and to survive, she must play their deadly game.

As strange storms ravage the city and wizards start turning up dead, Gwyn finds herself in more danger than ever. With enemies on every side, the immortal Scions massing their armies, and the dark power inside her growing stronger, she must make a choice... To save everything she loves, is she willing to become the monster the Syndicate fears?

Among boiling volcanoes under Mira's frozen lands, people like Ig are forced to undergo life-threatening trials that bind chemical elements to the human body. One of Mira's most powerful elementals, Ig serves as an enforcer for Magnate Sorrelo Adriann, but is cursed with flesh binding magic that will kill him at the first sign of disobedience.

When Sorrelo is overthrown, Ig quickly learns he can do far worse than what has been asked of him so far. If he can't escape the flesh binding in time, he will have to kill friend and foe alike to stop his master reclaiming the throne, or sacrifice himself trying.

After defeating the mercenary army that threatened his home, Jakar sets out with Efadora -- the only person left with the power to bind him -- across the Rift. He hunts the cultists who enslaved him, intent on ending their trade in elemental children, but he remembers little beyond that his search begins in the legendary city of Sulian Daw.

Back in Mira, the Foundry's rhidium -- the rare mineral that grants them extraordinary power -- has gone missing and is feared stolen by the rebellious faction that seeks to bring down the Sovereign. Ester, fledgling Smith of the Foundry, is tasked with tracking it down.

If she fails, the Sovereign will rain death upon all those who oppose him, costing thousands of innocent lives.

The RiftWar is done. But a fearsome army of trolls and renegade humans, emboldened by the drug of destruction, has risen in strength from the ashes of defeat. There is one, however, who defies the call to battle...

Prince Arutha--newly returned from battle--is concerned about a rash of unexplained assassinations that plagues his capital city. And so he commissions his most trusted agent, Squire James--formerly the thief known as "Jimmy the Hand"--to discover the source of the deadly epidemic. The answers seem to lie far beneath the streets in the dank depths of Krondor, where a terrible war rages in secret between two rival criminal gangs: those who call themselves "Mockers" and others in the thrall of a mysterious being known as "The Crawler."

But the deeper the Squire delves, the closer he gets to the true nature of the horror that has left untold dead in its wake. And unless James can prevent one last, unthinkable slaying, the nightmare forces of corruption and deceit will destroy his liege and reduce his beloved Krondor to ruins.

The vile sorcerer Sidi plans to strike the kingdom a fatal blow, setting the murderous pirate Bear upon the high seas in pursuit of the vessel that is transporting Midkemia's most holy object; the Tear of the Gods. From this miraculous stone all magic power is believed to flow. And if the Tear becomes the mage's trinket, the future will hold only terror, death and unending night.

For Squire James, Lieutenant William, and the able magician Jazhara, the race is on to rescue the remarkable artifact. For all manner of dark creatures are gathering with one unspeakable purpose: to breed the chaos that will hasten the destruction of Squire James and his brave companions... and bring about the total corruption of the Tear of the Gods.

A fantastic new novella from the master of magic and adventure. Best selling author Raymond E. Feist returns to the city of Krondor and one of his most loved characters, Jimmy the Hand.

The Crawler: a name whispered in fear...

In the crime-ridden back alleys of Krondor a rival gang has sprung up to threaten the Upright Man's Mockers. Does the Crawler control the rival gang? Where does his power come from? And does it threaten the peace of the Kingdom?

James, personal squire to Prince Arutha of Krondor, but in the underworld known as the thief and trickster Jimmy the Hand, must travel to Kesh in disguise. There, working with William, lieutenant of the prince's household guard and son of the magician Pug, and Jazhara, niece to the Keshian lord Hazara-Khan, he must attempt to unmask the mysterious Crawler and rid Krondor of his influence.

To the forest on the shore of the Kingdom of the Isles, the orphan Pug came to study with the master magician Kulgan. But though his courage won him a place at court and the heart of a lovely Princess, he was ill at ease with the normal ways of wizardry. Yet Pug's strange sort of magic would one day change forever the fates of two worlds. For dark beings from another world had opened a rift in the fabric of spacetime to being again the age-old battle between the forces of Order and Chaos.

He held the fate of two worlds in his hands...

Once he was an orphan called Pug, apprenticed to a sorcerer of the enchanted land of Midkemia.. Then he was captured and enslaved by the Tsurani, a strange, warlike race of invaders from another world.

There, in the exotic Empire of Kelewan, he earned a new name--Milamber. He learned to tame the unnimagined powers that lay withing him. And he took his place in an ancient struggle against an evil Enemy older than time itself.

A poisoned bolt has struck down the Princess Anita on the day of her wedding to Prince Arutha of Krondor.

To save his beloved, Arutha sets out in search of the mytics herb called Silverthorn that only grows in the dark and forbidding land of the Spellweavers.

Accompanied by a mercenary, a minstrel, and a clever young thief, he wil confront an ancient evil and do battle with the dark powers that threaten the enchanted realm of Midkemia.

An evil wind blows through Midkemia. Dark legions have risen up to crush the Kingdom of the Isles and enslave it to dire magics. The final battle between Order and Chaos is abotu to begin in the ruins of the city called Sethanon.

Now Pug, the master magician sometimes known as Milamber, must undertake an awesome and perilous quest to the dawn of time to grapple with an ancient and terrible Enemy for the fate of a thousand worlds.

Princess Adele struggles with a life of marriage and obligation as her Equatorian Empire and their American Republic allies stand on the brink of war against the vampire clans of the north. However, the alliance's horrific strategy for total victory drives Adele to abandon her duty and embark on a desperate quest to keep her nation from staining its hands with genocide. Reunited with her great love, the mysterious adventurer known to the world as the Greyfriar, Adele is pursued by her own people as well as her vengeful husband, senator Clark. With the human alliance in disarrray, Prince Cesare, lord of the British vampire clan, seizes the initiative and strikes at the very heart of Equatoria.

As Adele labors to bring order to her world, she learns more about the strange powers she exhibited in the north. Her teacher, Mamoru, leads a secret cabal of geomancers who believe Adele is the one who can touch the vast power of the Earth that surges through ley lines and wells up at the rifts where the lines meet. These energies are the key to defeating the enemy of mankind, and if Princess Adele could ever bring this power under her command, she could be death to vampires. But such a victory will also cost the life of Adele's beloved Greyfriar.

The Rift Walkeris the second book in a trilogy of high adventure and alternative history. Combining rousing pulp action with steampunk style, the Vampire Empire series brings epic politcal themes to life within a story of heartbreaking romance, sacrifice, and heroism.

In this second volume, Karan, a young Sensitive carrying the blood of all three Worlds, comes into possession of the Mirror of Aachen, which holds the power to heal--or destroy--World relations. But as war rages, Tensor, the leader of the Aachim people, steals the mirror and flees with the young chronicler, Lilan, leaving all to wonder how they plan to use this magic.

Hugo- and Nebula-nominated Novella

For generations Prosper Station has thrived under the guidance of its Honoured Ancestress: born of a human womb, the station's artificial intelligence has offered guidance and protection to its human relatives.

But war has come to the Dai Viet Empire. Prosper's brightest minds have been called away to defend the Emperor; and a flood of disorientated refugees strain the station's resources. As deprivations cause the station's ordinary life to unravel, uncovering old grudges and tearing apart the decimated family, Station Mistress Quyen and the Honoured Ancestress struggle to keep their relatives united and safe. What Quyen does not know is that the Honoured Ancestress herself is faltering, her mind eaten away by a disease that seems to have no cure; and that the future of the station itself might hang in the balance...