Search Worlds Without End

This novelette originally appeared in Altair, Issue Four, August 1999. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Seventeenth Annual Collection (2000), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collection Magic Dirt: The Best of Sean Williams (2008).

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, Volume IX (1993), edited by Dave Wolverton, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, May 2015. It is included in the collection Magic Dirt: The Best of Sean Williams (2008).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

It is strange enough that Odo and Eleanor have stumbled upon a sword in a dried-up river outside their village. It is even stranger that Odo is able to remove it from where it's buried. And it's REMARKABLY strange when the sword starts to talk.

Odo and Eleanor have unearthed Biter, a famous fighter from earlier times. By finding Biter, Odo instantly becomes a knight -- a role he is exquisitely unsuited for. Eleanor, however, would make a PERFECT knight -- but she's not the one with the sword.

Finding Biter is only the start -- boy, girl, and sword must soon go on a quest to save their kingdom from threats in both human and dragon form, in this new fantasy triumph from Garth Nix and Sean Williams.

Honour Among Ghosts is a high-action historical mystery set in a small Irish village where there are sorcerers, moralistic ghosts and spell-scribbling scribes. When 12-year-old Penny's working-class father is thrown into jail for a burglary he didn't commit, she is convinced he has been framed. Her best friend Colm, son of the wealthy and prejudiced Magistrate Nightwick (both the sentencer and victim of the robbery), vows to help Penny solve the crime. Enter Mab, a confident and clever magical scribe's apprentice, and Niclas, a young traveller living on the streets, who join forces with Penny and Colm to try to catch the thief before more innocent townspeople are blamed.

In a dystopic world after nuclear war, the American city of Kennedy has walled itself off from the decline of the former USA. Determined to continue as a functioning metropolis, Kennedy strictly patrols its boundaries and struggles to maintain the semblance of a modern city.

Now, 40 years after the end of the war, Kennedy is in crisis. Technologies are failing and replacements and repairs are not forthcoming. It is within this atmosphere of technological and social stagnation that news of a Re-United States of America emerges - a RUSA that wants Kennedy to rejoin. But not everybody in Kennedy agrees with re-assimilation, and a series of political assassinations and data thefts begin.

As the deadline for reunification looms, Phil Roads, the investigator assigned to solve the killings and robberies, is under increasing pressure. Caught between murderous opposing forces, and with dangerous secrets emerging from his past, his own life and career are on the line.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, September 2016.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Private detective Jonah McEwen is wanted for murder. Someone has been killing women who resemble Marylin Blaylock, his former colleague and ex-lover. The latest grisly discovery is right on his doorstep. He is the obvious suspect. The problem? He has been in a coma for three years - a coma he has no memory of entering. And there's worse to come. Using matter transporter technology, or 'd-mat', a serial killer know only as the Twinmaker has been brutally torturing and killing perfect facsimiles of his victims and leaving the originals alive. As legal arguments rage about whether this even constitutes murder, Jonah finds himself in the awkward position of defending his innocence when his own exact copy might actually be guilty.

Set in a time where the lines between human and machine are increasingly blurred, "The Resurrected Man" explores the future of terrorism, law enforcement, and globe-spanning conspiracies. A perfect blend of suspense and science fiction, the novel follows the complexities of Jonah and Marylin's relationship and their quest to find the killer before he strikes again, as well as unravelling the tensions between Jonah and his father - a man who has been dead for three years but who might yet hold the key to everything...

Nominated for the Aurealis Award and winner of the Ditmar Award, "The Resurrected Man" was hailed as a 'tour de force' in Australia, the author's home country, and described as 'compulsively readable' by Locus.

In the forty-third millennium of human history, Imre Bergamasc awakens after two hundred years to the realization that he has been the victim of an elaborate murder plot - a plot that also destroyed the intergalactic transport milieu known as the Continuum. But now that Imre has been reborn, he will stop at nothing to help bring forth the rebirth of the galaxy.

Imre Bergamasc is the First Prime of the Returned Continuum, ruling Earth and the far-flung regions of the galaxy. But dissidents and saboteurs threaten to bring his reign to an end.

Six hundred thousand years after Imre Bergamasc's abdication, the Host rules the supposedly peaceful galaxy. But revolution is fomenting-and Imre's unexpected return may be all it takes to light the final fuse.

In the far future, in the aftermath of a mysterious galactic catastrophe, a false prophet comes face to face with his greatest adversary yet: a man who thinks he's god, and might very well be right. While the battle for Earth rages around them, they face off, one wanting to conquer the world and the other to redeem it, and the victory may well decide the future of the galaxy, and of humanity itself.

In the bubble of space known as the Cogal, seven sentient races co-exist uneasily. Peace is always short lived. Commander Megan Moroney, Intelligence Officer for the New Amran Republic, is delivering an AI of unknown powers to her superiors in HighFleet. Her last port of call is the penal colony on Longmire's Planet.

There, accompanied by the mysterious castaway, John Nine, a rebel cyborg and a powerful young mind-rider, Moroney will come to question everything she holds true. What is the relevence of a war fought three hundred years ago? And where should she place her allegiance, when even what it means to be human is cast into doubt? In the Cogal, the truth is never quite what it seems.

The Prodigal Sun is a re-imagined, re-written version of The Unknown Soldier – with the elements of the failed gaming world Cogal removed, and the characters and storyline set in a new universe. The Unknown Soldier was an Aurealis Best SF Novel nominee and a Ditmar Best Long Fiction nominee.

Morgan Roche, commander in the intelligence arm of the Commonwealth Empires, has been charged with protecting the AI known as The Box on a secret voyage across the galaxy. But en route her ship is ambushed by the Dato Bloc, and she is forced to crash-land on a nearby prison planet.

MAROONED ON SCIACCA'S WORLD:
Battling deadly inmates and treacherous guards, she fights her way through a hostile environment toward her only hope of escape, the mysterious Adoni Cane at her side. A genetically enhanced warrior with a past not even he can fathom, he could be the savior of the human race, or its downfall - but either way, Morgan Roche won't survive without him...

The Prodigal Sun is a re-imagined, re-written version of The Unknown Soldier - with the elements of the failed gaming world Cogal removed, and the characters and storyline set in a new universe.The Unknown Soldier was an Aurealis Best SF Novel nominee and a Ditmar Best Long Fiction nominee.

Morgan Roche is a renegade, fleeing the agents she used to work for in the Commonwealth of Empires. Her quest to understand Adoni Cane has led her to a terrible truth. He is one of a breed of genetically enhanced warriors that once terrorized the galaxy. And there might be more of them, waking up to begin fighting anew.

AN INTERSTELLAR TRAP:
A whole solar system has disappeared, wiped from the universe in an attempt to snare just one super-soldier like Cane. In an attempt to come to grips with her enemy, Morgan Roche and The Box travel willingly into the trap, but find themselves ensnared in ever-thicker tangles of deception and intrigue. Who is The Box, and is what its agenda, really? The answer will rock Roche's world right down to the foundations.

The ruins of Sol System have been empty for thousands of years. A place of death and mystery, it is shunned by all--until now.

DEADLINE TO DESTRUCTION:
Renegade intelligence agent Morgan Roche arrives hot on the heels of the clone warriors--enemies she has been charged by the High Humans to stop before they destroy everything. What she finds--the largest fleet assembled in half a million years, with no central authority, no-one in charge--threatens to stretch her resources beyond their limit.

There, under the light of the star called Sol, Morgan Roche will uncover the final truth about the AI called The Box, about the man called Adoni Cane, and about the High Human called the Crescend. That truth will cost her dearly...

The year is 2438. Humanity has migrated to the stars in discrete waves, driven by evolving technologies and new ways of being human. The far-flung Arc Systems struggle under the yoke of their newest rulers--Exarchs from Sol, whose monopoly on faster-than-light communication gives them absolute control of a growing interstellar empire.

But humans weren't the first to conquer the stars, and the discovery of an alien artifact promising transport between systems threatens to undermine the Exarchs' power. Revolutionary leader Melilah Awad seeks an alliance to unlock Geodesica's secrets with VOIDship pilot Palmer Eogan, a lover she lost to the Dark more than two centuries earlier. What they find could be more dangerous than anyone--human or more than human--could imagine....

Revolution spreads like wildfire though humanity's interstellar empire, sparked by the opening of Geodesica and the destruction of an entire inhabited system. But who was ultimately responsible? And who will pay the price?

Melilah Awad and Palmer Eogan delve deeper into Geodesica's ancient alien labyrinth than anyone has ever dared, hoping to unravel its secrets before the hunter-killers from Earth bring them down. Former Exarch of Bedlam, Isaac Forge Deangelis, finds his grip on sanity slipping as his very reason for existing is ripped from him. While a rebel Exarch and Palmer Horsfall, grieving for her lost sister, form an alliance that might tear humanity's interstellar empire apart....

On an alien world a very long way from home, Peter Alander is going out of his mind.

The Frank Tipler is just one of a thousand survey vessels sent out into the bubble of space surrounding Earth, seeking habitable worlds and signs of advanced life. Its crew has stumbled across artifacts left behind by a benevolent trader species, but the decision to study them is fraught with danger and uncertainty. The Tipler's crew consists of forty flawed electronic copies of human beings, some of them profoundly damaged--and Earth stopped responding to signals over a century ago.

Caught between madness and political machinations, Alander stands on the brink of what might be the greatest discovery humanity has ever made--and a gift that humanity can't afford to accept.

The sole survivors of the human race... and their time is running out.

In the wake of Earth's fall, Peter Alander has just one choice: to use the alien Gifts left behind on his distant colony world to warn other missions of their impending demise, a second wave of alien ships, this time intent on destroying everything in their path. Without the Gifts, humanity would have no hope at all--although no one truly understands them, and it is becoming increasingly certain that the very use of them is what draws the enemy on.

Out of the dark comes help from an entirely unexpected quarter. Peter Alander and his fellow survivors are not the only victims of the terrible Starfish. But what if the cost of that help is too high? What if the price is humanity itself?

On the brink of extinction, a suicide mission is humanity's last hope.

The Gifts of an alien race called the Spinners gave Peter Alander hope for the future of humanity. All the Gifts did, though, was draw down the wrath of the Starfish, another alien race apparently intent on wiping out all forms of competition. Caught between the two, humanity faces the hard decision of evolving into something else entirely simply to survive.

As their new alien allies prepare to leave human space forever, a handful of survivors band together to make one last attempt to communicate with their enemies. A single ship will leap into the very heart of the Starfish fleet, attempting to find reason where none exists...

"The Sith always betray one another.... I'm sure you'll learn that soon enough."

The overthrow of the Republic is complete. The Separatist forces have been smashed, the Jedi Council nearly decimated, and the rest of the Order all but destroyed. Now absolute power rests in the iron fist of Darth Sidious--the cunning Sith lord better known as the former Senator, now Emperor, Palpatine. But more remains to be done. Pockets of resistance in the galaxy must still be defeated and missing Jedi accounted for... and dealt with. These crucial tasks fall to the Emperor's ruthless enforcer, Darth Vader. In turn, the Dark Lord has groomed a lethal apprentice entrusted with a top-secret mission: to comb the galaxy and dispatch the last of his masters' enemies, thereby punctuating the dark side's victory with the Jedi's doom.

Since childhood, Vader's nameless agent has known only the cold, mercenary creed of the Sith. His past is a void; his present, the carrying out of his deadly orders. But his future beckons like a glistening black jewel with the ultimate promise: to stand beside the only father he has ever known, with the galaxy at their feet. It is a destiny he can realize only by rising to the greatest challenge of his discipleship: destroying Emperor Palpatine.

The apprentice's journeys will take him across the far reaches of the galaxy, from the Wookiee homeworld of Kashyyyk to the junkyard planet of Raxus Prime. On these missions, the young Sith acolyte will forge an unlikely alliance with a ruined Jedi Master seeking redemption and wrestle with forbidden feelings for his beautiful comrade, Juno Eclipse. And he will be tested as never before–by shattering revelations that strike at the very heart of all he believes and stir within him long-forgotten hopes of reclaiming his name... and changing his destiny.

As ruthless apprentice to Darth Vader, Starkiller was mercilessly schooled in the ways of the dark side, commanded to exterminate the last of the purged Jedi Order, and groomed for the ultimate Sith power play: assassination of the Emperor. He served without question, killed without remorse, and lost his heart without warning to beautiful Imperial fighter pilot Juno Eclipse, never suspecting that he was just a tool in the schemes of his masters--until it was too late to escape their lethal betrayal.

Juno mourned Starkiller as dead... but now he is back, purged of all memories and programmed to kill. And as fate brings Juno and Starkiller closer to reuniting, with Darth Vader determined not to lose his assassin a second time, they will both have to make a stand. The prize is freedom. The punishment for failing will be eternal enslavement to the dark side of the Force...

As the bloodied and weary galaxy faces battle once more, the Jedi take on the formidable task of bringing the last of the Empire into the light... From the ashes of the New Republic, torn apart by the Yuuzhan Vong forces, the newly formed Galactic Alliance has risen, determined to bring peace to the entire galaxy. But first the Yuuzhan Vong must be contained once and for all. And so Luke Skywalker seeks a world long lost to legend: Zonama Sekot, a sentient planet believed to have repelled an invasion by the Yuuzhan Vong decades before. Deciphering the enigmatic secrets of Zonama Sekot just might turn the relentless tides of war...

The second of a mass-market original trilogy charting the beginning of the galaxy's victory over the dreaded Yuuzhan Vong alien invaders. Under the leadership of Luke Skywalker and a combined Jedi-government council, the newly formed Galatic Federation of Free Alliances is doggedly fighting back--and winning. Luke is on a quest for a legend, in hope of bringing back the ultimate answer to the war. And a mysterious prophet has risen among the Yuuzhan Vong lower castes to turn Yuuzhan Vong culture on its ear. This adventure includes major storylines for favorite characters, both old and new.

The Jedi move one step closer to saving the embattled galaxy-only to confront a formidable wall of resistance....

The harrowing search for Zonama Sekot if finally over for Luke Skywalker, Jacen Solo, and others aboard the Jade Shado. But joy turns to alarm when the living planet sends a defiant message: it refuses to follow them back to a galaxy full of war, exploitation, and misery.

While Luke works feverishly to persuade the elusive planet to reconsider, the Yuuzhan Vong launch a full-scale attack aimed at the heart of the new alliance. Sent to defend a major communicating base, Han and Leia find themselves hopelessly outnumbered.

Reinforcements are just too far away to help before everything is destroyed. So the courageous pair must now fight an unrelenting battle against staggering odds. Whether they actually survive is another matter....

"When I look into you, I see no loyalty.... I sense only tangled allegiances.... Given a choice, I would never trust you."

From across the galaxy they've come: agents of both the Republic and the Sith Empire, an investigating Jedi Padawan, an ex-trooper drummed out of the Republic's elite Blackstar Squad, and a mysterious Mandalorian. An extraordinary auction has drawn them all together--in quest of a prize only one can claim. Each is prepared to do what he must to possess the treasure, whose value may be the wealth of a world itself. None intend to leave empty-handed. All have secrets, desires, and schemes. And nothing could ever unite them as allies--except the truth about the deadly danger of the object they covet. But can Sith and Jedi, Republic and Empire--enemies for millennia--join as one against the certain doom of the galaxy?

When mirror twins Seth and Hadrian Castillo travel to Europe on holidays, they don't expect the end of the world to follow them. Seth's murder, however, puts exactly that into motion.

From opposite sides of death, the Castillo twins grapple with a reality neither of them suspected, although it has been encoded in myths and legends for millennia. The Earth we know is just one of many 'realms', three of which are inhabited by humans during various stages of their lives. And their afterlives.

In the tradition of Philip Pullman and Ursula K. Le Guin and inspired by numerous arcane sources, the "Books of the Cataclysm" begin in the present world but soon propel the reader to a landscape that is simultaneously familiar and fantastic.

In a remote city on the edge of two worlds, where blood has power and water is more precious than freedom, three far-flung friends unite on a quest to save their families.

Sal Hrvati's estranged father has brought more into the world than the woman he loved. Instead of saving her from the Void Beneath, he has summoned an unknown creature a creature with a mission of its own and a past that stretches back to the beginning of the world. The quest to find both of them entangles Sal and his companions in a hunt for magical treasure on the floor of the Divide, a mighty crack in the earth inhabited by creatures that are not remotely human. Desert landscapes and dirigibles feature in a fast-paced fantasy that combines romance, adventure, and humor with an original take on magic.

The Books of the Cataclysm take inspiration from many arcane and mythological sources. In positing that this world is just one of many realms, three of which are inhabited by humans during various stages of their lives, it begins in the present world but soon propels the reader to a landscape that is simultaneously familiar and fantastic.

Ancient enemies stalk ghostly fog forests as legends come to life. The Divide is flooded. Habryn Kail and the Homunculus are missing, presumed dead. Sal and his companions seek the source of the flood in the legendary Hanging Mountains, hoping to head off a crisis that was put in motion a thousand years ago.

As conflict erupts between two long-forgotten civilizations, the outsiders find that allies are hard to come by. Taken captive and separated, they uncover uncomfortable truths about the world and how it relates to the one that came before--our world.

Something dark and deadly is stirring in the heart of the mountains. And the closer it comes to waking, the more certain it seems the Homunculus may not have been the enemy at all.

In a glacial lake at the top of the world salvation and destruction await...

Haunted by a ghost from the future Shilly and her man'kin allies are drawn into the snowbound mountains on a mission to save the world. Yod trapped by the Castillo twins in the Void Beneath may finally be breaking free.

Hard on Shilly's heels are Sal and his father and an uneasy alliance of Sky Wardens Panic and foresters. The stakes are high as ancient forces struggle for ascendancy including the strange and alien glast and a dragon with its own agenda. If the Goddess rises from her Tomb the fate of the Ice Eaters will be sealed and they will kill anyone who tries to get in their way...

The Stone Mages rule the huge deserts of red sand. The vast coastlines are ruled by Sky Wardens. Magic is everywhere but not all have the power to control and direct it. Any child found to have magical ability is sent to the Haunted City to be trained in the Change.

On the coast of the Strand, Sal and his father arrive in the small, apparently-normal town of Fundelry, where the locals are suspicious of newcomers and of anyone who stands out or appears different. Sal and his father are on the run from an unnamed someone... or something. When a local bully attacks Sal, he is rescued by Shilly and her teacher, Lodo.

Lodo is marked with mysterious tattoos and seems to know a lot more about Sal than Sal knows about himself. Sal's father wants to stay but the Sky Wardens will be coming and Sal needs to learn what connection Lodo had with his mother and what fate seems to have been chosen for him before he was even born.

Sal's life has been thrown into turmoil and he is on the run, from more than one pursuer, it appears. He is accompanied by his new-found friend Shilly and he's not entirely sure where he wants to go-but Shilly is. She wants to find her teacher Lodo's old teacher, the Mage Van Haasteren, which means they must head north to the Interior, where Sal's mother was born.

The journey is over rugged, mountainous country on the Old Line and it's dangerous. The Sky Warden Shom Behenna is after them and they must risk all top reach the Divide and get across to the other side, not even knowing if the Stone Mages will help them.

Sal and his friend Shilly have been joined by a third refugee, Skendar, by the time the make their way to the remote island that is the home of the famous, feared Haunted City, home of the Sky Wardens. Sal's great aunt, the Syndic, is also there and she is determined to keep Sal under control, even if she has to imprison him to do it. But there are greater threats even than that.

The ghosts that live behind the ancient glass of the City are restless. No one can say why they are stirred up and no one has any idea what they can do if they act. The golem is determined to make Sal do its bidding and will not stop short of murder to obtain his obedience. It appears that the Weavers have plans as well, yet no one knows, or will admit knowing, if the legendary Weavers even exist or what they are.

This novelette originally appeared on Eidolon: SF Online, December 1997. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifteenth Annual Collection (1998), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collections Troy (Brown, 2006) and Magic Dirt: The Best of Sean Williams (2008).

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, November 2013.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, August 2013.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in the Australian magazine Cosmos: The Science of Everything, December 2012-January 2013, ans was reprinted in Lightspeed, May 2013.

Read the full story for free at Lighstpeed.

This short story originally appeared as an extra in some edition so of the novel Jump (2013). It was reprinted in Lightspeed, May 2014.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

A near-future thriller that fans of the GONE series and Doctor Who will love

Clair is pretty sure the offer in the 'Improvement' meme is just another viral spam, though Libby is determined to give it a try.

But what starts as Libby's dream turns into Clair's nightmare when her friend vanishes.

In her search for answers, Clair seeks out Jesse - a boy whose alternative lifestyle might help to uncover the truth.

What they don't anticipate is intervention from the mysterious contact known only as Q, and being caught up in a conspiracy that will change everything.

M. T. Anderson meets Cory Doctorow in the exciting sequel to Twinmaker, from #1 New York Times bestseller Sean Williams, who also coauthors the Troubletwisters series with Garth Nix.

Clair and Jesse have barely been reunited when the world is plunged into its biggest crisis since the Water Wars. The d-mat network is broken. The world has ground to a halt. People are trapped, injured, dying. It's the end of the world as Clair knows it--and it's partly her fault. Now she's been enlisted to track down her friend Q, the rogue AI who repeatedly saved her life--and who is the key to fixing the system. Targeted by dupes, abandoned by her friends, and caught in a web of lies that strike at the very essence of who she is, Clair quickly finds powerful and dangerous allies. But if she helps them, will she be leading her friend straight into a trap? Caught between pro- and anti-d-mat philosophies, in a world on the brink of all-out war, Clair must decide where she stands--and who she stands with, at the end.

The mind-bending conclusion to the Twinmaker trilogy.

Clair's world has been destroyed - again. The only remaining hope of survival is for her and Q to enter the Yard, a simulation as detailed - and as real - as the home they have lost. But in the Yard there are two Clair Hills. The other Clair is headstrong, impulsive, suspicious - just like Clair herself used to be, and their very existence is causing cracks.

As Clair searches for a solution, a surprising new ally emerges from the ashes. Together they fight their way through the digital and political minefield in the hope of saving Jesse, her friends and the whole of humanity.