Search Worlds Without End

A grief-struck man finds the truth he needs in a Wild Blue Yonder purchased from a back alley grief counselor. A Kentucky veteran freshly home from Iraq juggles a trailer-park Thanksgiving and zombie apocalypse. A disillusioned pastor and a disgraced security officer in the not-so-distant future face down a domestic terror cell bent on bringing about Armageddon. These are just a few of the stops in Ken Scholes's latest pass through his Imagination Forest.

Blue Yonders, Grateful Pies and Other Fanciful Feasts is a potluck of words gathered together just in time to celebrate 15 years logging stories for fun and profit. So grab your plate and fork, find yourself a place at the table, and get ready to dig in!

Editor's note: Readers of the Kindle Edition of Ken Scholes' Antiphon, third volume in his Psalms of Isaak series, found themselves suddenly flung out of the Named Lands at the beginning of Chapter 16, and into the world of Lisa Desrochers Personal Demons. Somehow, bits had flipped and tables had swapped, and the story of Frannie, Luc and Gabe was substituted into Rudolfo's tent. Alert readers alerted us. Frantic phone calls were made, fiery emails were written. Files were pulled, and intact duplicates were substituted.

And Ken Scholes, being the frighteningly creative writer that he is, decided that the most fun he could have with this strange occurance was to collaborate with Lisa on a scene showing Rudolfo's reaction....

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Return to Ken Scholes' Imagination Forest in this second collection of quirky, off-beat short stories. Diving Mimes, Weeping Czars and Other Unusual Suspects gathers seventeen tales spanning his first published story in 2000 to his most recent in 2009 including two stories set in the world of his Psalms of Isaak series. You'll encounter cynical Santas and explore the dating woes of superheroes. You'll join God and Satan in the bar for a glass of merlot and watch the hyjinx unfold as Reverend Sparkle Jones leads his rag-tag gang of misfits across a post-apocalyptic America in search of the holy grail to stem the tide of an alien invasion. You'll meet the Lady of the Lake in the Oklahoma Dust Bowl and bump into Abe and his backup singers as they do their part to save the world. So settle in for the ride and keep your hands inside the vehicle at all times. Here in the Imagination Forest, you never know exactly who - or what - you'll come across.

Table of Contents

• Introduction - essay by John A. Pitts
• A Weeping Czar Beholds the Fallen Moon [The Psalms of Isaak] (2009) - novelette
• The Night the Stars Sang Out My Name (2008) - short story
• The God-Voices of Settler's Rest (2008) - short story
• The Music of the Spheres (2008) - short fiction
• Four Clowns of the Apocalypse and the Mecca of Mirth - short fiction
• The Boy Who Could Bend and Fall (2009) - short fiction
• The Second Gift Given [The Psalms of Isaak] (2009) - short story
• Invisible Empire of Ascending Light (2008) - short story
• There Once Was a Girl from Nantucket (A Fortean Love Story) (2006) - short fiction by John A. Pitts and Ken Scholes
• The Taking Night (2000) - short story
• On the Settling of Ancient Scores (2006) - short fiction
• In Time of Despair and Great Darkness (2009) - short story
• Of Missing Kings and Backward Dreams and the Honoring of Lies - short fiction
• Grief-Stepping to the Widower's Waltz (2010) - short fiction
• Love in the Time of Car Alarms (2009) - short fiction
• What Child Is This I Ask the Midnight Clear - short fiction
• Grail-Diving in Shangrilla with the World's Last Mime (2009) - novelette
• Afterword: A Return to the Imagination Forest (2010) - essay

This short story originally appeared in Aeon Six, March 2006, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, August 2017. The story is included in the collection Long Walks, Last Flights & Other Strange Journeys (2008),

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Do you believe in Santa? And in his terrible swift sword?

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

A humorous short story written for Jay Lake's birthday in 2007. It was published by Tor.com several days after Lake passed away on June 1st 2014.

Read the full story on Tor.com.

With these 17 tales, Ken Scholes invites you to his Imagination Forest. Youll find a toy bear of Little Brain tasked with a Very Long Walk and a mysterious metal man with the power to bring down a city and the heart to weep for it. Follow Meriwether Lewis west, seeking the source of a mysterious scrap of currency from the future. Laugh and cry as Andro Giantslayer recounts the highlights of his dungeon-crawling, dragon-slaying and diaper-changing career with Luendyl the Fierce and Fair. Learn exactly how Cain found himself a wife, see what superheroes get up to in their sunset years, and watch Hodgson and Houdini as they traverse the landscape of Hell in search of Michelangelos Crystalline Ear. And along the way, keep your eyes open. Youll meet alien babies, messianic Santas, typing chimps and maybe, if you look carefully, youll find some off-brand love and a little bit of hope in Drum Farrellys supply room. Buckle up. Hang on. A ride in the Imagination Forest is bound to be a strange journey.

This story is available in the collections Two Stories (2011) by Jay Lake and Ken Scholes as well as the collection The Last Plain to Heaven (2015).

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

When an ex-clown tries to go into the insurance business, he gets into monkey business instead.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

This short story originally appeared in Realms of Fantasy, August 2006, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, April 2016. It is included in the collection Long Walks, Last Flights & Other Strange Journeys (2008).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, #14 November 2007. It can also be found in the anthology Realms 2: The Second Year of Clarkesworld Magazine (2010), edited by Sean Wallace and Nick Mamatas. The story is included in the collection Long Walks, Last Flights & Other Strange Journeys (2008).

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

This short story originally appeared in Realms of Fantasy, April 2008. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Three (2009), edited by Jonathan Strahan. The story is included in the collection Long Walks, Last Flights & Other Strange Journeys (2008).

This story is available in the collections Two Stories (2011) by Jay Lake and Ken Scholes as well as the collection The Last Plain to Heaven (2015). It was anthologized in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Eighth Annual Collection (2011), edited by Garnder Dozois

Read the fulll story for free at Tor.com.

Charlie is dealing with complicated grief, and even his therabot is out of ideas. But the back-alley grief counsellors might have something to help: it looks like blue asparagus, and it's called Wild Blue Yonder.

Contains the short stories The Starship Mechanic and Looking for the Truth in a Wild Blue Yonder. They can be read for free at Tor.com here and here.

After untold ages of futurity, the world is old. Regret is endless. Deceit is ubiquitous. And for the Weeping Czar, love is new.

Ken Scholes is the author of the five-book Psalms of Isaak sequence, comprising Lamentation, Canticle, the forthcoming Antiphon, and two more in progress. "A Weeping Czar Beholds the Fallen Moon" is set in the same world, about a thousand years before the events of Lamentation.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

This story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, February 2009. It can also be found in the anthology Clarkesworld: Year Three (2013). The story is included in the collection Diving Mimes, Weeping Czars and Other Unusual Suspects (2010).

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

An ancient weapon has completely destroyed the city of Windwir. From many miles away, Rudolfo, Lord of the Nine Forest Houses, sees the horrifying column of smoke rising. He knows that war is coming to the Named Lands.

Nearer to the Devastation, a young apprentice is the only survivor of the city -- he sat waiting for his father outside the walls, and was transformed as he watched everyone he knew die in an instant.

Soon all the Kingdoms of the Named Lands will be at each others' throats, as alliances are challenged and hidden plots are uncovered.

This remarkable first novel from an award-winning short fiction writer will take readers away to a new world -- an Earth so far in the distant future that our time is not even a memory; a world where magick is commonplace and great areas of the planet are impassable wastes. But human nature hasn't changed through the ages: War and faith and love still move princes and nations.

Come back to the Named Lands in this compelling sequel to Ken Scholes amazing novel Lamentation.

It is nine months after the end of the previous book. Many noble allies have come to the Ninefold Forest for a Feast in honor of General Rudolfo's first-born child. Jin Li Tam, his wife and mother of his heir, lies in childbed.

As the feast begins, the doors of the hall fly open and invisible assassins begin attacking. All of Rudolfo's noble guests are slain, including Hanric, the Marsh Queen's Shadow. And on the Keeper's Gate, which guards the Named Lands from the Churning Waste, a strange figure appears, with a message for Petronus, the Hidden Pope.

Thus begins the second movement of The Psalms of Isaak, Canticle.

Nothing is as it seems to be.

The ancient past is not dead. The hand of the Wizard Kings still reaches out to challenge the Androfrancine Order, to control the magick and technology that they sought to understand and claim for their own.

Nebios, the boy who watched the destruction of the city of Windwir, now runs the vast deserts of the world, far from his beloved Marsh Queen. He is being hunted by strange women warriors, while his dreams are invaded by warnings from his dead father.

Jin Li Tam, queen of the Ninefold Forest, guards her son as best she can against both murderous threats, and the usurper queen and her evangelists. They bring a message: Jakob is the child of promise of their Gospel, and the Crimson Empress is on her way.

And in hidden places, the remnants of the Androfrancine order formulate their response to the song pouring out of a silver crescent that was found in the wastes.

Who is the Crimson Empress, and what does her conquest of the Named Lands really mean? Who holds the keys to the Moon Wizard's Tower?

The plots within plots are expanding as the characters seek their way out of the maze of intrigue. The world is expanding as they discover lands beyond their previous carefully controlled knowledge. Hidden truths reveal even deeper truths, and nothing is as it seemed to be.

Ken Scholes completes his five-book epic that began with his acclaimed first novel Lamentation. The battle for control of The Named Lands has captivated readers as they have learned, alongside the characters, the true nature of world called Lasthome.

Now the struggle between the Andro-Francine Order of the Named Lands and the Y'Zirite Empire has reached a terrible turning point. Believing that his son is dead, Rudolfo has pretended to join with the triumphant Y'zirite forces?but his plan is to destroy them all with a poison that is targeted only to the enemy.

In Y'Zir, Rudolfo's wife Jin Li Tam is fighting a war with her own father which will bring that Empire to ruin.

And on the Moon, Neb, revealed as one of the Younger Gods, takes the power of the Last Home Temple for his own.