Search Worlds Without End

Sturgeon Award winning and Nebula Awared nominated novelette. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 1986. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fourth Annual Collection (1987), edited by Gardner Dozois, Best SF of the Year #16 (1987), edited by Terry Carr, Nebula Awards 22 (1988), edited by George Zebrowski, and The Best from Fantasy & Science Fiction: A 40th Anniversary Anthology (1989), edited by Edward L. Ferman.

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Welcome to the Greenhouse (2011) edited by Gordon Van Gelder. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 17 (2012), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer.

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novella.

When an ambitious young botanist named Nancy Sandford discovers that she is positive for HIV, she scraps plans for a world-class research career and reinvents herself as a mediocre professor in an academic backwater. By doing so she hopes to keep her secret concealed, and to survive until a cure for HIV is found. In her struggle to endure the loneliness and terror of such a life, Sandy involves herself in activities ranging from the botanical to the bizarre; and both sorts come into play when an accident occurs at a power plant near her home, shortly before an alien ship lands on the moon.

The nuclear meltdown shatters Sandy's carefully restricted personal world. Yet its consequences--combined with alien intervention--bring about a startling conclusion to her situation and to the story.

The story originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, February 1989. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Seventh Annual Collection (1990), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Women of Wonder: The Contemporary Years: SF by Women from the 1970s to the 1990s (1995), edited by Pamela Sargent. The novella was later incorporated in the novel The Ragged World (1991).

Pennterra is a beautiful and fertile planet and humanity’s last hope for survival. But Pennterra is already inhabited. After warning other colony ships to stay away, the small advance colony of Quakers has adapted to life on Pennterra. Heeding the empathic warnings of the native hrossa, they have settled in a single valley, sharply limited their population, and continued to use no heavy machinery in their building and farming. But surviving under these conditions has left the Quakers little time to learn more about their native neighbors. Catastrophe or peace—Tanka Wakan, the omnipotent master spirit of Pennterra, will decide.

Table of Contents:

• 1 - Surviving - (1986) - novelette
• 51 - Afterword to "Surviving" - essay
• 59 - Not Without Honor - (1989) - novelette
• 99 - Afterword to "Not Without Honor" - essay

This novella originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October-November 2003. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-First Annual Collection (2004).

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, May 1988. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Sixth Annual Collection (1989), edited by Gardner Dozois and Little People! (1991), edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois.

In the early years of the twenty-first century, Earth teetered on the brink of ecological destruction. Then the alien Hefn came, determined to save the dying Earth -- and to the Hefn, the ends always justified the means. Humans were given nine years to correct their mistakes -- alone, with no recourse to the Hefn's advanced technology. If by then the Earth's ecology had not stabilized, the Hefn would solve the problem for good... by eliminating humans entirely.

But slowly, against their will, some of the Hefn became deeply involved with their human counterparts. And to the handful of people who came to know them, the Hefn made a great difference: as mentors, researchers, rulers... and saviors. But could those few friendships sway the Hefn to help save a despoiled planet -- and the human race?

Hefn aliens arrive on Earth in a multi-faceted exploration of human and alien relationships. By the author of The Ragged World.

The long-awaited conclusion of the Holy Ground trilogy!

Occupation of Earth is now in its 27th year, and relations between humanity and the dictatorial Hefn have never seemed shakier. The aliens mission is to save the planet from its human abusers; and the Baby Ban imposed by mass hypnosis has made Earth a cleaner, wilder, less crowded place. But the Ban has now lasted so long, and provoked such hatred, that when a spark is struck the situation explodes into worldwide riots on one side and retaliatory mindwipings on the other. Years of effort by the eco-spiritual Gaians, who mediate between humans and Hefn, have been destroyed.

While the Gaians regroup and brainstorm frantically in an atmosphere of doubt and danger, one obsessed Hefn and one young woman begin a radical experiment. Pam Pruitt has discovered a growing ability to acquire information by non-rational means. Childhood suffering has empowered her, in a way once understood by hunting and gathering peoples -- an understanding lost with that lost lifeway -- to communicate with mysterious forces through strong dreaming: to function as a shaman on behalf of her community, the human race.

One of three stories inspired by the same painting by Richard Anderson. Anthologized in The Anderson Project.

Give a poet a painting to write a story about and you get "Space Ballet", in which students at the Center for Dream Research struggle to interpret a cryptic precognitive dream, a group effort that may avert a disaster.

Read this story online for free at Tor.com.