Search Worlds Without End

Beautifully crafted, unfailingly strange, and always moving, Susan Palwick's stories shift effortlessly between fantasy and science fiction, magical realism and horror. Here you will encounter aliens, ghosts, and robots, along with a colorful assortment of eccentric and vulnerable humans. You will see souls trapped in lucite, witness the operations of a magical measuring tape, and watch the oldest woman on a generation ship bequeath a precious Terran relic to a young friend. Collecting tales published in markets such as Tor.com, Asimov's, F&SF, and Lightspeed, All Worlds are Real also includes three new pieces exclusive to this volume.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction by Jo Walton
• Windows (2014)
• The Shining Hills (2017)
• Ash (2016)
• Cucumber Gravy (2001)
• Hhasalin (2013)
• Sanctuary (2013)
• City of Enemies
• Lucite (2016)
• Hodge
• Homecoming (2013)
• Weather (2014)
• Hideous Flowerpots (2018)
• Remote Presence (2017)
• Recoveries (2018)
• Wishbone

This novelette originally appeared on Sci Fiction, January 24, 2001, it was reprinted in Lightspeed, January 2011. The story can also be found in the anthology Lightspeed: Year One (2011), edited by John Joseph Adams.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Sturgeon Award nominated short story. It originally appaered in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, November 1986. The story is included in the collection The Fate of Mice (2007).

This novelette originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, November 1987. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifth Annual Collection (1988), edited by Gardner Dozois, The Year's Best Fantasy: First Annual Collection (1988), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, and The Year's Best Fantasy Stories: 14 (1988), edited by Arthur W. Saha. The story is included in the collection The Fate of Mice (2007).

Once in a while, a first novel arrives like a bolt of lightning, commanding attention with an explosion of power, grace, and light. Flying in Place is such a book. As unflinching as The Lovely Bones, as startling as Beloved, it is a work to bear witness--with bravery and compassion--for the experience of millions of readers and their loved ones.

Emma is twelve, a perfectly normal girl, in a perfectly normal home. With a perfectly normal father...who comes into her bedroom every night in the hours before dawn. Emma will do anything to escape. From the visits. From the bodies. From the breathing. Even go walking on the ceiling--which is where Emma meets Ginny, the sister who died before she was born. Ginny, who knows things. Ginny, who can fly....

WFA nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology Starlight 1 (1996), edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden. The story is included in the collection The Fate of Mice (2007).

This short story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, May 2000, and was reprinted in Clarkesworld Magazine, #91 April 2014. The story can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighteenth Annual Collection (2001), edited by Gardner Dozois. It is included in the collection The Fate of Mice (2007).

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

Homecoming, by Susan Palwick, is a dark fantasy novelette about a young girl on the cusp of womanhood who yearns to leave her village and go to sea with her best friend, a boy about her own age, despite natural and supernatural dangers.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Two women who have been friends since they were children--one a recovering alcoholic brought up by parents who believe they're alien abductees, the other an orphan with an eating disorder--contend with a secret that might doom their friendship, in Susan Palwick's Tor.com Original short story, Recoveries.

The full story can be read for free at Tor.com.

This novelette originally appeared in Lightspeed, April 2017.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

The three basic human needs are food, water... and shelter. But in the late 21st century, compassion is a crime. You can get your memories wiped just for trying to help.

Papa Preston Walford's world doesn't allow for coincidences. Accidents. Secrets in the backs of closets. Or the needs of his own daughter.

Meredith Preston has reason to seek shelter. She needs protection from the monsters in her mind, in her history, in her family. And the great storms of a changing climate have made literal shelter imperative.

When a cutting-edge, high-tech house, designed by a genius with a unique connection to Meredith, overcomes its programming to give shelter to a homeless man in a storm, from its closets emerge the revelations of a past too painful to remember.

In the world of Susan Palwick's Shelter, perception is about to meet reality, and reality has mud all over it. The truth won't make you happy, but it may just make you whole.

This short story originally appeared in the collection The Fate of Mice (2007). It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Two (2008), edited by Jonathan Strahan.

This short story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, January 2005. It can also be found in the anthologies Science Fiction: The Very Best of 2005, edtied by Jonathan Strahan, Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2006 Edition, edited by Rich Horton, and Telling Tales: The Clarion West 30th Anniversary Anthology (2013) edited by Ellen Datlow. The story is included in the collection The Fate of Mice (2007).

The fantastic and magical realities humans create and their often terrifying consequences are examined in this unflinching collection of work from a noted science fiction writer. A determined mother attempts to break the fairy tale spell that confines her daughters, a female wolf learns that loving a man can be quite dangerous, and a manipulative politician harvests zombies in these stories that are beautiful and brutal, but maintain a modicum of hope for the future.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (2007) - essay by Paul Di Filippo
• The Fate of Mice - (2005) - shortstory
• Gestella - (2001) - novelette
• The Old World - (2007) - shortstory
• Jo's Hair - (1995) - shortstory
• Going After Bobo - (2000) - novelette
• Beautiful Stuff - (2004) - shortstory
• Elephant - (1986) - shortstory
• Ever After - (1987) - novelette
• Stormdusk - (2007) - shortstory
• Sorrel's Heart - shortstory
• GI Jesus - (1996) - novelette

A university student seeks special accommodations for her new support animal, causing havoc all around her...

Read the full story for free at Tor.com

Praised as "a deeply felt, deeply moving tale . . . chilling and finely tuned" (Publishers Weekly), Susan Palwick's first novel Flying in Place won widespread acclaim for its haunting exploration of a troubled childhood. Now, after a decade, Palwick returns with the powerful tale of a family cast out of an idyllic realm, learning to live in our own troubled world--an exciting and insightful examination of humanity in the spirit of Ursula Le Guin's The Disposessed and Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land.

Lémabantunk, the Glorious City, is a place of peace and plenty. But it is also a land of swift and severe justice. Young Darroti has been accused of the murder of a highborn woman who had chosen the life of a Mendicant, a holy beggar whose blessing brings forgiveness. Now his entire family must share his shame, and his punishment--exile to an unknown world.

Grieving for the life they have left behind, Darroti and his family find themselves in a hostile land--an all-too-familiar American future, a country under attack in a world torn by hatred and war. There, each tries to cope in their own way. Some will surrender to despair. Some will strive to preserve the old ways. Some will be lured by the new world's temptations. And some, sustained by extraordinary love, will find a way to heal the family's grief and give them hope.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, August 2017.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, #96 September 2014. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Second Annual Collection (2015), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Clarkesworld: Year Eight (2016), edited by Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

This short story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, September 2014. It can also be found in the anthology The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015, edited by Joe Hill and John Joseph Adams.