Search Worlds Without End

Table of Contents:

• 7 - Introduction (Alternities) - essay by David Gerrold
• 11 - Sand Castles - short story by Jack C. Haldeman, II
• 29 - Before the Great Space-War - short story by Barry N. Malzberg
• 35 - The P.T.A. Meets Che Guevara - short story by Robert Wissner
• 41 - The Legend of Lonnie and the Seven-Ten Split - novelette by E. Michael Blake
• 65 - Webster - short story by Greg Bear
• 79 - The First Few Kinds of Truth - short story by James Sallis
• 84 - A Gross Love Story - short story by Arthur Byron Cover
• 97 - Recourse, Inc. - short story by Vonda N. McIntyre
• 119 - Sign at the End of the Universe - short story by Duane Ackerson
• 120 - No Room for the Wanderer - short story by Lee Saye
• 127 - Hung Like an Elephant - short story by Joseph F. Pumilia and Steven Utley
• 139 - Delta Flight 281 - short story by James Sallis
• 141 - Message of Joy - short story by Arthur Byron Cover
• 150 - Womb, with a View - short story by Steven Utley
• 157 - How Xmas Ghosts Are Made - short story by David R. Bunch
• 161 - Cowboys, Indians - short story by Edward Bryant

Table of Contents:

• 9 - Introduction (Ascents of Wonder) - essay by David Gerrold
• 11 - Tom Sawyer's Sub-Orbital Escapade - short story by Lisa Tuttle and Steven Utley
• 21 - The Light at the End of the Penumbra - novelette by Gregory Feeley
• 51 - Love Among the Symbionts - short story by Michael Reaves
• 67 - A Modern Parable - short story by Christopher J. Crowley
• 75 - Portrait of the Artist as a Young God - short story by Stephen Goldin
• 93 - The Exempt - novelette by George Alec Effinger
• 115 - Scrapings - short story by Kenneth Von Gunden
• 127 - The Perambulator - novelette by Mel Gilden
• 161 - White Hole - short story by Daniel P. Dern
• 171 - Just an Old-Fashioned War Story - short story by Michael G. Coney
• 191 - Contact Myth - novelette by Joseph F. Pumilia
• 227 - Equinoctial - novella by John Varley

After gaining access to the combined knowledge of the galaxy, mankind discovers that there is a price to pay and Yake Singh Brown is enlisted to negotiate the deal.

Kaer's family has volunteered to emigrate through a world-gate to Linnea, a world known for horses as large as houses and dangerously mistrustful natives, in this new young adult novel from David Gerrold. Kaer and his mothers, fathers, siblings, and cousins embark on a training program in the Linnea dome designed to teach them to blend in with their new home's prior inhabitants in an environment free from the risk of discovery. The dome itself should be safe, but in a setting designed to be like Linnea in every conceivable way-from the long, harsh winters to the kacks, wolf-like creatures as tall as men-Kaer finds that even the simplest training exercises can be fraught with risk.

Sturgeon Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 2004. The story can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy for Teens: First Annual Collection (2005), edited by Jane Yolen and Patrick Nielsen Hayden. It is included in the collection The Involuntary Human (2007).

Six hunters and two official guides are going on the trip of their lifetime.

Their destination? Earth as it was a hundred million years ago, long before human dominion, when the great hot-blooded dinosaurs ruled supreme.

Each of the time travelers has a different motive. Some are on the strange safari for pay. Others are taking a psychological and sexual holiday from civilization. There are women who wanted to show themselves the equal of men--and men out to test and prove their manhood.

But whatever their drives and desires, their strengths and weaknesses, the ultimate horror awaits them.

Enemy Mine--The Nebula and Hugo Award winner that inspired the 20th Century Fox motion picture starring Dennis Quaid and Lou Gossett, Jr.

The story of a man, incomplete in himself, taught to be a human by his sworn enemy, an alien being who leaves with the human its most important possession: its future.

Hella is a planet where everything is oversized--especially the ambitions of the colonists.

The trees are mile-high, the dinosaur herds are huge, and the weather is extreme--so extreme, the colonists have to migrate twice a year to escape the blistering heat of summer and the atmosphere-freezing cold of winter.

Kyle is a neuro-atypical young man, emotionally challenged, but with an implant that gives him real-time access to the colony's computer network, making him a very misunderstood savant. When an overburdened starship arrives, he becomes the link between the established colonists and the refugees from a ravaged Earth.

The Hella colony is barely self-sufficient. Can it stand the strain of a thousand new arrivals, bringing with them the same kinds of problems they thought they were fleeing?

Despite the dangers to himself and his family, Kyle is in the middle of everything--in possession of the most dangerous secret of all. Will he be caught in a growing political conspiracy? Will his reawakened emotions overwhelm his rationality? Or will he be able to use his unique ability to prevent disaster?

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the collection With a Finger in My I (1972). There are no other known publications at this time.

Time-quakes are disrupting Los Angeles in the sixties. A soul-scarred Vietnam vet takes a job as a time-raveler, sewing up the loose threads of unraveled lives, but now he's on a case that threatens to unravel his own life. Why are young men are disappearing from West Hollywood? Is there a serial killer preying on the nascent gay community? Or is there some darker force at work? A brilliant and disturbing short novel, gritty and realistic, filled with recognizable details. This crossover mix of science fiction and noir mystery evokes a not-yet-forgotten time and place on the threshold of change.

This novella originally appeared in the anthology Down These Dark Spaceways (2005), edited by Mike Resnick. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Third Annual Collection (2006), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Jobe, Child of Storm, could change the path of a planet's future…

Table of Contents:

• A Sort of Introduction - essay by David Gerrold
• What Makes a Cage, Jamie Knows - shortstory by Scott Bradfield
• I'll Be Waiting for You When the Swimming Pool is Empty - shortstory by James Tiptree, Jr.
• In a Sky of Daemons - novelette by Laurence Yep
• The Last Ghost - shortstory by Stephen Goldin
• Afternoon with a Dead Bus - shortstory by David Gerrold
• Eyes of Onyx - shortstory by Edward Bryant
• The World Where Wishes Worked - shortstory by Stephen Goldin
• Cold, the Fire of the Phoenix - (1971) - shortstory by Leo P. Kelley
• Oasis - shortstory by Pamela Sargent
• Holdholtzer's Box - shortstory by David R. Bunch
• The Five-Dimensional Sugar Cube - shortstory by Roger Deeley
• And Watch the Smog Roll In... - shortstory by Barry Alan Weissman
• Chances Are - shortstory by Alice Laurance
• The Naked and the Unashamed - shortstory by Robert E. Margroff
• My Country, Right or Wrong - shortstory by Andrew J. Offutt
• Side Effect - novelette by Pg Wyal

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by David Gerrold
• Willowisp - shortstory by Joseph F. Pumilia
• Bonus Baby - shortstory by Felix C. Gotschalk
• Telepathos - novelette by Ronald Cain
• In the Crowded Part of Heaven - shortstory by Robert Borski
• The Rubaiyat of Ambrose Bagley - shortstory by W. Macfarlane
• Gato-O - novelette by Don Picard
• Shards of Divinity - shortstory by Michael D. Toman
• On the Street of the Serpents or, The Assassination of Chairman Mao, as Effected by the Author in Seville, Spain, in the Spring of 1992, a Year of No Certain Historicity - novelette by Michael Bishop

Where had the Empire gone? Once it had ruled the galaxy, linking thousands of worlds ina net of commerce, culture, and law. Then... it vanished, leaving only isolated planets sinking into apathy or barbarism. The man called Mass, driven by a dream of rediscovering the Empire, left his brutal homeworld and voyaged among the stars but all he found were tantalizing clues to the lost glory. Then he discovered the space skimmer, one of the miraculous vessels that had made the Empire possible. With it, Mass could find what he sought, could seek allies to help him... but only if he finally understood what the space skimmer was - and what it had done.

This funny and insightful science fiction classic introduces Shoogar, the greatest wizard ever known in his village. His spells can strike terror in the hearts of even his most powerful enemies. But the enemy he faces now is like none he has ever seen before. The stranger has come from nowhere and is ignorant of even the most basic principles of magic. But the stranger has an incredibly powerful magic of his own. There is no room in Shoogar's world for an intruder whose powers match his own, let alone one whose powers might exceed his. So before the blue sun can cross the face of the red sun once more, Shoogar will show this stranger just who is boss.

This short story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September-October 2016. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection (2017), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Welcome to David Gerrold's imagination. In this volume, some of Gerrold's finest writing is brought together in an eclectic mix of poeces that display his many voices in one unique package. From outer space to earthly concerns, from human sensibility to inner darkness, David Gerrold offers us real characters to care for, varied persectives to consider, and exciting worlds to explore.

Table of Contents:

• The Truth About David Gerrold - essay by Spider Robinson
• Author's Rebuttal - essay by David Gerrold
• Interlude #1: Solomon Short - shortfiction
• The Martian Child - (1994) - novelette
• Pickled Mongoose - shortstory
• Interlude #2: Solomon Short - shortfiction
• Blood and Fire - novella
• A Shaggy Dog Story - shortstory
• The Strange Death of Orson Welles - shortstory
• Interlude #3: Solomon Short - shortfiction
• It Needs Salt - novella
• The Satanic Limericks #1 - poem
• ... And Eight Rabid Pigs - (1994) - shortstory
• The Satanic Limericks #2 - poem
• The Baby Cooper Dollar Bill - shortstory
• Interlude #4: Solomon Short - shortfiction
• Digging in Gehenna - (2003) - novelette
• King Kong: Behind the Scenes - (2005) - shortstory
• King Kong: The Unanswered Questions - (2005) - shortstory
• The Kennedy Enterprise - (1992) - shortstory
• Chester - (2005) - novelette
• Interlude #5: Solomon Short - shortfiction
• Chess With a Dragon - novella
• The Green Man - (2000) - shortstory
• The Diamond Sky - (2005) - shortfiction
• Interlude #6: Solomon Short - shortfiction
• Riding Janis - (2003) - shortstory
• Dancer in the Dark - (2004) - novelette
• thirteen o'clock - (2006) - novelette

This classic work of science fiction is widely considered to be the ultimate time-travel novel. When Daniel Eakins inherits a time machine, he soon realizes that he has enormous power to shape the course of history. He can foil terrorists, prevent assassinations, or just make some fast money at the racetrack. And if he doesn't like the results of the change, he can simply go back in time and talk himself out of making it! But Dan soon finds that there are limits to his powers and forces beyond his control.

Locus, Hugo and Nebula Award winning and Sturgeon Award nominated novelette.

What happens when a science fiction writer adopts a little boy who says he's from Mars? Prepare to be enchanted.

David Gerrold's bittersweet memoir of his son's adoption was rejected by six editors before it finally found a home in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Readers fell in love with it immediately. It was the basis for the 2007 movie Martian Child, starring John Cusack and Amanda Peet.

This hilarious and moving account of the poignant adventure of parenthood is the author's personal favorite.

The story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September 1994. It can also be found in the anthology Nebula Awards 30 (1996), edited by Pamela Sargent. It was later expanded to the novel The Martian Child: A Novel About a Single Father Adopting a Son (Based on a True Story) (2003).

"Oh. One more thing: Dennis thinks he's a Martian...."

Soon-to-be parents are instructed to "expect the unexpected." Good advice, it turns out. Especially for the anxious or apprehensive parent who is considering adoption.

How can one know about an adopted child?

All David Gerrold knew for certain was that he wanted to be a parent. As a single gay man he thought adoption would be the most direct route to fatherhood. But he soon found out-to both his joy and dismay-that the emotional route to fatherhood was anything but direct. In fact, it was a roller-coaster ride that changed his life forever.

When he first saw the picture of eight-year-old Dennis beaming up at him from the photograph in the adoption book, David knew this was the boy for him.

But these were the facts: Abandoned as an infant by drug-addicted parents. Documented abuse. Shuffled from one foster home to another. Deficit hyperactivity disorder. Ritalin to control his violent emotional outbursts. For his antisocial behavior: Disipramine. The conclusion from experts: Dennis was "hard to place." A polite bureaucratic euphemism for unadoptable. It was a depressing assessment that David could not-would not-accept.

He needed Dennis. And he believed Dennis needed him. It was that simple.

Until the reality of single fatherhood set in.

A searingly honest, funny, moving, and heartfelt portrait of the joys and perils of parenting, The Martian Child is David Gerrold's valentine to the redemptive value of love,in this case a father's love for his son. A son who thinks he's a Martian.

First Auberson made HARLIE, the world's first Human Analogue Robot Life Input Equivalents.

Harlie enjoyed infinite knowledge. But no wisdom. He had ethics, but, by his own admission, no morals. He wrote poetry. Went on mind-bending jags for the pleasure of it. And worried about his sexual identity.

He also made Auberson more of a human being. Helped him learn how to love, for one thing. But Harlie was a financial loss for the company.

The money people wanted to pull Harlie's plug. And they would, unless he could do something worthwhile.

So Harlie thought. And created God....

Table of Contents:

• All of Them Were Empty - shortstory
• Oracle For a White Rabbit - (1969) - novelette
• Love Story in Three Acts - (1970) - shortstory
• Yarst! - shortstory
• Battle Hum and the Boje - novelette
• With a Finger in My I - (1972) - shortstory
• How We Saved the Human Race - (1972) - novelette
• The Crystal Castle - shortstory
• In the Deadlands - novelette

On a routine mission in deep space, Captain James Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise discover a lost city, drifting in space, more than 20 years from the nearest Human colony.

Its inhabitants are human, but so isolated that they are unable to grasp the existence of other worlds besides their own. Outsiders must be demons. Earth is a place that exists only in legend, in the tales of their ancestors. But time is running out for this forgotten civilization... their world is being pulled straight towards the center of a galactic whirlpool, two orbiting black holes in space.

Can Kirk convince them to trust him, before their world is destroyed forever?

It was a quiet, peaceful city.

It was a city ruled by apes and served by men.

It was a city unaware of an angry band of vicious gorillas anxious to revolt and an insane cadre of mutated humans hungry to kill.

It was a city on the brink of an horrendous destruction that had happened once--and was suddenly, inexorably, happening again.

WHERE THE ADVENTURE BEGAN...

CAPTAIN'S LOG, STARDATE 41254.7: The U.S.S. Enterprise is en route to Cygnus IV -- the edge of the known galaxy. There, we will rendezvous with the ship's new first officer and the other command personnel and proceed with out mission: discover the truth about Farpoint Station, a starbase facility built by the inhabitants of Cygnus IV, a starbase of unparalleled size and complexity... and infinite mystery.

And the success or failure of this, our first mission together, may well determine the course of human exploration across the galaxy for centuries to come...

From the award-winning science fiction author who created it, the behind-the-scenes story of one of Star Trek's most famous episodes.

Aired in 1967 as part of the second season, "The Trouble with Tribbles" was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation--though it lost out to another Star Trek episode, "The City on the Edge of Forever"--and has been a mainstay of best-of and fan-favorite lists ever since.

Here, David Gerrold, the creator of "Tribbles," recalls how this popular episode of Star Trek was made, from conceptualizing the first draft to the final script to shooting on set--and explains the techniques and disciplines of TV writing.

Only an endless space war could have produced the Roger Burlingame. A war that had caused Earth to turn starships into instruments of total destruction. A war that had so drained Earth of resources that the Roger Burlingame was kept in service long after it should have been scrapped.

Now, light years from Earth, the great starship had sighted a quarry almost certain to defeat it in a fair fight. The captain's nerve was gone; the crew were on the verge of mutiny. And command had passed to a fanatical young first officer hungry for his first kill.

War had turned into hell--and this was a voyage of the damned...

Starhunt is an expansion of Yesterday's Children (1972).

The first work in David Gerrold's Star Wolf trilogy, this tale pits the human members of the Star Wolf space vessel against the superhuman Morthan crew. Captain Jonathan Korie, hampered by the loss of most of the human fleet to the Morthans and a nearly disabled ship of his own, faces the Morthan threat driven by the need for survival and the desire for revenge. A classic of military science fiction, the Star Wolf trilogy combines rapid action with powerful studies of military character.

With an introduction by Spider Robinson

The Morthans were physically and mentally superior. Descended from humans, they were now, literally, "more-than" human... and considered the human race to be little better than animals. They would stop at nothing to conquer the remaining human-controlled worlds.

Docked for repairs after a harrowing battle with a Morthan ship, Jonathan Korie and his crew discover they have a Morthan imp aboard — a Morthan weapon so quick they have no chance of catching it, so clever they have no hope of outsmarting it and so deadly they have no choice but to try.

With an introduction by D.C. Fontana

The Morthans were physically and mentally superior. Descended from humans, they were now, literally, "more-than" human ... and considered the human race to be little better than animals. They would stop at nothing to conquer the remaining human-controlled worlds.

Formerly a never-filmed script for Star Trek: The Next Generation, this conclusion to the Star Wolf trilogy finds Executive Officer Korie and the crew of the Star Wolf answering a distress call from a mysteriously lifeless ship. On board the Norway, they discover half-wave, half-particle clusters of golden light — and a dead man. The lights are the energy form of bloodworms, a fatal infestation that feeds off the energy of living bodies, which scientists on the Norway have developed for use in the Alliance's war against the Morthans. Officer Korie's struggle between his conscience and his desire for vengeance will determine not only the safety of the Star Wolf, but the fate of the enemies he's sworn to destroy.

Nebula Award nominated novella. It was originally published in Science Fiction Age, January 1998. The novella was later expanded to a full novel with the same title.

A trip to the Moon? Sounds like the perfect family vacation. Only for 13-year-old Charles "Chigger" Dingillian his family is anything but perfect. His parents fight so much they put the 'dis' into dysfunctional. So when he and his brothers find themselves halfway to the Moon Chigger hits on a plan: if his parents can't find a way to work things out, why not just divorce them? Sound crazy? Until it works.

Charles and his brothers are on their own. But their bid for freedom hits a roadblock when Chigger suspects they are targets of an interstellar manhunt. What do these Big Corporations want? And why?

Their only hope is to jump off the planet...

Having escaped both an Earth on the verge of global collapse and their squabbling parents in a "divorce" at Geosynchronous Station, a newly independent Charles and his two brothers find themselves alone on the Moon with very few prospects. Worse, they are being hunted by ruthless interplanetary corporations who would stop at nothing to come in possession of a memory bar the boys smuggled on board. Can they make it on their own? Who can they trust?

Charles thought the moon would be a new beginning. He will be lucky just to stay alive.

Having divorced his parents and escaped to the moon, Charles and his brothers find themselves faced with most difficult decision. Unable to return to Earth, where do they go? One option is the distant Earth colony Outbeyond. Complicating matters, he and HARLIE-a state of the art intelligence unit-have become valuable commodities in a Free Luna movement. A hijacking aboard ship, however, and suspicion's of HARLIE'S true motives could doom the brothers' bid for freedom forever.

They were once humanity's last hope: a race of genetically engineered killing machines known as the Phaestor and their army of deadly Moktar Dragons. Now, the enemy long vanquished, the Phaestor themselves have become the enemy, seizing control of the galaxy and subjugating all lesser species--including humans--to feed their appetite for terror and blood.

On a small, insignificant planet called Thoska-Roole, a ragtag alliance of humans, androids, and bioforms make a last desperate stand against Phaestor domination. Among their number are two bounty hunters, a mercenary starship captain, and a disgraced reptilian warrior. As the Phaestor begin a new reign of unprecedented terror, these rebels prepare to strike back against their vampire overlords and bring revolution to the stars.

In A Covenant of Justice, the sequel to Gerrold's classic space opera Under the Eye of God, The Phaestor, a genetically altered vampiric race, have set in motion their final plan for the complete enslavement of the galaxy. However, they will not go unopposed, for on numerous worlds, humans, androids, and bioforms have joined forces against their vampiric overlords.

A government of vampires, dragons, and mutated humans display their galactic dominance, and while those entrusted with the wisdom of the galaxy sanction the struggle against the Phaestor, a cunning Vampire war queen, her ambitious suitor, and the fierce and invincible Dragon Lord vie for total domination.

The last hope for the galaxy remains in the hands of rebels from Thoska-Roole: a band of malcontents, outnumbered and pursued, fighting for their freedom, their lives, and the future of the stars.

With the human population ravaged by a series of devastating plagues, the alien Chtorr arrive to begin the final phase of their invasion. Even as many on Earth deny their existence, the giant wormlike carnivores prepare the world for the ultimate violation--the enslavement of humanity for food!

McCarthy was drafted from his college biology studies and became a member of the Special Forces. Then he is given the opportunity to contact the Chtorr, but when a helicopter crash leaves him and his companions stranded in enemy territory, he must decide whether to communicate with the Chtorr--or kill them!

Still reeling from the alien plagues that killed two-thirds of the planet's population, humanity now confronts the most deadly enemy Earth has ever known?the giant man-eating Chtorr. Lieutenant James McCarthy has grown to manhood under the shadow of the terrifying invasion of the Chtorr. As a student, he learned all he could to understand their alien behavior. As a Special Forces commando, he made violent first contact. Now this battle-hardened warrior faces a profound challenge. Captured by an anarchistic band of men and women known as renegades, McCarthy must secretly gather vital information while fighting indoctrination into their cult?which serves and worships the Chtorr.

As tenacious aliens transform the wartorn Earth into a replica of their own terrifying world, a handful of scientists, soldiers, and citizens prepares to fight back.