Search Worlds Without End

Award-winning novelist Samuel R. Delany has written a book for creative writers to place alongside E. M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel and Lajos Egri's Art of Dramatic Writing. Taking up specifics (When do flashbacks work, and when should you avoid them? How do you make characters both vivid and sympathetic?) and generalities (How are novels structured? How do writers establish serious literary reputations today?), Delany also examines the condition of the contemporary creative writer and how it differs from that of the writer in the years of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and the high Modernists. Like a private writing tutorial, About Writing treats each topic with clarity and insight. Here is an indispensable companion for serious writers everywhere.

Wesleyan University Press has made a significant commitment to the publication of the work of Samuel R. Delany, including this recent fiction, now available in paperback. The three long stories collected in Atlantis: three tales -- "Atlantis: Model 1924," "Erik, Gwen, and D. H. Lawrence's Aesthetic of Unrectified Feeling," and "Citre et Trans" -- explore problems of memory, history, and transgression.

Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, and Guest of Honor at the 1995 World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow, Delany was won a broad audience among fans of postmodern fiction with his theoretically sophisticated science fiction and fantasy. The stories of Atlantis: three tales are not SF, yet Locus, the trade publication of the science fiction field, notes that the title story "has an odd, unsettling power not usually associated with mainstream fiction."

A writer whose audience extends across and beyond science fiction, black, gay, postmodern, and academic constituencies, Delany is finally beginning to achieve the broader recognition he deserves.

A father must come to terms with his son's death in the war. In Venice an architecture student commits a crime of passion. A white southern airport loader tries to do a favor for a black northern child. The ordinary stuff of ordinary fiction--but with a difference! These tales take place twenty-five, fifty, a hundred-fifty years from now, when men and women have been given gills to labor under the sea. Huge repair stations patrol the cables carrying power to the ends of the earth. Telepathic and precocious children so passionately yearn to visit distant galaxies that they'll kill to go. Brilliantly crafted, beautifully written, these are Samuel Delany's award-winning stories, like no others before or since.

Table of Contents:

• The Star Pit - (1967) (listen to the 1967 radio version here)
• Corona - (1967) (read here)
• Aye, and Gomorrah... - (1967) (read here)
• Driftglass - (1967) (listen to an audio reading here)
• We, in Some Strange Power's Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line - (1968)
• Cage of Brass - (1968)
• High Weir - (1968) (read here)
• Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones - (1968)
• Omegahelm - (1981)
• Among the Blobs - (1988)
• Tapestry - (2003)
• Prismatica - (1977)
• Ruins - (1968)
• Dog in a Fisherman's Net - (1971)
• Night and the Loves of Joe Dicostanzo - (1970)
• Of Doubts and Dreams - (1981)

Nebula Award winning and Hugo Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in the anthlogy Dangerous Visions (1967), edited by Harlan Ellison. The story has been reprinted many times. It can be found in the anthologies:

• Nebula Award Stories Three (1968), edited by Roger Zelazny
• Modern Science Fiction (1974), edited by Norman Spinrad
• The Road to Science Fiction 3: From Heinlein to Here (1979), edited by James Gunn
• The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume III (1981), edited by Arthur C. Clarke and George W. Proctor
• The World Treasury of Science Fiction (1989), edited David G. Hartwell
• The Best of the Nebulas (1989), edited by Ben Bova
• Off Limits: Tales of Alien Sex (1996), edited by Ellen Datlow
• Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African (2000), edited by Sheree R. Thomas
• Supermen (2002), edited by Gardner Dozois
• The Big Book of Science Fiction (2016), edited by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer

The story can also be found in the collections Driftglass (1971), The Complete Nebula Award-Winning Fiction (1986), Driftglass/Starshards (1993), and Aye, and Gomorrah: And Other Stories (2003).

Read the full story for free at Strange Horizons.

Table of Contents:

• Of Doubts and Dreams - essay
• Prismatica - (1977) - novelette
• Corona - (1967) - shortstory
• Empire Star - (1966) - novel
• Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones - (1968) - novelette
• Omegahelm - (1981) - shortstory
• Ruins - (1968) - shortstory
• We, in Some Strange Power's Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line - (1968) - novella

Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in If, June 1967. The story can also be found in the anthologies:

• World's Best Science Fiction: 1968, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr
• A Day in the Life (1972), edited by Gardner Dozois
• Worlds of If: A Retrospective Anthology (1986), edited by Joseph D. Olander, Martin Harry Greenberg and Frederik Pohl
• Mermaids! (1986), edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois
• Modern Classics of Science Fiction (1991), edited by Gardner Dozois
• Mermaids and Other Mysteries of the Deep (2015), edited by Paula Guran

It is included in the collections Driftglass (1971), Driftglass/Starshards (1993) and Aye, and Gomorrah: And Other Stories (2003).

Table of Contents:

• Of Doubts and Dreams - (1981) - essay
• The Star Pit - (1967) - novella
• Corona - (1967) - short story
• Aye, and Gomorrah... - (1967) - short story
• Driftglass - (1967) - short story
• We, in Some Strange Power's Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line - (1968) - novella
• Cage of Brass - (1968) - short story
• High Weir - (1968) - novelette
• Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones - (1968) - novelette
• Omegahelm - (1981) - short story
• Prismatica - (1977) - novelette
• Ruins - (1968) - short story
• Dog in a Fisherman's Net - (1971) - short story
• Night and the Loves of Joe Dicostanzo - (1970) - short story
• Among the Blobs - (1988) - short story
• Citre et Trans - novelette
• Eric, Gwen, and D. H. Lawrence's Esthetic of Unrectified Feeling - (1991) - novelette

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1968. The story is included in the collections Driftglass (1971), Distant Stars (1981), Driftglass/Starshards (1993) and Aye, and Gomorrah: And Other Stories (2003). It is half or the Tor Double #21: Home is the Hangman/We, in Some Strange Power's Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line (1990, with Roger Zelazny).

Hugo Award nominated novelette. It orignally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1977. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: 23rd Series (1980), edited by Edward L. Ferman, and Unnatural Creatures (2013), edited by Neil Gaiman and Maria Dahvana Headley. It is included in the collections Distant Stars (1981), Driftglass/Starshards (1993) and Aye, and Gomorrah: And Other Stories (2003).

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand is a science fiction masterpiece, an essay on the inexplicability of sexual attractiveness, and an examination of interstellar politics among far-flung worlds. First published in 1984, the novel's central issues - technology, globalization, gender, sexuality, and multiculturalism - have only become more pressing with the passage of time.

The novel's topic is information itself: What are the repercussions, once it has been made public, that two individuals have been found to be each other's perfect erotic object out to "point nine-nine-nine and several nines percent more"? What will it do to the individuals involved, to the city they inhabit, to their geosector, to their entire world society, especially when one is an illiterate worker, the sole survivor of a world destroyed by "cultural fugue," and the other is - you!

Table of Contents:

• Babel-17 - (1966) - novel
• A Fabulous, Formless Darkness - (1967) - novel
• Aye, and Gomorrah... - (1967) - short story
• Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones - (1968) - novelette
• Forward to an Afterword - essay
• Afterword: A Fictional Architecture that Manages Only with Great Difficulty Not Once to Mention Harlan Ellison - essay

The Einstein Intersection won the Nebula Award for best science fiction novel of 1967. The surface story tells of the problems a member of an alien race, Lo Lobey, has assimilating the mythology of earth, where his kind have settled among the leftover artifacts of humanity. The deeper tale concerns, however, the way those who are "different" must deal with the dominant cultural ideology. The tale follows Lobey's mythic quest for his lost love, Friza. In luminous and hallucinated language, it explores what new myths might emerge from the detritus of the human world as those who are "different" try to seize history and the day.

This novelette originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September-October 2017. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2018, edited by Rich Horton, The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Twelve (2018), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018, edited by N. K. Jemisin and John Joseph Adams.

Born in New York City's black ghetto Harlem at the start of World War II, Samuel R. Delany married white poet Marilyn Hacker right out of high school. The interracial couple moved into the city's new bohemian quarter, the Lower East Side, in summer 1961. Through the decade's opening years, new art, new sexual practices, new music, and new political awareness burgeoned among the crowded streets and cheap railroad apartments. Beautifully, vividly, insightfully, Delany calls up this era of exploration and adventure as he details his development as a black gay writer in an open marriage, with tertiary walk-ons by Bob Dylan, Stokely Carmichael, W. H. Auden, and James Baldwin, and a panoply of brilliantly drawn secondary characters.

Winner of the 1989 Hugo Award for Non-fiction

Samuel R. Delany is the author of numerous science fiction books including Dhalgren, other fiction including The Mad Man, as well as the best-selling nonfiction study Times Square Red, Times Square Blue. He lives in New York City and teaches at Temple University. The Lambda Book Report chose Delany as one of the fifty most significant men and women of the past hundred years to change our concept of gayness, and he is a recipient of the William Whitehead Memorial Award for a lifetime's contribution to lesbian and gay literature.

"A very moving, intensely fascinating literary biography from an extraordinary writer. Thoroughly admirable candor and luminous stylistic precision; the artist as a young man and a memorable picture of an age." -William Gibson

"Absolutely central to any consideration of black manhood.... Delany's vision of the necessity for total social and political transformation is revolutionary." -Hazel Carby

"The prose of The Motion of Light in Water often has the shimmering beauty of the title itself.... This book is invaluable gay history." -Inches Magazine

Hugo Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Worlds of Tomorrow, February 1967. The story can also be found in the anthologies SF 12 (1968), edtied by Judith Merril, Alpha 5 (1974), edited by Robert Silverberg, The Arbor House Treasury of Great Science Fiction Short Novels (1980), edited by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg, and Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction (1994), edited by Gardner Dozois. It is included in the collections Driftglass (1971), Driftglass/Starshards (1993) and Aye, and Gomorrah: And Other Stories (2003). It is half of Tor Double #4: Tango Charley and Foxtrot Remeo/The Star Pit (1989).

The Tides of Lust is a powerful, erotic and violent encounter with the voices and experiences of characters who linger in a small American seaport. Here is an insatiable African-American ship's captain, a dangerously young slave mistress, an aimless drifter and a supreme artist of the perverse.

Hugo and Nebula Award winning novelette. It originally appeared in New Worlds, #185 December 1968. The story has been reprinted many times. It can be found in the anthologies:

• World's Best Science Fiction: 1969, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr
• Nebula Award Stories Five (1970), edited by James Blish
• The Shores Beneath (1971), edited by James Sallis
• The Hugo Winners, Volume 2: (1963-70) (1971), edited by Isaac Asimov
• The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume III (1981), edited by George W. Proctor and Arthur C. Clarke
• The Best of the Nebulas (1989), edited by Ben Bova
• Nebula Awards Showcase 2015, edited by Greg Bear

It is included in the collections Driftglass (1971), Distant Stars (1981), The Complete Nebula Award-Winning Fiction (1986), Driftglass/Starshards (1993) and Aye, and Gomorrah: And Other Stories (2003).

Alpha Yes, Terra No!

The Alphans had been watching Earth for centuries, seeing its technological advances and its moral stagnation. They had erected a barrier against Earth's attempts to enter their system. Finally, they decided that Earth was a canker on the face of the universe, and decreed it's total destruction... The Earth was on trial, would no one defend her.

The Ballad of Beta-2

Centuries ago, the Star Folk had left Earth on twelve spaceships on a generations-long mission to colonize the distant stars. Ten of the ships had reached thier destination. Two had failed--and nobody, in the hundreds of years since the disaster, had the slightest inkling of what had happened.

Joneny, a student of galactic anthropology, was assigned the problem. It had seemed routine to him. Just some faster-than-light travel to the two wrecked ships, a bit of poking around and then writing up his findings.

But he was ill-prepared for what he found in space at the site of the two ancient worlds. One, the Sigma-9, was not subject to the laws of time-stasis (the only exception he knew of), and it was covered entirely with a mysterious green fire that shimmered so much that it seemed alive. And the other ship, the Beta-2, was nowhere to be seen.

Captives of the Flame

SAMUEL R. DELANY considers Captives of the Flame to be the first of a trilogy dealing with the same epoch and characters. It is, however, his second published novel, his first being The Jewels of Aptor, Ace Book F-173, which has received considerable acclaim.

A young man, resident in New York City, Delany is a prolific and talented writer, whose work in poetry and prose have won him many awards. Asked for comment on his literary ambitions, he preferred to quote one of the characters from one of his works:

"I wanted to wield together a prose luminous as twenty sets of headlights flung down a night road; I wanted my words tinged with the green of mercury vapor street lamps seen through a shaling of oak leaves in the park past midnight. I needed phrases that would break open like thunder, or leave a brush as gentle as willow boughs passed in a dark room.... The finest writing is always the finest delineation of surfaces."

The Psionic Menace

In Dhalgren, perhaps one of the most profound and bestselling science fiction novels of all time, Samuel R. Delany has produced a novel "to stand with the best American fiction of the 1970s" (Jonathan Lethem).

Bellona is a city at the dead center of the United States. Something has happened there.... The population has fled. Madmen and criminals wander the streets. Strange portents appear in the cloud-covered sky. And into this disaster zone comes a young man-poet, lover, and adventurer-known only as the Kid. Tackling questions of race, gender, and sexuality, Dhalgren is a literary marvel and groundbreaking work of American magical realism.

A bizarre breed of planet-hopping humans sell their sexless, neutered bodies. Far beneath the Earth, a man lives out the rest of his years in a life-sustaining coffin in a world where not dying is the ultimate punishment. These are two of the short stories in this science fiction collection.

Table of Contents:

• The Star Pit - (1967)
• Dog in a Fisherman's Net - (1971)
• Corona - (1967)
• Aye, and Gomorrah... - (1967)
• Driftglass - (1967)
• We, in Some Strange Power's Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line - (1968)
• Cage of Brass - (1968)
• High Weir - (1968)
• Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones - (1968)
• Night and the Loves of Joe Dicostanzo - (1970)

Originally appeared in Ace Double F-139 (1966). The novel is also part of Ace Double #20571 (1975).

The dying alien from the ship that crashed onto Rhys gave Comet Jo a jewel, and begged him to take it to the heart of the Galactic Empire. And, seeing no reason to miss an adventure, Comet Jo started out for the fabled Empire Star. But his journey was to have far-reaching consequences - consequences that could disrupt all the known laws of Time and Space...

Centuries ago, the Star Folk had left Earth on twelve spaceships on a generations-long mission to colonize the distant stars. Ten of the ships had reached their destinations. Two had failed-and nobody, in the hundreds of years since the disaster, had the slightest inkling of what had happened.

Joneny, a student of galactic anthropology, was assigned the problem. It had seemed routine to him. Just some faster-than-light travel to the two wrecked ships, a bit of poking around, and then writing up his findings.

But he was ill-prepared for what he found in space at the site of the two ancient wrecks. One, the Sigma-9, was not subject to the laws of time-stasis (the only exception to a universal law), and it was covered entirely with a mysterious green fire that shimmered so much that it seemed alive! And the other ship, the Beta-2, was nowhere to be found. Only a fragment of a mysterious poem could possibly provide a clue.

The Ballad of Beta-2

Centuries ago, the Star Folk had left Earth on twelve spaceships on a generations-long mission to colonize the distant stars. Ten of the ships had reached thier destination. Two had failed--and nobody, in the hundreds of years since the disaster, had the slightest inkling of what had happened.

Joneny, a student of galactic anthropology, was assigned the problem. It had seemed routine to him. Just some faster-than-light travel to the two wrecked ships, a bit of poking around and then writing up his findings.

But he was ill-prepared for what he found in space at the site of the two ancient worlds. One, the Sigma-9, was not subject to the laws of time-stasis (the only exception he knew of), and it was covered entirely with a mysterious green fire that shimmered so much that it seemed alive. And the other ship, the Beta-2, was nowhere to be seen.

Empire Star

The dying alien from the ship that crashed onto Rhys gave Comet Jo a jewel, and begged him to take it to the heart of the Galactic Empire. And, seeing no reason to miss an adventure, Comet Jo started out for the fabled Empire Star. But his journey was to have far-reaching consequences - consequences that could disrupt all the known laws of Time and Space...

Contains Out of the Dead City, The Towers of Toron and City of a Thousand Suns.

Come and enter Samuel Delany’s tomorow, in this trilogy of high adventure, with acrobats and urchins, criminals and courtiers, fishermen and factory-workers, madmen and mind-readers, dwarves and ducheses, giants and geniuses, merchants and mathematicians, soldiers and scholars, pirates and poets, and a gallery of aliens who fly, crawl, burrow, or swim.

The Jewels of Aptor

When Argo, the White Goddess, orders it Geo, the itinerant poet, and his three disparate companions journey to the island of Aptor to seize a jewel from the dark god, Hama, and return it to Argo so that she may defeat the malign forces ranged against her and the land of Leptar

But, as the four push deep into the enigmatic heart of Aptor and the easy distinctions between good and evil start to blur, their mission no longer seems straightforward. For Argo already controls two of the precious stones and possession of the third would make her power absolute. And the four friends have learned that power tends to corrupt...

Second Ending

Five miles beneath the surface, Ross was awakened from the deep sleep of suspended animation to find himself in an empty world. There was no noise, no people, and no motion save for the steady activity of the hospital robots. What had happened to life? Was Ross the last human being in existence?

The Towers of Toron

The Lord of the Flames was loose on Earth once more--this deadly alien entity had nearly destroyed the Empire of Toromon with its first attack. Its return now would mean a new era of chaos and conflict for the remnants of humanity. Somehow mankind must defeat this strangest of all enemies--an enemy that could be anywhere or anyone, an enemy that would reduce the human race to primitive savagery...

The Lunar Eye

Beware: Spies from space!

Table of Contents:

• The Tree Lord of Imeten - novel by Tom Purdom
• Empire Star - novella by Samuel R. Delany

Triton, the outermost moon of Neptune, was a world of absolute freedom, where every wish could be fulfilled. But for Bron Helstrom, one of Triton's elite, life had lost its meaning. There, in a world of endless possibilities, Bron began a searing odyssey to find the object of his desires.

Babel-17, winner of the Nebula Award for best novel of the year, is a fascinating tale of a famous poet bent on deciphering a secret language that is the key to the enemy's deadly force, a task that requires she travel with a splendidly improbable crew to the site of the next attack.

For the first time, Babel-17 is published as the author intended with the short novel Empire Star, the tale of Comet Jo, a simple-minded teen thrust into a complex galaxy when he's entrusted to carry a vital message to a distant world. Spellbinding and smart, both novels are testimony to Delany's vast and singular talent.

Originally appeared in Ace Double F-173 (1962).

When Argo, the White Goddess, orders it Geo, the itinerant poet, and his three disparate companions journey to the island of Aptor to seize a jewel from the dark god, Hama, and return it to Argo so that she may defeat the malign forces ranged against her and the land of Leptar

But, as the four push deep into the enigmatic heart of Aptor and the easy distinctions between good and evil start to blur, their mission no longer seems straightforward. For Argo already controls two of the precious stones and possession of the third would make her power absolute. And the four friends have learned that power tends to corrupt...

Given that the suns of Draco stretch almost sixteen light years from end to end, it stands to reason that the cost of transportation is the most important factor of the 32nd century. And since Illyrion is the element most needed for space travel, Lorq von Ray is plenty willing to fly through the core of a recently imploded sun in order to obtain seven tons of it. The potential for profit is so great that Lorq has little difficulty cobbling together an alluring crew that includes a gypsy musician and a moon-obsessed scholar interested in the ancient art of writing a novel.

What the crew doesn't know, though, is that Lorq's quest is actually fueled by a private revenge so consuming that he'll stop at nothing to achieve it.

In the grandest manner of speculative fiction, Nova is a wise and witty classic that casts a fascinating new light on some of humanity's oldest truths and enduring myths.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (Nebula Winners 13) - (1980) - essay by Samuel R. Delany
• Jeffty Is Five - (1977) - shortstory by Harlan Ellison
• Air Raid - (1977) - shortstory by John Varley
• The Screwfly Solution - (1977) - novelette by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Particle Theory - (1977) - shortstory by Edward Bryant
• Stardance - (1977) - novella by Spider Robinson and Jeanne Robinson
• Aztecs - (1977) - novella by Vonda N. McIntyre
• The Nebula Winners, 1965-1977 - (1980) - essay by uncredited

Appearing in book form for the first time, The Atheist in the Attic is a suspenseful and vivid historical narrative, recreating the top-secret meeting between the mathematical genius Leibniz and the philosopher Spinoza caught between the horrors of the cannibalistic Dutch Rampjaar and the brilliant "big bang" of the Enlightenment. Also Delany's "Racism and Science Fiction" combines scholarly research and personal experience in the unique true story of the first major African-American author in the genre. This collection features a bibliography, an author biography, and the candid and uncompromising Outspoken Interview.

Table of Contents:

• The Atheist in the Attic - novella
• Racism and Science Fiction - (1998) - essay
• "Discourse in an Older Sense" - interview by Terry Bisson

Table of Contents:

• Editorial - essay by Samuel R. Delany and Marilyn Hacker
• The Cliff Climbers - shortstory by R. A. Lafferty
• The Sound of Muzak - novelette by Gardner Dozois
• A Trip to the Head - shortstory by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Let Us Quickly Hasten to the Gate of Ivory - shortstory by Thomas M. Disch
• Inalienable Rite - shortstory by Gregory Benford
• Orion - shortstory by George Stanley
• The View from This Window - novelette by Joanna Russ
• Gone Are the Lupo - shortstory by H. B. Hickey
• Fire Storm - shortstory by Christopher Priest
• Getting to Know You - poem by Link
• Dogman of Islington - shortstory by Hilary Bailey
• Shades - shortstory by Sandy Boucher
• Carthing - shortstory by A. E. van Vogt
• Daughter of Roses - poem by Helen Adam
• Adrift on the Freeway - shortstory by Edward Bryant
• My Father's Guest - shortstory by Joan Bernott
• Critical Methods: Speculative Fiction - essay by Samuel R. Delany
• Ramona, Come Softly - novelette by Gordon Eklund
• Contributors' Notes

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Samuel R. Delany and Marilyn Hacker
• The Interstate - shortstory by John Sladek
• A Possible Episode in the Picaresque Adventures of Mr. J.H.B. Monstrosee - shortstory by Carol Emshwiller
• Trojak - shortstory by Marek Obtulowicz
• Gold, Black, and Silver - shortstory by Fritz Leiber
• Mensuration - poem by James Sallis
• The Voice of the Sonar in My Vermiform Appendix - shortstory by Philip José Farmer
• The Way Home - shortstory by Joan Bernott
• Among the Dead - shortstory by Edward Bryant
• The Last Supper - shortstory by Russell FitzGerald
• The Village - poem by Leland Stoney
• Arpad - shortstory by Alexei Panshin
• Bitching It - shortstory by Sonya Dorman
• Et in Arcadia Ego - shortstory by Thomas M. Disch
• Landscape for Insurrection - poem by Marilyn Hacker
• The People of Prashad - novelette by James Keilty
• The Inception of the Epoch of Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid - shortstory by John Brunner
• The Electric Neon Mermaid - novelette by Laurence Yep

Table of Contents:

• Forward - essay by Samuel R. Delany and Marilyn Hacker
• Encased in Ancient Rind - novelette by R. A. Lafferty
• Home Again, Home Again - shortstory by Gordon Eklund
• Dog in a Fisherman's Net - shortstory by Samuel R. Delany
• The Zanzibar Cat - shortstory by Joanna Russ
• Field - shortstory by James Sallis
• Vanishing Point - poem by Sonya Dorman
• Where Have You Been, Billy Boy, Billy Boy? - shortstory by Kate Wilhelm
• Brave Salt - shortstory by Richard Hill
• Nature Boy - shortstory by Josephine Saxton
• Balls: A Meditation at the Graveside - shortstory by Virginia Kidd
• Ring of Pain - shortstory by M. John Harrison
• To the Child Whose Birth Will Change the Way the Universe Works - poem by George Stanley
• A Sexual Song - shortstory by Tom Veitch
• Twenty-Four Letters from Underneath the Earth - shortstory by Hilary Bailey
• The Coded Sun Game - novella by Brian Vickers
• Contributors' Notes

Table of Contents:

• On Speculative Fiction - essay by Samuel R. Delany and Marilyn Hacker
• Basileikon: Summer - shortstory by Avram Davidson
• Voortrekker - novelette by Michael Moorcock
• Brass and Gold (or Horse and Zeppelin in Beverly Hills) - (1971) - shortstory by Philip José Farmer
• The Song of Passing - poem by Marco Cacchioni
• Norman Vs. America (graphic story) - shortfiction by Charles Platt
• Norman Vs. America (graphic story) - interior artwork by Charles Platt
• The True Reason for the Dreadful Death of Mr. Rex Arundel - novelette by Helen Adam
• Acid Soap Opera - shortstory by Gail Madonia
• Bodies - novelette by Thomas M. Disch
• Nightsong - poem by Marilyn Hacker
• Cages - shortstory by Vonda N. McIntyre
• A Man of Letters - shortstory by Marek Obtulowicz
• The Fourth Profession - novelette by Larry Niven

Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in the shortlived Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine, Summer 1979. The story is included in the collections Tales of Nevèrÿon (1979), The Bridge of Lost Desire (1987) and Return to Nevèrÿon (1989).

The first book of a four-part science fiction fantasy series depicting an empire beyond the borders of history where human destinies entwine in a strange design. It is an intricate web of adventure, intrigue and desire and a literary puzzle where meaning, parable and paradox collide.

A novel of myth and literacy about a long-ago land on the brink of civilization. Vol 2

A novel of myth and literacy about a long-ago land on the brink of civilization. Vol 3

A novel of myth and literacy about a long-ago land on the brink of civilization. Vol 4

Tango Charley and Foxtrot Remeo:

Lunar police officer Anna-Louise Bach helps save a girl surviving on a long-abandoned space station that is about to crash.

The Star Pit:

Space Travel is as easy as jumping on a ship - but only if you're golden...

Home is the Hangman::

A sentient space-exploration robot, lost years before, has apparently returned to Earth. One of its original designers has died under suspicious circumstances. Has the Hangman returned to kill its creators? The hero must find the Hangman and stop it, and time is running out.

We, In Some Strange Power's Employ, Move On A Rigorous Line:

This is the story of a group of futuristic outlaw bikers who don't want to join the world order symbolized by Global Power's electric grid.