Search Worlds Without End

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology The Mammoth Book of Steampunk (2012), edited by Sean Wallace. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2013, edited by Rich Horton.

David Holbrook is a scrawny kid, the victim of bullies, and the neglected son of insane parents. David Holbrook is the Kallis Episkopos, a vicious murderer turned imprisoned leader of a death cult dedicated to Eris, the Hellenic goddess of discord. David Holbrook never killed anyone, and lives a lonely and luckless existence with his aging mother in a tumbledown New Jersey town. Caught between finger and trigger, David is given three chances to decide his fate as he is compelled to live and relive all his potential existences, guided only by the dark wisdom found in a bottle of cough syrup. From the author of the instant cult classic Move Under Ground comes a fantasy of blood, lust, destiny, school shootings, and the chance to change your future.

Jaskey has a flashlight, a captive audience, and a story about the end of the world -- what could be better?

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Winner of the 2010 Bram Stoker Award for Best Anthology!

Darkly thrilling, these twenty new ghost stories have all the chills and power of traditional ghost stories, but each tale is a unique retelling of an urban legend from the world over.

Multiple award-winning editor Ellen Datlow and award-nominated author and editor Nick Mamatas recruited Jeffrey Ford, Ramsey Campbell, Joe R. Lansdale, Caitlin Kiernan, Catherynne M. Valente, Kit Reed, Ekaterina Sedia, and thirteen other fine writers to create stories unlike any they've written before. Tales to make readers shiver with fear, jump at noises in the night, keep the lights on.

These twenty nightmares, brought together by two renowned editors of the dark fantastic, are delightful visions sure to send shivers down the spines of horror readers.

Table of Contents:

• Saying Boo: Why We Like Ghost Stories - essay by Nick Mamatas
• Knickerbocker Holiday - shortstory by Richard Bowes
• That Girl - shortfiction by Kaaron Warren
• Akbar - shortstory by Kit Reed
• The Spring Heel - shortfiction by Steven Pirie
• As Red as Red - shortstory by Caitlín R. Kiernan
• Tin Cans - shortstory by Ekaterina Sedia
• Shoebox Train Wreck - shortfiction by John Mantooth
• Fifteen Panels Depicting the Sadness of the Baku and the Jotai - shortfiction by Catherynne M. Valente
• La Llorona - shortfiction by Carolyn Turgeon
• Face Like a Monkey - shortfiction by Carrie Laben
• Down Atsion Road - shortstory by Jeffrey Ford
• Return to Mariabronn - shortfiction by Gary A. Braunbeck
• Following Double-Face Woman - shortfiction by Erzebet YellowBoy
• Oaks Park - shortfiction by M. K. Hobson
• For Those in Peril on the Sea - shortfiction by Stephen Dedman
• The Foxes - shortfiction by Lily Hoang
• The Redfield Girls - shortfiction by Laird Barron
• Between Heaven and Hull - shortfiction by Pat Cadigan
• Chucky Comes to Liverpool - shortfiction by Ramsey Campbell
• The Folding Man - shortfiction by Joe R. Lansdale

For fans of legendary pulp author H. P. Lovecraft, there is nothing bigger than the annual Providence-based convention the Summer Tentacular. Horror writer Colleen Danzig doesn't know what to expect when she arrives, but is unsettled to find that among the hob-knobbing between scholars and literary critics are a group of real freaks: book collectors looking for volumes bound in human skin, and true believers claiming the power to summon the Elder God Cthulhu, one of their idol's most horrific fictional creations, before the weekend is out.

Colleen's trip spirals into a nightmare when her roommate for the weekend, an obnoxious novelist known as Panossian, turns up dead, his face neatly removed. What's more unsettling is that, in the aftermath of the murder, there is little concern among the convention goers. The Summer Tentacular continues uninterrupted, except by a few bumbling police. Everyone at the convention is a possible suspect, but only Colleen seems to show any interest in solving the murder. So she delves deep into the darkness, where occult truths have been lurking since the beginning of time. A darkness where Panossian is waiting, spending a lot of time thinking about Colleen, narrating a new Lovecraftian tale that could very well spell her doom.

In 1989, punk-rock girl "Golden" Dawn has crafted an outsider's life combining the philosophies of Communism and Aleister Crowley's black magic. One fateful day she finds the dead body of her mentor in both politics and magick shot in the head, seemingly a suicide. But Dawn knows there's more going on than the cops could ever hope to find. In setting out to find the murderer herself, she will encounter dark and twisted truths for which nothing could have prepared her.

The year is nineteen-sixty-something, and after endless millennia of watery sleep, the stars are finally right. Old R'lyeh rises out of the Pacific, ready to cast its damned shadow over the primitive human world. The first to see its peaks: an alcoholic, paranoid, and frightened Jack Kerouac, who had been drinking off a nervous breakdown up in Big Sur. Now Jack must get back on the road to find Neal Cassady, the holy fool whose rambling letters hint of a world brought to its knees in worship of the Elder God Cthulhu. Together with pistol-packin' junkie William S. Burroughs, Jack and Neal make their way across the continent to face down the murderous Lovecraftian cult that has spread its darkness to the heart of the American Dream. But is Neal along for the ride to help save the world, or does he want to destroy it just so that he'll have an ending for his book?

The infamous eleventh-century warrior Hexen Sabbath is plucked from death and certain damnation by a being claiming to be an angel of the Lord, and finds himself dropped into contemporary Manhattan with no clothes, no weapons, no resources, and one mission--to track down and kill the living personifications of the Seven Deadly Sins before they bring about Armageddon.

With time running out and his only ally a destitute art gallery owner, Sabbath must fight his way through New York's elite and challenge the world's most powerful man, or an eternity of suffering will be his, and our, only reward.

When Julia Hernandez leaves her husband, shoots a real estate developer, and then vanishes without a trace, she slips out of the world she knew and into the Simulacrum--a place where human history is both guided and thwarted by the conflict between a species of anarchist wasps and a collective of hyperintelligent spiders. When Julia's ex-husband Raymond spots her in a grocery store he doesn't usually patronize, he's soon drawn into an underworld of radical political gestures where Julia is the new media sensation of both this world and the Simulacrum. Told ultimately from the collective point of view of another species, this allegorical novel plays with the elements of the Simulacrum apparent in real life--media reports, business speak, blog entries, text messages, psychological-evaluation forms, and the lies lovers tell one another--and poses a fascinating idea that displaces human beings from the center of the universe and makes them simply the pawns of two warring species.

The cult phenomenon Battle Royale has been lauded as a masterpiece and decried as exploitative gore, but it's always remained in the public consciousness. This collection of essays by some of the best science fiction, horror, and thriller writers working today explore the depth, details, and controversies surrounding Battle Royale in an intelligent, accessible fashion.

A hilarious, shocking, terrifying thrill ride across the American landscape, The Damned Highway pays homage to the gonzo journalism of Hunter S. Thompson and the uncanny terrors of H. P. Lovecraft!

Horror legend Brian Keene (The Rising) and cult storytelling master Nick Mamatas (Move Under Ground) dredge up a tale of drug-fueled eldritch madness from the blackest depths of the American nightmare. On a freaked-out bus journey to Arkham, Massachusetts, and the 1972 presidential primary, evidence mounts that sinister forces are on the rise, led by the Cult of Cthulhu and its most prominent member - Richard M. Nixon!

Meet Vasilis Billy Kostopolos: Bay Area Rust Belt refugee, failed sci-fi writer, successful barfly and, since an exceptionally American zombie apocalypse, accomplished driller of reanimated corpses. Now that all the sane, well-adjusted human beings are hunted to extinction, he's found his vocation trepanning zombies, peddling his one and only published short story and drinking himself to death that is, until both his girlfriends turn out to be homicidal revolutionaries, he collides with a gang of Berkeley scientists gone berserker, the long-awaited Big One finally strikes San Francisco, and what s left of local government can no longer hide the awful secret lurking deep in the basement of City Hall. Can Bill unearth the truth about America s demise and San Francisco s survival and will he destroy what little s left of it in the process? Is he legend, the last man, or just another sucker on the vine? Nick Mamatas The Last Weekend takes a high-powered drill to the lurching, groaning conventions of zombie dystopias and conspiracy thrillers, sparing no cliché about tortured artists, alcoholic genius , noir action heroes, survivalist dogma, or starry-eyed California dreaming. Starting in booze-soaked but very clear-eyed cynicism and ending in gloriously uncozy catastrophe, this tale of a man and his city s last living days is merciless, uncomfortably perceptive, and bleakly hilarious.

This vile tome collects thirteen blasphemous Lovecraftian tales of a certain scribe named Nick Mamatas. Warning: May contain shoggoths, martial arts, weirdness, Nyarlathotep, fish people from Innsmouth, and copious literary references. With an introduction by Orrin Grey and a bevy of disturbing alchemical illustrations by GMB Chomichuk. Side effects may include hallucinations and a steep descent into insanity.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: The Man Who Collected Mamatas (by Orrin Grey)
• Brattleboro Days, Yuggoth Nights
• And Then, And Then, And Then....
• The Dude Who Collected Lovecraft
• Wuji
• Mainevermontnewhampshiremass
• And Other Horrors
• Real People Slash
• Inky, Blinky, Pinky, Nyarlathotep
• Jitterbuggin'
• Hideous Interview with Brief Man
• Dead Media
• That of Which We Speak When We Speak of the Unspeakable
• On the Occasion of My Retirement

Welcome to the People's Republic of Everything?of course, you've been here for a long time already. Make yourself at home alongside a hitman who always tells the truth, no matter how reality has to twist itself to suit; electric matchstick girls who have teamed up with Friedrich Engels; a telepathic boy and his father's homemade nuclear bomb; a very bad date that births an unforgettable meme; and a dog who simply won't stop howling on social media.

The People's Republic of Everything features a decade's worth of crimes, fantasies, original fiction, and the author's preferred text of the acclaimed short novel Under My Roof.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction by Jeffrey Ford
• Walking with a Ghost
• Arbeitskraft
• The People's Republic of Everywhere and Everything
• Tom Silex, Spirit-Smasher
• The Great Armored Train
• The Phylactery
• Slice of Life
• North Shore Friday
• The Glottal Stop
• The Spook School
• A Howling Dog
• Lab Rat
• Dreamer of the Day
• We Never Sleep
• Under My Roof

Herbert Weinberg's father is striking a blow for freedom. Implanting a nuclear device within a garden gnome in the front yard of their Long Island home, he's declared independence from the U.S. The household is understandably is an uproar. Mother's gone, the local weatherman has moved in, and 12-year-old Herbert is simultaneously a hostage and the Minister of Information. A daring raid plucks the lad from his ancestral home, but even while troops surround the belligerent house-state of Weinbergia, the call to freedom has been sounded. The house is rapidly filling up with American refuseniks. Can the refrigerator hold out? And will Herbert's telepathic powers defeat imperialism and reunite him with his father? Based on Aristophanes's Archanians, Under My Roof is funny, ambitous novel.

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, June 2009. It can also be found in the anthology Clarkesworld: Year Three (2013), edited by Sean Wallace and Neil Clarke. It is included in the collection The People's Republic of Everything (2018).

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

A web browser that threatens to conquer the world. The longest, loneliest railroad on Earth. A North Korean nuke hitting Tokyo, a hollow asteroid full of automated rice paddies, and a specialist in breaking up virtual marriages. And yes, giant robots. These thirteen stories from and about the Land of the Rising Sun run the gamut from fantasy to cyberpunk, and will leave you knowing that the future is Japanese!

Contributors include cyberpunk legends Pat Cadigan and Bruce Sterling, New York Times bestselling author Catherynne Valente, the enormously popular and prolific Japanese writer Hideyuki Kikuchi, and hot new writers Rachel Swirsky, David Moles, and Ken Liu--who have won or been nominated for the Nebula and Hugo awards.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword - essay by Masumi Washington
• Revolving Around a Rising Sun - essay by Nick Mamatas
• Mono no Aware - shortstory by Ken Liu
• The Sound of Breaking Up - shortstory by Felicity Savage
• Chitai Heiki Koronbin - shortstory by David Moles
• The Indifference Engine - shortstory by Project Itoh
• The Sea of Trees - shortstory by Rachel Swirsky
• Endoastronomy - shortstory by Toh EnJoe
• In Plain Sight - shortstory by Pat Cadigan
• Golden Bread - shortstory by Issui Ogawa
• One Breath, One Stroke - shortstory by Catherynne M. Valente
• Whale Meat - shortstory by Ekaterina Sedia
• Mountain People, Ocean People - shortstory by Hideyuki Kikuchi
• Goddess of Mercy - novelette by Bruce Sterling
• Autogenic Dreaming: Interview with the Columns of Clouds - shortstory by TOBI Hirotaka

The secret history of the most famous secret agent in the world. A bunny costume that reveals the truth in our souls. The unsettling notion that Japan itself may be a dream. The tastiest meal you'll never have, a fedora-wearing neckbeard's deadly date with a yokai, and the worst work shift anyone--human or not--has ever lived through. Welcome to Phantasm Japan.

Table of Contents:

• Gary A. Braunbeck: "Shikata Ga Nai: A Bag Lady's Tale"
• Nadia Bulkin: "Girl, I Love You"
• Quentin S. Crisp: "The Last Packet of Tea"
• Project Itoh: "From the Nothing, With Love"
• Yusaku Kitano: "Scissors or Claws, and Holes"
• Jacqueline Koyanagi: "Kamigakari"
• Alex Dally MacFarlane: "Inari Updates the Map of Rice Fields"
• Zachary Mason: "Five Tales of Japan"
• Miyuki Miyabe: "Chiyoko"
• James A. Moore: "He Dreads the Cold"
• Lauren Naturale: "Her Last Appearance"
• Tim Pratt: "Those Who Hunt Monster Hunters"
• Benjanun Sriduangkaew: "Ningyo"
• Seia Tanabe: "The Parrot Stone"
• Joseph Tomaras: "Thirty-Eight Observations on the Nature of the Self"
• Dempow Torishima: "Sisyphean"
• Sayuri Ueda: "Street of Fruiting Bodies"

Hanzai Japan: Fantastical, Futuristic Stories of Crime From and About Japan --

The latest in Haikasoru's anthology series that began with the acclaimed The Future is Japanese, Hanzai Japan gathers weird crime and mystery stories from an international list of best-selling authors and some of the brightest, and darkest, new writers working today.

A murderer doing time in Hell. A girl who just wants to win her high school band contest... no matter what it takes. Sumo wrestlers with a supernatural secret. A future Tokyo where vampires are menial laborers nursing long-held grudges against humanity. And even a very conscientious, if unstable, Universal Transverse Mercator projection. These crime and mystery stories from and about Japan explore myth, technology, the sharpness of a sleuth's mind, and the darkness in the hearts of criminals. Read these stories and learn that hanzai means crime!

• Ray Banks
• Libby Cudmore
• Brian Evenson
• Kaori Fujino
• Jyouji Hayashi
• Naomi Hirahara
• Yumeaki Hirayama
• Violet LeVoit
• Yusuke Miyauchi
• S. J. Rozan
• Hiroshi Sakurazaka
• Setsuko Shinoda
• Jeff Somers
• Genevieve Valentine
• Carrie Vaughn

Upending and recombining familiar genres with fearless abandon, Nick Mamatas is known for his wicked satires in which Horror rides shotgun with SF as they power through Fantasy's rush-hour traffic. Lanes are crossed, speed limits exceeded, and minds often blown.

Our title piece, original to this volume, is something entirely new. Trust me. "The Planetbreaker's Son" is a starship novella in which interstellar emigrants maintain their stadium-sized vessel with dreams and play. On the fly. Think Pinocchio meets Ender's Game.

"Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring" is a cautionary tale about the perilous interface between ancient wizardry and modern ringtones. And it's for you. "The Term Paper Artist" is Nick's celebrated and hilarious how-to on embellishing the academic establishment with equal parts imitation and duct tape. Based on a true story of lies.

And Featuring: of course, our casually candid Outspoken Interview, in which Greek sailors, Japanese manga mavens, Doc Martens, Lovecraft, Grandma, and Kerouac mingle and mix. Care to dance?

Contents:

• The Planetbreaker's Son - novella
• The Term Paper Artist - (2008) - essay
• "Put Your Twist in the Middle" - interview of Nick Mamatas - interview by Terry Bisson
• Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring - [Punktown] - (2018) - short story

Step into a world of wonder, epiphany and danger. From the return of old gods to the adventures of the last dragon on Earth, from quantum physics to manticores trained for the circus, this unique anthology takes readers on journeys to realms both distant and oddly familiar. Selected from the critically-acclaimed online magazine Clarkesworld, Realms collects the work of twenty-four visionary writers of short fiction.

Table of Contents:

• A Light in Troy - (2006) - shortstory by Sarah Monette
• 304 Adolph Hitler Strasse - (2006) - shortstory by Lavie Tidhar
• The Moby Clitoris of His Beloved - (2006) - shortstory by Ian Watson and Roberto Quaglia
• Lydia's Body - (2006) - shortstory by Vylar Kaftan
• Urchins, While Swimming - (2006) - shortstory by Catherynne M. Valente
• The Other Amazon - (2006) - shortstory by Jenny Davidson
• Automatic - (2007) - shortstory by Erica L. Satifka
• Orm the Beautiful - (2007) - shortstory by Elizabeth Bear
• Chewing Up the Innocent - (2007) - shortstory by Jay Lake
• Attar of Roses - (2007) - shortstory by Sharon Mock
• Clockmaker's Requiem - (2007) - shortstory by Barth Anderson
• Something in the Mermaid Way - (2007) - shortstory by Carrie Laben
• The Third Bear - (2007) - shortstory by Jeff VanderMeer
• The First Female President - (2007) - shortstory by Michael De Kler
• There's No Light Between Floors - (2007) - shortstory by Paul G. Tremblay
• Qubit Conflicts - (2007) - shortstory by Jetse de Vries
• The Oracle Spoke - (2007) - shortstory by Holly Phillips
• Moon Over Yodok - (2007) - shortstory by David Charlton
• I'll Gnaw Your Bones, the Manticore Said - (2007) - shortstory by Cat Rambo
• Transtexting Pose - (2007) - shortstory by Darren Speegle
• The Taste of Wheat - (2007) - shortstory by Ekaterina Sedia
• The Beacon - (2007) - shortstory by Darja Malcolm-Clarke
• The Ape's Wife - (2007) - shortstory by Caitlín R. Kiernan
• Lost Soul - (2007) - shortstory by M. P. Ericson

Selected from the Hugo and World Fantasy Award-nominated Clarkesworld Magazine, Realms 2 collects the work of twenty-four visionary writers of short fiction, including such World Fantasy, Philip K. Dick, Tiptree, Hugo and Campbell Award winners and finalists as Jeffrey Ford, Mary Robinette Kowal, Jay Lake, Cat Rambo, Tim Pratt, and Catherynne M. Valente -- and amazing stories from up-and-comers like, Paul Jessup, Yoon Ha Lee, Margaret Ronald and many more!

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: Tomorrow Can Wait - (2008) - essay by Sean Wallace
• Summer in Paris, Light from the Sky - (2007) - shortstory by Ken Scholes
• Tetris Dooms Itself - (2008) - shortstory by Meghan McCarron
• Blue Ink - (2008) - shortstory by Yoon Ha Lee
• Curse - (2007) - shortstory by Samantha Henderson
• Clockwork Chickadee - (2008) - shortstory by Mary Robinette Kowal
• Flight - (2008) - shortstory by Jeremiah Sturgill
• Captain's Lament - (2008) - shortstory by Stephen Graham Jones
• Birdwatcher - (2008) - shortstory by Garth Upshaw
• The Buried Years - (2007) - shortstory by Loreen Heneghan
• The Glory of the World - (2008) - shortstory by Sergey Gerasimov
• Teeth - (2008) - shortstory by Stephen Dedman
• A Buyer's Guide to Maps of Antartica - (2008) - shortstory by Catherynne M. Valente
• After Moreau - (2008) - shortstory by Jeffrey Ford
• Debris Ensuing from a Supervortex - (2008) - shortstory by Brian Ames
• When the Gentlemen Go By - (2008) - shortstory by Margaret Ronald
• The Human Moments - (2008) - shortstory by Alexander Lumans
• The Secret in the House of Smiles - (2008) - shortstory by Paul Jessup
• A Dance Across Embers - (2007) - shortstory by Lisa Mantchev
• Threads of Red and White - (2007) - shortstory by Lisa Mantchev
• Excerpt from a Letter by a Social-Realist Aswang - (2007) - shortstory by Kristin Mandigma
• The River Boy - (2008) - shortstory by Tim Pratt
• Acid and Stoned Reindeer - (2007) - shortstory by Rebecca Ore
• Worm Within - (2008) - shortstory by Cat Rambo
• Can You See Me Now? - (2008) - shortstory by Eric M. Witchey
• The Sky That Wraps the World Round, Past the Blue and Into the Black - (2008) - shortstory by Jay Lake