Search Worlds Without End

In the winter of 2005, after the horrifying natural disaster of the tsunami in Southeast Asia, Steve Savile and Alethea Kontis joined forces to raise money to help the distressed survivors and have created Elemental. They solicited SF and fantasy stories, all new and never published elsewhere, from many of the top writers in the genres today, and received immediate responses in the form of the excellent stories here in this book.

Elemental has an introduction by Arthur C.Clarke and more than twenty stories by Brian Aldiss, David Drake, Jacqueline Carey, Martha Wells, Larry Niven, Joe Haldeman, Eric Nylund, Sherrilyn Kenyon writing as Kinley MacGregor, and a Dune story by Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson, and many others. They created in Elemental one of the most important genre anthologies of the year, but more than that: in giving real value for the purchase price, everyone who sells this book can be proud, and everyone who buys it will be richly rewarded for supporting the tsunami relief effort.

Contents:

• 11 - Introduction: Once and Future Tsunamis (Elemental) - essay by Arthur C. Clarke
• 19 - Report from the Near Future: Crystallization - short fiction by David Gerrold
• 36 - And Tomorrow and - short story by Adam Roberts
• 50 - Abductio Ad Absurdum - short fiction by Esther M. Friesner
• 58 - In the Matter of Fallen Angels - short fiction by Jacqueline Carey
• 72 - Tiger in the Night - short fiction by Brian W. Aldiss [as by Brian Aldiss]
• 76 - The Strange Case of Jared Spoon, Who Went To Pieces for Love - short fiction by Stel Pavlou
• 88 - The Solipsist at Dinner - short story by Larry Niven
• 92 - The Wager - [Lords of Avalon] - short fiction by Sherrilyn Kenyon [as by Kinley MacGregor]
• 102 - Expedition, with Recipes - short story by Joe Haldeman
• 108 - Tough Love 3001 - short story by Juliet Marillier
• 119 - Chanting the Violet Dog Down: A Tale of Noreela - [Noreela Short Fiction] - short story by Tim Lebbon (variant of Chanting the Violet Dog Down)
• 137 - Butterflies Like Jewels - short fiction by Eric S. Nylund [as by Eric Nylund]
• 156 - Perfection - [Skalan Saga] - short fiction by Lynn Flewelling
• 169 - The Compound - short fiction by Michael Marshall Smith
• 184 - Sea Child: A Tale of Dune - [Dune] - short story by Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert
• 200 - Moebius Trip - short fiction by Janny Wurts
• 212 - The Run to Hardscrabble Station - short fiction by William C. Dietz
• 234 - The Last Mortal Man - short fiction by Syne Mitchell
• 248 - The Double-Edged Sword - novelette by Sharon Shinn
• 277 - Night of the Dolls - short story by Shane Dix and Sean Williams
• 286 - The Potter's Daughter - [Ile-Rien] - short story by Martha Wells
• 308 - The Day of Glory - [Hammer's Slammers] - novelette by David Drake
• 338 - Sea Air - short fiction by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
• 377 - Afterword: Why Elemental? (Elemental) - essay by Steven Savile

It isn't easy being the rather overlooked and unhappy youngest sibling to sisters named for the other six days of the week. Sunday's only comfort is writing stories, although what she writes has a terrible tendency to come true.

When Sunday meets an enchanted frog who asks about her stories, the two become friends. Soon that friendship deepens into something magical. One night Sunday kisses her frog goodbye and leaves, not realizing that her love has transformed him back into Rumbold, the crown prince of Arilland--and a man Sunday's family despises.

The prince returns to his castle, intent on making Sunday fall in love with him as the man he is, not the frog he was. But Sunday is not so easy to woo. How can she feel such a strange, strong attraction for this prince she barely knows? And what twisted secrets lie hidden in his past--and hers?

Rough-and-tumble Saturday Woodcutter thinks she's the only one of her sisters without any magic--until the day she accidentally conjures an ocean in the backyard. With her sword in tow, Saturday sets sail on a pirate ship, only to find herself kidnapped and whisked off to the top of the world. Is Saturday powerful enough to kill the mountain witch who holds her captive and save the world from sure destruction? And, as she wonders grumpily, "Did romance have to be part of the adventure?" As in Enchanted, readers will revel in the fragments of fairy tales that embellish this action-packed story of adventure and, yes, romance.

Readers met the Woodcutter sisters (named after the days of the week) in Enchanted and Hero. In this delightful third book, Alethea Kontis weaves together some fine-feathered fairy tales to focus on Friday Woodcutter, the kind and loving seamstress. When Friday stumbles upon seven sleeping brothers in her sister Sunday's palace, she takes one look at Tristan and knows he's her future. But the brothers are cursed to be swans by day. Can Friday's unique magic somehow break the spell?