Search Worlds Without End

Hugo Award nominated novelette. It originally appearred in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, February 1990. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighth Annual Collection (1991), edited by Gardner Dozois and Visions of Wonder (1996), edited by David G. Hartwell and Milton T. Wolf. It is included in the collection Dancing With Myself (1993).

In the 277th century, Earth is dead, but mankind survives in colonies scattered across the galaxy. To these new worlds come the Immortals, beings with strange ties to ancient Earth who seem to live forever, who can travel light years in days - and who use their strange powers to control the existence of ordinary mortals. On the planet Pentecost, a small group sets out to find and challenge the Immortals. But in the search they themselves are changed: as Immortals, they discover a new threat, not just to themselves, but to the galaxy itself.

Born of a crack-addicted mother in a charity ward in Washington, D.C., after the "crash," Job Napoleon Salk is destined to change the world.

A combination of science fiction stories and science fictional fact explores the technology of the future and the impact that it will have on everyday life.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay
• Out of Copyright - (1989) - shortstory
• Tunicate, Tunicate, Wilt Thou Be Mine? - (1985) - novelette
• Counting Up - (1988) - essay
• A Braver Thing - (1990) - novelette
• The Grand Tour - (1987) - shortstory
• Classical Nightmares...... And Quantum Paradoxes - (1989) - essay
• Nightmares of the Classical Mind - (1989) - novelette
• The Double Spiral Staircase - (1990) - shortstory
• The Unlicked Bear-Whelp: A Worm's Eye Look at Chaos Theory - (1990) - essay
• The Seventeen-Year Locusts - (1983) - shortstory
• The Courts of Xanadu - (1988) - novelette
• C-Change - (1992) - shortstory
• Unclear Weather: A Miscellany of Disasters - (1988) - essay
• Godspeed - (1990) - shortstory
• Dancing With Myself - (1989) - shortstory
• Something for Nothing: A Biography of the Universe - essay

Charles Darwin's grandfather Erasmus Darwin is the protagonist in this collection of three separate stories. In them, Erasmus uses deductive reasoning and his powers of observation, a la Sherlock Holmes, to penetrate three mysteries which at first blush appear to involve the supernatural. At the same time, matters are not so simple, because Sheffield's backdrop is a fantasy England where supernatural explanations cannot necessarily be ruled out... The first episode is not so great--Darwin comes off as only slightly brighter than average. But the episodes which follow are engaging and interesting, well worth the read. Sheffield is a skilled practitioner who holds the reader's attention. I enjoyed the book, but wound up feeling slightly disappointed that Darwin, billed as "arguably the greatest Englishman of the 18th century," is not even more witty and brilliant.

Table of Contens

• Introduction - essay
• The Devil of Malkirk - novella
• The Treasure of Odirex - (1978) - novella
• The Lambeth Immortal - (1979) - novella
• Appendix- Erasmus Magister: Fact and Fiction - essay

Ben Bova, Frederik Pohl, Jerry Pournelle, and Charles Sheffield share a collection of original stories and essays that speculate on what the world will be like fifty years from now and discuss the sociological and technological implications of their expectations.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Charles Sheffield
• 2042: A Cautiously Pessimistic View - (1991) - essay by Ben Bova
• Thy Kingdom Come - (1993) - novella by Ben Bova
• A Visit to Belinda - essay by Frederik Pohl
• What Dreams Remain - novella by Frederik Pohl
• Report on Planet Earth - essay by Charles Sheffield
• The Price of Civilization - (1992) - novelette by Charles Sheffield
• Democracy in America in the Year 2042 - essay by Jerry Pournelle
• Higher Education - novella by Jerry Pournelle and Charles Sheffield

Hugo and Nebula Award winning novelette.

Evidence that a copy of Babbage's Analytical Engine had once existed on the South Island of New Zealand leads to even more remarkable discoveries.

The story was originally published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, January 1993. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eleventh Annual Collection (1994), edited by Gardner Dozois, Nebula Awards 29 (1995), edited by Pamela Sargent, and The New Hugo Winners, Volume IV: (1992-94) (1997), edited by Gregory Benford. It is included in the collection Georgia on My Mind and Other Places (1995).

A collection of some of the finest short stories penned by a master of hard science fiction, this anthology includes Charles Sheffield's highly acclaimed novelette, Georgia On My Mind.

Georgia On My Mind won both the Hugo and Nebula when originally published in 1993. The accompanying stories were written by the author between 1987 and 1994.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1995) - essay
• The Feynman Saltation - (1992) - shortstory
• The Bee's Kiss - (1994) - novelette
• Millennium - (1994) - shortstory
• Fifteen-Love on the Dead Man's Chest - (1993) - shortstory
• Deep Safari - (1992) - novelette
• Beyond the Golden Road - (1989) - novelette
• Health Care System - (1990) - novelette
• Humanity Test - (1989) - novelette
• That Strain Again... - (1988) - shortstory
• Destroyer of Worlds - (1989) - novella
• The Fifteenth Station of the Cross - (1993) - shortstory
• Trapalanda - (1987) - novelette
• Obsolete Skill - (1987) - shortstory
• Georgia on My Mind - (1993) - novelette

Hugo Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, November 1990. The story is included in the collection Dancing With Myself (1993).

Jay Hara is an ordinary young man growing up on the isolated planet of Erin. But Jay dreams of adventure and escapades and the legend of the lost "Godspeed" drive which allowed humans to travel at faster-than-light speeds.

His life changes when he joins up with the seedy spacer, Paddy Enderton and Captain Daniel Shaker. Captain Shaker is a charming but ruthless adventurer who inspires both fear and admiration in equal measure, and he and his questionable crew are joined by Jay as they race to find the legendary drive Jay Hara used to dream about.

Godspeed is a true coming-of-age tale told in the classic tradition of R.L. Stevenson's Treasure Island. A modern day pirate story, set among the stars.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay
• The Man Who Stole the Moon - (1980) - novelette
• Afterword: The Man Who Stole the Moon - essay
• The Deimos Plague - (1978) - shortstory
• Afterword: The Deimos Plague - essay
• Forefather Figure - (1981) - novelette
• Afterword: Forefather Figure - essay
• Moment of Inertia - (1980) - novelette
• Afterword: Moment of Inertia - essay
• The New Physics: The Speed of Lightness, Curved Space, and Other Heresies - (1980) - shortstory
• Afterword: The New Physics - essay
• From Natural Causes - (1978) - shortstory
• Afterword: From Natural Causes - essay
• Legacy - (1977) - novelette
• Afterword: Legacy - essay
• The Softest Hammer - (1981) - shortstory
• Afterword: The Softest Hammer - essay
• Hidden Variable - (1980) - novelette
• Afterword: Hidden Variable - essay
• A Certain Place in History - (1977) - shortstory
• Afterword: A Certain Place in History - essay
• All the Colors of the Vacuum - (1981) - novelette
• Afterword: All the Colors of the Vacuum - essay
• Perfectly Safe, Nothing to Worry About - (1977) - shortstory
• Afterword: Perfectly Safe, Nothing to Worry About - essay
• Summertide - (1981) - novella
• Afterword: Summertide - essay
• The Marriage of True Minds - (1980) - novelette
• Afterword: The Marriage of True Minds - essay

There's no question mark in this book's title. The stories gathered under it won't politely request permission to play with your head. They're not asking you, they're telling you! In the gutsy tradition of the best science fiction speculation, they'll confront your assumptions and force you to discard the thoughtless certainties of everyday life. In thirteen stimulating tales, some of SF's brightest thinkers entertainingly challenge you to stretch your mind around the answers that might shape your future.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1995) - essay by Charles Sheffield
• Zap Thy Neighbor - (1995) - novelette by James P. Hogan
• Choice - (1995) - short story by Lawrence Watt-Evans
• The Meetings of the Secret World Masters - (1995) - novella by Geoffrey A. Landis
• The Invasion of Space - (1995) - novelette by Charles Sheffield
• The South Los Angeles Broadcasting System - (1993) - short story by Larry Niven
• Buyer's Remorse - (1995) - short story by Kathe Koja and Barry N. Malzberg
• Souls on Ice - (1995) - short story by Arlan Andrews, Sr.
• Raw Terra - (1995) - novelette by Nick Pollotta
• The Product of the Extremes - (1995) - short story by Brenda W. Clough
• My Soul to Keep - (1995) - novelette by Jerry Oltion
• Defense Conversion - (1995) - novelette by Doug Beason
• The Guatemala Cure - (1995) - short story by Mary A. Turzillo
• Higher Education - (1994) - novella by Jerry Pournelle and Charles Sheffield
• About the Authors - (1995) - essay by Charles Sheffield

Lionel Salkind was glad for a visit from his twin brother Leo; the two rarely saw each other. Tehn their plane went down, and as he lost consciousness Lionel knew that Leo was dead.

Lionel woke up in a hospital, to the eerie news that he owed his life to bits of his dead brother's brain transplanted into his own skull. It was a very experimental operation, but it seemed to have been successful.

And then the memories began. Terrifying snatches of memory that had no place in Lionel's own quiet past. Leo's memories, calling him somewhere to finish a job half-done - a dangerous job whose importance to the world Lionel had not even begun to grasp.

This short story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May 1989, and was reprinted in Clarkesworld Magazine, #84 September 2013. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Seventh Annual Collection (1990), edited by Gardner Dozois, Clones (1998), edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois, and Worldmakers: SF Adventures in Terraforming (2001), edtied by Gardner Dozois. The story can be found in the collection Dancing With Myself (1993).

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

This novelette originally appeared in Science Fiction Age, September 1999. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Seventeenth Annual Collection (2000), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collection The Lady Vanishes and Other Oddities of Nature (2002).

Lawyers in Space?! Well, yes. It's a terrifying thought. But there are lawyers and lawyers. And then, there are Henry Carver and Waldo P. Burmeister. Sometimes it's not clear if their greatest skill lies in getting their clients out of trouble -- or in getting themselves into it. Whether it's Waldo doggedly trying to escape The Dalmation of Faust or Henry's grim internal struggle against Parasites Lost, or the two working together, because so much is riding With the Knight Male, their adventures are sure to entertain every reader -- and lead most to consider a long time before daring to seek legal representation.

Presenting the space adventures of Arthur Morton McAndrew, space-time expert and scientist extraordinaire, and his long-suffering companion, spaceship skipper Jeanie Roker. Jeanie first met McAndrew on a routine run to Titan and quickly learned he was a genius of the caliber of Newton or Einstein. When McAndrew invented a space drive that let frail humans survive hundreds of gravities of acceleration, he disappeared while testing it, and Jeanie had to find him, using a trail of cryptic messages he had left behind.That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, in spite of the gray hairs that Jeanie began accumulating as a result of McAndrew's impractical nature and his talent for getting himself into trouble with much more practical villains, such as...

A mass-murderer of several million people A highly-placed government official whose life McAndrew saved, but in an embarrassing way, and who consequently wants to kill both him and Jeanie The ruler of a slower-than-light spaceship that left Earth a long time ago, giving it time to develop some very strange customs by the time McAndrew and Jeanie visited it.And there are still more adventures of this spacegoing odd couple in The Compleat McAndrew.Publisher's Note: Part of this book was previously published as One Man's Universe.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Charles Sheffield
• First Chronicle: Killing Vector - (1978) - short story
• Second Chronicle: Moment of Inertia - (1980) - novelette
• Third Chronicle: All the Colors of the Vacuum - (1981) - novelette
• Fourth Chronicle: The Manna Hunt - (1982) - novelette
• Fifth Chronicle: The Hidden Matter of McAndrew - (1992) - novelette
• Sixth Chronicle: The Invariants of Nature - (1993) - novelette
• Seventh Chronicle: Rogueworld - (1983) - novella
• Eighth Chronicle: With McAndrew, Out of Focus - (1999) - novelette
• Ninth Chronicle: McAndrew and the Fifth Commandment - (1999) - novelette
• Appendix: Science & Science Fiction - essay by Charles Sheffield

This short story originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, April 2002. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 8 (2003), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer.

Guarding an ancient cross that is believed to hold the soul of the disciple Judas Iscariot, Marquis Louis Villette, a knight of an ancient secret order, witnesses the devastating effects of world war on his French homeland and his loved ones.

This short story originally appeared in Science Fiction Age, November 1996. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual Collection (1997), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Hard SF Renaissance (1998), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. The story is included in the collection The Lady Vanishes and Other Oddities of Nature (2002).

A government scientist specializing in optics and material properties has done the impossible: she literally disappeared from the top-security research facility in Reston, VA; her ex-boyfriend is called in to find out how she pulled it off... and why. Year's Best Science Fiction Pick.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay
• The Lady Vanishes - (1996) - shortstory
• The Peacock Throne - (1996) - novelette
• Brooks Too Broad For Leaping - (1998) - shortstory
• The Art of Fugue - (2000) - shortstory
• The Whole Three Yards - shortstory
• Cloud Cuckoo - (1996) - novelette
• Packing Fraction - (1998) - shortstory
• Nuremberg Joys - (2000) - novelette
• What Would You Like to Know? - (1997) - novelette
• Waiting for the Riddlers - (1997) - shortstory
• Phallicide - (1999) - novelette

A collection of short stories. From Amazon: Meet McAndrew. Einstein came close. Heisenberg and Dirac too. But not since Newton has any human had such insight into the nature of reality. And like Newton, McAndrew doesn't just think: he invents things, things like inertialess drives and interstellar spaceships. Unfortunately for his favorite fieldtester, not even McAndrew's inventions always work right the first time, and when you're four light years from Earth that can be a problem. It's a good thing the beautiful and daring Jeannie Roker brought McAndrew along for a little warmth in the cold depths of space.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: The McAndrew Chronicles - essay by Charles Sheffield
• First Chronicle: Killing Vector - (1978)
• Second Chronicle: Moment of Inertia - (1980)
• Third Chronicle: All the Colors of the Vacuum - (1981)
• Fourth Chronicle: The Manna Hunt - (1982)
• Fifth Chronicle: Rogueworld - (1983)
• Appendix: The Science in the Science Fiction - essay by Charles Sheffield

A young American couple having marriage difficulties come to the coast of northern Scotland to work on the development of nuclear power in the area and discover the Selkies, a horrifying race of mutants living in nearby sea caves.

Rob Merlin was the best engineer who had ever lived. That was why "The King of Space" had to have him for the most spectacular construction project ever - even though Rob was a potentially fatal threat to his power...

Thus begins a breakthrough novel by the former President of the American Astronautical Society, about an idea whose time has come: a shimmering bridge between Earth and space that mankind will climb to the stars!

A man from Earth's distant past is humanity's only hope for a future...

Drake Merlin's wife, the love of his life, is dying of a rare, fatal disease for which there is no cure. Not now, in the 21st century. But surely in the future... For Drake there is only one solution: have Ana's body frozen until she can be cured. And he will go with her into the cryowomb. It is a desperate gamble born of folly, obsession... and love.

Thus begins an epic journey across eons, as Drake is revived again and again, only to find that Ana is beyond help. Millions of years past his first sleep, he learns there is hope for her restoration--at the Omega Point, where the universe collapses, merging past and present.

But first he will be awakened to become humanity's unwilling savior. For an alien menace is laying the solar system to waste, and only an anachronism from the days of human barbarism can save an enlightened race..

A Trader had no home - yet was at home everywhere.

From the Chill settlements to Cap City, from the Strine Interior to the Darklands and out to the space colonies, the Traders were always on the move.

They did the deals, turned contacts into contracts. They collected information, exchanged technologies, undertook espionage...

Always outsiders, welcomed warily at best, at risk always, they and their systems were everywhere but belonged nowhere.

To be a Trader was to live by your wits, survive through training and experience and to relax only with other Traders.

Mikal Asparian was about to enter the world of the Traders.

A collection of Sheffield's short stories, written from 1977 to 1979.

Table of Contents:

• What Song the Sirens Sang - (1977) - short story
• Introduction (Vectors) - essay
• Fixed Price War - (1978) - short story
• Marconi, Mattin, Maxwell - (1977) - short story
• Power Failure - (1978) - novelette
• Killing Vector - (1978) - short story
• Dinsdale Dissents - (1977) - short story
• We Hold These Truths to Be Self-Evident - (1977) - novelette
• Skystalk - (1979) - novelette
• How to Build a Beanstalk - (1979) - essay
• Transition Team - (1978) - novelette
• Bounded in a Nutshell - (1978) - short story
• The Long Chance - (1977) - novelette
• The Treasure of Odirex - (1978) - novella
• The Dalmatian of Faust - (1978) - short story

It's 2026, and the Alpha Centauri supernova has risen like a second sun, rushing Earth toward its last summer. Floods, fires, starvation and disease paralyze the planet. A flash of gamma rays has destroyed all microchips worldwide, leaving an already devastated Earth without communications, transportation, weaponry or medicine.

The disaster sets three groups of survivors on separate quests. A militant cult seizes the opportunity to free their leader from her long court-mandated coma. Three cancer patients also search for a man in judicial sleep: the brilliant scientist - and monstrous criminal - who alone can continue the experimental treatment that keeps them alive. From a far greater distance come the survivors of the first manned Mars expedition, struggling homeward to a world that has changed far beyond their darkest fears. And standing at the crossroads is one man, U.S. President Saul Steinmetz, who faces a crucial decision that will affect the fate of his own people... and the world.

The end draws nigh....

The year is 2053, and Earth has barely recovered from the Alpha Centauri supernova that destroyed much of the planet's infrastructure. Now the supernova's residual effect - a storm of high-energy particles - is racing toward Earth, and an international effort has been launched out of the Sky City space colony to save the planet. But the controversial plan - to build a giant protective shield for Earth - is falling dangerously behind schedule.

A series of unexplained murders has disrupted the Sky City workforce, so much so that a brilliant but monstrous criminal has been enlisted to track down the Sky City killer.Then comes more startling news. Evidence indicates that the original supernova was caused deliberately, and that the lethal particle storm will arrive sooner than anyone expected. But who - or what - tried to destroy the Earth? And will the answer come in time to save it from its final apocalypse?

In the 23rd century, humanity is considered one of the lesser galactic breeds -- until a threat to all life in the galaxy arises, and suddenly human valor and stubbornness come in very handy.

Spacer Chan Dalton is torn between two masters. The pacifist aliens who hold Earth under Quarantine want him to find out why their starships have been disappearing in the Geyser Swirl, the Bermuda Triangle of the galaxy. Earth's military, which has secretly discovered a way to break the quarantine, assumes that someone out there is making ships vanish, including Earth's, and wants Dalton to find the culprits and hopefully stop them - with extreme prejudice, if necessary.

The trouble is, the aliens hold the taking of intelligent life, even in selfdefense, to be the greatest of sins. It was Earth's violent ways (in defense of the damned pacifist aliens!) that led to the quarantine in the first place -and if Dalton is forced to fight, it will unveil, and so destroy, Earth's final chance to reach for the stars again. So when Dalton does indeed discover the hostile invaders responsible for the lost starships, he is faced with an impossible decision: Fight and lose access to space forever; or allow a rapacious enemy to run riot over all that he holds dear...

Twenty-five years ago there was a great interplanetary war in the Solar System. It was a suicidal spasm in which terrible weapons were created and used; in which nine billion people were killed. The rivalries that led to the war are not gone. And a few of those deadly weapons remain--some still orbiting the sun in the debris of destroyed ships, some deliberately placed in storage.

Now Cyrus Mobarak, the man who perfected the fusion engine, is determined to bring human settlement to the protected seas of Europa. Opposing him is Hilda Brandt, Europa's administrator. And caught between them are three remarkable young people: Jon Perry, Camille Hamilton, and Wilsa Sheer.

Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Charles Sheffield returns to the Solar System of his novel Cold As Ice, to spin a tale of the years immediately following the Great War, a horrifying spasm that was over in weeks, but killed half the human race.

The Solar System is finally recovering from the Great War – a war that devastated the planets and nearly wiped out the human race – and the population of the outer moons, orbiting Jupiter and Saturn, is growing.

On one of those moons, Alex Ligon, scion of a great interplanetary trading family has developed a wonderfully accurate new population model, and cannot wait until the newly reconstituted "Seine," the interlinked network of computers that spans the planets and moons and asteroids, comes back on line. But when it does, and he extends his perfect model a century into the future, it predicts the complete destruction of the human race.

On another moon, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence goes on, undaunted by generations of failure. And to her amazement, Millie Wu, a young genius newly recruited to the project, has found a signal... a signal that is coming from outside the solar system.

And in his new retreat on a minor moon of Saturn, the cranky genius Rustam Battacharyia is still collecting weapons from the Great War. He thinks he may have stumbled on an unexpected new one... but he'll need to disarm it before it destroys the Sun.

Set more than four thousand years in the future, Summertide introduces a galaxy widely populated by humans and a variety of intelligent aliens, all of whom live in the shadow of the vanished race known only as the Builders. Nothing is known about the Builders, but the gigantic artifacts they have left behind - many of them still hardly understood - dominate the areas of space in which they are found. One such is the double-planet system of Opal and Quake - the former covered in water, the latter in desert - connected by a Builder device called the Umbilical. It is to this system that a variety of humans and aliens come, ostensibly to witness Summertide - the annual tidal wave which sweeps across Opal.

For millennia, humankind and the other intelligent races had studied the bizarre and unfathomable constructs of the legendary beings known as Builders. But for all that study, they were still no closer to figuring out who - or what - the Builders had been, or where they had gone. Then, on the world called Quake, in the midst of the violent planetary upheaval that was Summertide, a small group of humans and aliens witnessed the culmination of all those years of watching and waiting: the planet Quake opened up, and something came out - and it looked as if, at long last, the discovery of the Builders themselves was at hand.

All her life, Darya Lang had dreamed of finding the Builders, whose artifacts she had single-handedly catalogued for the rest of the universe. Troubleshooter and adventurer Hans Rebka had his own dreams of unraveling the mystery of those artifacts. To Louis Nenda and the Cecropian Atvar H'sial, the Builder artifacts represented a once-in-a-lifetime shot at untold wealth. And close behind them came the others: Councilor Julius Graces, who did not trust anyone to make first contact unassisted; the slavesJ'merlia and Kallik, who craved only a reunion with their masters; and the embodied computer E.C. Tally, charged with finding out just what the rest were up to.

The trail that began at Quake led to unexpected Builder artifacts full of traps for the unwary and answers for those who knew how to ask the questions. But the biggest question of all would remain an enigma, while their search unleashed the greatest threat to civilization ever imagined...

The Zardalu were the greatest menace ever known to the worlds of the spiral arm, enslaving entire races and exterminating others, guided by an unswerving belief in their own supremacy. Then their slaves rose up against them, and for eleven thousand years the Zardalu had been extinct and the spiral arm had known a kind of peace.

But now the Zardalu were back...

The search for the Builders, the legendary alien race whose unfathomable constructs continued to perplex scholars and explorers alike, had led Builder expert Darya Lang, adventurer Hans Rebka, and treasure hunters Louis Nenda and Atvar H'sial to an unknown Builder artifact far outside the spiral arm. There they found the Zardalu - just a few who had been trapped in stasis all those millennia, held there for purposes known only to the Builders. And in the struggle that ensued the Zardalu had been set loose, transported by Builder technology to to galactic parts unknown - free to ravage any world and any race within their grasp.

The only chance to eliminate the Zardalu threat was to find them and wipe them out before they had time to breed back up to strength and once again threaten civilized beings everywhere. The problem was that no one believed the story. Only Darya Land and her companions had actually seen the aliens - and no evidence existed to support their claims. And so the course seemed clear: get a ship themselves and search out the Zardalu.

But the way would not be easy. Even once they managed to locate the Zardalu, they still had the Builders to deal with. For the closer they got to their quarry, the more clear it became that the Zardalu and their world were closely entwined with the fate - and the plans - of the Builders themselves.

Humans first reached out to the stars travelling at a painfully slow sublight crawl - then they found the Bose network, which allowed ships to jump instantaneously from one node in the galactic arm to another. Once in the Network they found the Artifacts: enigmatic structures, millions of years old, left by a vanished race. Incomprehensible to both human ad non-human minds, the Artifacts seemingly defy natural law.

Now, after millions of years, a new Artifact has appeared - and previously discovered Artifacts are showing strange changes in their inexplicable activities. When a motley crew of human and alien scientists and adventurers set out to examine still more Artifacts, they should have considered the fat that some changes are more dangerous than others...

Hans Rebka, interstellar trouble-shooter, had solved the mystery of the gigantic Artefacts built by a race that vanished millions of years ago, and at the same time had defeated the warlike Zardalu, onetime tyrannical rulers of the galaxy. But that was only a warm-up for the main event. In one arm of the galaxy, something is destroying whole stellar systems. Investigating the wave of stellar destruction, Rebka and his motley crew of humans and aliens discover a battle beginning that may determine the ultimate fate of the galaxy itself. Rebka and company must act quickly. Unfortunately, they are trapped on a planet directly in the path of destruction...

When Rick Luban's high school prank to impress his buddies gets him thrown out of school, a long-suffering teacher recommends he apply for a job with a mining company in space. So begins an exciting adventure, the kind that one day will be open to many young men and women.

Shelby Cheever is a spoiled brat. He is also the richest kid in the country. Actually, make that the universe. Bored with his all-the-amusements-money-can-buy life, he decides on a bit of interstellar action, Shelby-style. But it turns out life on a starship is not all fun and games. As part of a crew, Shelby has a few things to learn. Such as how to follow orders instead of simply giving orders. Can Shelby learn how to cooperate with his crewmates?

He may not have a choice. When Shelby becomes the target of a hostage-for-ransom scheme, he'll need all the help he can get.

Scheming to get rid of obstacles, Josh Kerrigan's step-aunt ships him and her autistic step-daughter to Solferino to work for Foodlines. Josh and Dawn join a small training group that is ostensibly doing scientific research and exploration under the watchful eye of the company.

But as the days go by and strange occurrences and mysterious happenings continue, it becomes apparent that something is very wrong and that someone has very different plans for the planet.

Even more importantly, Josh and the other members of the training team realize that they are being lied to about intelligent life existing on the planet and then it becomes a race against time to save those creatures as well as themselves.

Jefferson Kopal, the privileged son of a wealthy family, knows he is a coward and a failure. He dreads appearing for and then barely passes the Space Navy test to qualify for service as an officer--something that has been an integral part of his family's tradition.

He is assigned to the remote Border Command by the Navy and eventually to a ship commanded by Captain Dufferin, who hates everything that the Kopal family stands for.

But when he is abandoned by his Captain and the rest of the crew, left for dead and possibly framed as a traitor, he must find his inner courage and resolve, not only to save himself, but to save his world as well.

In the 22nd century a combination of computer-augmented bio-feedback and chemo-therapy techniques has given man the ability not only to heal himself, but to change himself - to alter his very shape at will. But Form Change has its darker aspects, ranging from unautorized experimentation on human subjects to a threat to the very essence of humanity.

There were problems with the Form Change process. One or two malfunctions at first: people emerging from the tanks in an incorrect form or completely unchanged.

For three years it had been getting worse. Now there had been deaths, and on the Space Farms panic was setting in. People were refusing to go into the tanks. Yet out in the Cloudlands, they needed continuous small form corrections just to stay effective. As the faults increased, their society was on an exponential curve to disaster.

Behrooz Wolf, down in the Inner System, was sent for. But far gone in despair, he was in no state to help. He himself was going mad.

Like a hallucination, the Dancing Man would come capering across his field of vision. Dressed in skin-tight scarlet, he danced up to him, mouthing gibberish, then skipping backwards, tantalisingly, out of sight.

While, hidden in the Kernel Ring, Black Ransone bided his time, waiting for the disintegration of the empires, waiting to inherit the universe.

In the 22nd century biofeedback techniques to control by will the processes of one's own body have reached their ultimate expression: the ability to transform the body into virtually any viable form whatsoever. What began as an innocent technique to reduce anxiety without recourse to drugs has raised fundamental questions about what it is to be human, since form is no longer sufficient nor even relevant.

Enter the Humanity Test: in a future when other techniques can change the forms of animals, so far it has been a guaranteed one hundred percent successful means of determining if a life form started out as human. But now strange life forms, vicious and bestial, are proliferating throughout the Solar System. They are clearly not human, and clearly their nervous systems are too underdeveloped for them to have been human. But though the beasts threaten havoc and death to all the far flung isolated stations, the simple solution of shooting the varmints is impossible: for life forms that according to the Humanity Test started out human the law is very clear: Thou Shalt Not Kill.