Search Worlds Without End

Lixia and the members of her human crew are determined not to disturb the life on the planet circling the Star Sigma Draconis which they have begun exploring. But the factions on the mother ship hovering above the planet may create an unintended chaos for both the life on the planet and the humans exploring it. As the anger increases on the ship, the ground crew becomes more and more affected by the conflict and begins to rely on their instincts to keep the project moving forward. Unexpected danger plagues the mission as Lixia is determined to expand her knowledge.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Orbit 15 (1974), edited by Damon Knight. It was reprinted in Lightspeed, November 2012.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Big Mama Stories collects five edgy, satirical tales of wily tricksters for the 21st century. In "Big Green Mama Falls in Love," Big Green Mama duplicates herself and discovers just how life-threatening a Big-Mama-sized case of love can be while the skwork learn that one cannot train a microbe to be patriotic. In "Big Red Mama in Time and Morris, Minnesota," Big Red Mama is annoyed big-time when she discovers the Cretaceous has been invaded by an obnoxious human who has stolen a time-machine and decides that some information probably shouldn't be free, particularly since as a group, humans underestimated the damage they did and rarely took responsibility for anything. On the basis of these stories, the one thing you can say for sure is that Big Mamas' lives are never dull.

This novelette originally appeared in Clarkesworld, Issue 126, December 2016. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection (2017), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

Housewife from Minneapolis becomes fighter of monsters.

Secreted away in Iceland's meadows and mountain crags dwell the Hidden Folk--magical beings from the age of the Vikings. In this new collection, Eleanor Arnason has crafted five original tales both fantastical and contemporary, where ordinary folk cross paths with elves and trolls, heroes and magicians, vengeful ghosts, a were-puffin, and even the devil himself. With the same clean, laconic style and quiet sense of humor beloved to readers of her previous award-winning novels and stories, she weaves together the rich imaginative tradition of the Norse sagas and folktales with persistent concerns of our own time: social and environmental justice, the rights of women and underrepresented peoples, and the desire of working people everywhere for freedom and self-determination. In the words of National Book Award winner Will Alexander, "Eleanor Arnason is wise, and everyone who reads Hidden Folk will become the wiser for it. They ll have too much fun to notice, though."

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay
• Glam's Story - (1987) - short story
• Kormak the Lucky - (2013) - novelette
• The Black School - novelette
• The Puffin Hunter - short story
• My Husband Stein - novelette

This short story can be found in The James Tiptree Award Anthology 3 and The Year's Best SF 8.

This novelette originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July-August 2013. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Eight (2014), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2014, edited by Rich Horton. The story is included in the collection Hidden Folk (2014).

Sidewise and Sturgeon Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the collection Mammoths of the Great Plains (2010). The story can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Eighth Annual Collection (2011), edited by Gardner Dozois.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Infinity Wars (2017), edited by Jonathan Strahan. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection (2018), edited by Gardner Dozois.

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Old Venus (2015), edited by Gardner Dozois and George R. R. Martin. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Third Annual Collection (2016), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, May 1996. The story can also be found in the anthologies Isaac Asimov's Camelot (1998) edited by Gardner Dozois and Sheila Williams and The Mammoth Book of Arthurian Legends (1998) edited bt Mike Ashley.

WFA nominated short story. It originally appeared in Realms of Fantasy, June 1999, and appeared on Strange Horizons, 29 March 2004. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Thirteenth Annual Collection (2000), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, and Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology (2015), edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. It is included in the collection Ordinary People (2005).

Read the full story for free at Strange Horizons.

Short story originally published in Subterranean Press Magazine, Winter 2014. It can also be found in the anthlogies The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine, edited by Jonathan Strahan and The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2015 Edition, edited by Rich Horton.

Read the full story for free at Subterranean Press Magazine.

This is the legend. Of Limper, a royal sword smith. Of a baby dragon named Nargri. Of a mountainous land, a world of mystery. Of peasants and kings, sorcerers and trolls. It is a tale of fantasy, but it has the earthy reality of a true story of survival. It is a perilous adventure, but it has wit and charm and love. It is a work of uncommon imagination and rare talent.

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology New Worlds 7 (1974) edited by Hilary Bailey, Charles Platt. In the US this anthology was published as New Worlds #6 in 1975. The story can also be found in the anthologies The New Women of Wonder (1978), edited by Pamela Sargent and The Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction, 1960-1990 (1993), edited by Ursula K. Le Guin and Brian Attebery. It is included in the collection Ordinary People (2005).

It began like any other day....

Until Belinda Smith was abruptly snatched from the comforting surroundings of university life by her mysterious guardian and imprisoned in the solitary confines of Gorwing Keep. Suddenly, she was the reluctant heiress to her planets' largest fortune---and the unwilling bride-to-be of an alien prince.

But fate had still more surprises in store for the young woman. And soon Belinda, her unwanted fiancee, and a battered old robot would find themselves fleeing across the galaxy in search of a new life. Their destination: a real-life fountain of youth, found in only one spot in the entire universe... The fabled planet Earth... and its legendary resurrection station.

Spanning thirty years, this volume collects six stories, one poem, and a WisCon Guest of Honor speech. In the richly ironic "Warlords of Saturn's Moons," first published in 1974, a cigar-puffing woman writes space-opera while the drama of real-life inner-city Detroit goes on around her; "The Grammarian's Five Daughters" offers a playful explication of the uses of the parts of speech; "A Ceremony of Discontent" takes a humorous approach to a modern-day feminist problem; and Arnason's wise, earthy tales of hwarhath serve up new myths explaining the origins of the world and morality (among other things). The work in this collection entertains with its wit, delights with its precision and imagination, and challenges and provokes with its bluntness. Ordinary People offers a small, potent taste of the oeuvre of an important feminist sf author.

Table of Contents:

• The Land of Ordinary People - (1985) - poem
• The Grammarian's Five Daughters - (1999) - short story
• A Ceremony of Discontent - (1981) - short story
• The Warlord of Saturn's Moons - (1974) - short story
• The Lovers - (1994) - novelette
• Origin Story - (2000) - short story
• The Small Black Box of Morality - (1996) - short story
• Writing Science Fiction During the Third World War - essay

Sturgeon Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, September 1999 and was reprinted in Lightspeed, July 2015. The story can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Seventeenth Annual Collection (2000), edited by Gardner Dozois. It is included in the collection Hwarhath Stories: Transgressive Tales by Aliens (2016).

This novelette originally appeared on Eclipse Online, November 12, 2012. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirtieth Annual Collection (2013), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Year's Best SF 18 (2013), edited by David G. Hartwell. The story is included in the collection Hwarhath Stories: Transgressive Tales by Aliens (2016).

Read the full story for free at Night Shade Books.

Hwarhath Stories: Transgressive Tales by Aliens collects a dozen Hwarhath tales with commentary by their translator. As the translator notes, "Humanity has encountered only one other species able to travel among the stars. This species, who call themselves the hwarhath, or 'people,' are also the only intelligent species so far encountered. Of course, we interest and puzzle and disturb each other... The stories in this collection were written after the hwarhath learned enough about humanity to realize how similar (and different) we are. Our existence has called into question many ideas about life and morality that most hwarhath would have called certain a century ago..." "One of the strongest collections of science fiction stories you're ever likely to find. It's hard to think of anybody other than Ursula K. Le Guin who was written better anthropological science fiction than Eleanor Arnason, and this very strong collection gather some of the best stories published by anybody during the last two decades." -- Gardner Dozois, author of When Great Days Come, editor of Year's Best Science Fiction series

Table of Contents:

• The Semen Thief - (1994) - shortstory
• The Lovers - (1994) - novelette
• The Small Black Box of Morality - (1996) - shortstory
• The Gauze Banner - (1998) - novelette
• Dapple - (1999) - novella
• The Actors - (1999) - novella
• Origin Story - (2000) - shortstory
• The Potter of Bones - (2002) - novella
• The Hound of Merin - (1993) - novelette
• The Garden - (2004) - novella
• The Woman Who Fooled Death Five Times - (2012) - shortstory
• Holmes Sherlock - (2012) - shortstory

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Synergy SF: New Science Fiction (2004), edited by George Zebrowski, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, May 2013. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Second Annual Collection (2005), edited by Garnder Dozois, and Best Short Novels: 2005, edited by Jonathan Strahan. The story is included in the collection Hwarhath Stories: Transgressive Tales by Aliens (2016).

Tiptree nominted novelette first published in More Amazing Stories, edited by Kim Mohan. It is included in the collection Hwarhath Stories: Transgressive Tales by Aliens (2016).

Tiptree nominated short story. Originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction, July 1994. Later Collected in Ordinary People (2005) and Hwarhath Stories: Transgressive Tales by Aliens (2016). It was anthologized in Flying Cups and Saucers: Gender Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy (1998).

Read this story online for free at Clarkesworld.

Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, September 2002. The story can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twentieth Annual Collection (2003), edited by Gardner Dozois, and the collection Hwarhath Stories: Transgressive Tales by Aliens (2016).

This short story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July-August 2012. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Seven (2013), edited by Jonathan Strahan. The story is included in the collection Hwarhath Stories: Transgressive Tales by Aliens (2016).

Read the full story for free at the Baen website.

For half a century, Earth has been on the brink of total war with an implacable alien race. Biologist Anna Perez is the first to discover the truth-the hwarhath have segregated their society strictly along gender lines, to prevent the warlike males from harming women and children. In their eyes, humans are a dishonorable and barbaric race who may require extermination...

This novella originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, May 2001. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Nineteenth Annual Collection (2002), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, April 1999. The story can also be found in the anthology Nebula Awards Showcase 2002, edited by Kim Stanley Robinson.

Shaggy herds of mammoths still roam the Great Plains--to the delight of President Thomas Jefferson--in this imaginative alternative history in which the beasts thunder over the grasslands as living symbols of the oncoming struggle between the Native peoples and the European invaders. This unforgettable saga soars from the Badlands of the Dakota Territory to the icy wastes of Siberia, from the Russian Revolution to the American Indian Movement protests of the 1960s and one woman's attempt to harness DNA science to fulfill the ancient promises of her Lakota heritage. In addition, this volume includes the essay "Writing During World War Three," a politically incorrect take on multiculturalism from a science fiction point of view and an outspoken interview with the writer of some of today's edgiest and most uncompromising speculative fiction.

Table of Contents:

• Mammoths of the Great Plains - (2010)
• Writing Science Fiction During World War Three - (2010) - essay by Eleanor Arnason
• "At the Edge of the Future" - (2010) - interview of Eleanor Arnason by Terry Bisson
• Bibliography
• About the Author