Search Worlds Without End

A collection of 19 stories personally selected by the author, including two original to the collection, tales that draw aside the veils of mundane reality to reveal the hidden truths of this world and beyond. Stories that transport the reader from the icy Mars of Winterstrike to the searing deserts of Kazakhstan; from the exotic streets of Inspector Chen's Singapore Three to the forgotten waterways and hidden courtyards of Venice. Liz Williams writes science fiction with the rich textures of the very best fantasy, and fantasy with the sensibilities of high-end science fiction. She reveals the world around us in subtly different shades and portrays other realms with a vividness that defies doubt.

Table of Contents

• Introduction - essay by Tanith Lee
• Mr DeQuincy and the Daughters of Madness - (2000) - short fiction
• Mr Animation and the Wu Zhiang Zombies - (2001) - short story
• Necrochip - (1999) - short fiction
• The Flower of Tekheli - (2004) - short story
• Tycho and the Stargazer - (2003) - short story
• Indicating the Awakening of Persons Buried Alive - (2004) - short fiction
• Voivodoi - (1998) - short story
• On Windhover Down - (2004) - short story
• Troytown - short fiction
• Woewater - (2002) - short story
• Blackthorn and Nettles - (2005) - short story
• The Water Cure - (2004) - short story
• All Fish and Dracula - (2005) - short story
• Who Pays - (2008) - short fiction
• Ikiryoh - (2005) - short story
• The Age of Ice - (2006) - short story
• La Malcontenta - (2005) - short story
• Dusking - (2009) - short story
• A Glass of Shadow - short fiction

Journey into a strange future fueled by haunt-tech: a technology which works by harnessing energy from of the realm of the dead. But who are the mysterious race known as the Kami who brought haunt-tech to earth? Saviors from another world, or something else entirely? And how does the child named Lunae who can manipulate time with a thought fit into the puzzle? It is up to the Martian warrior Dreams-of-War to answer these questions before life as she knows it comes to an end.

Millions of years ago alien beings seeded Earth with their genetic strands to create a new outpost of intelligent life. Now their descendants have returned to Earths skies, drawn by their detection of a Receiver, a human with the genetic ability to tap into alien communications. It is the signal that Earth is ready to be absorbed into a vast galactic empire.

Jaya Nihalani has been a prophet, a crusader, and a terrorist, fighting for the rights of her despised Untouchable caste. Now she lies in an Indian hospital, dying of a hideous disease. Her head is filled with voices and visions; her body is aging rapidly, inexplicably. But the voices and visions are no disease. Jaya is the Receiver whom the aliens intend to heal, enlighten…and use.

Soon the subcontinent erupts in riots and chaos as powerful forces attempt to co-opt the enigmatic alien emissaries, and a shocked world awaits its fate. Jaya must somehow discover the plans of her perfect and powerful friends. Have they come to end human suffering, or to make it worse? Should she help themor lead the impossible fight against them?

This short story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, December 2005. It can also be found in the anthologies Year's Best SF 11 (2005), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, and Twenty-First Century Science Fiction (2013), edited by David G. Hartwell and Partick Nielsen Hayden. The story is included in the collection A Glass of Shadow (2011).

This short story originally appeared on Strange Horizons, 7 March 2005. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Third Annual Collection (2006), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collection A Glass of Shadow (2011).

Read the full story for free at Strange Horizons.

This short story originally appeared in Interzone, #193 Spring 2004. It can also be found in the anthologies Year's Best SF 10 (2005), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, and Future Fiction: New Dimensions in International Science Fiction (2018), edited by Bill Campbell and Francesco Verso. The story is included in the collection The Banquet of the Lords of Night and Other Stories (2004).

This short story originally appeared in Realms of Fantasy, August 2008. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2009, edited by Rich Horton. The story is included in the collection The Light Warden (2015).

This short story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, April-May 2006. It can also be found in the antholgy Year's Best SF 12 (2012), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. The story is included in the collection A Glass of Shadow (2011).

In such novels as The Poison Master, Empire of Bones, and Nine Layers of Sky, Liz Williams sparked readers' imaginations by creating worlds at once strange and familiar. Now this bold new writer brings her best short fiction together in one stunning collection. The stories featured in The Banquet of the Lords of Night have appeared in Asimov's, Interzone, Realms of Fantasy, and The Third Alternative, among others. The stories within the covers of The Banquet of the Lords of Night are varied in style and subject matter, but they are all powerfully written. From the breathtaking title story, "Banquet of the Lords of Night" about an Earth plunged into a world of darkness where light is against the law to the stunning "The Man from the Ministry" in which we learn the how far a mother will go where her family is concerned; Williams displays an astonishing breadth and variety of writing styles. Williams is equally at home writing galaxy-spanning science fiction like "Quantum Anthropology" as she is weaving a tale like "Adventures in the Ghost Trade" which incorporates demons, magic, the afterlife, and private detectives. "Williams's unique cross-genre voice is a reinvigorating one for SF, fantasy and horror."

Table of Contents:

• Adventures in the Ghost Trade - (2000) - short story
• Outremer - (1999) - short story
• Skindancing - short story
• A Child of the Dead - (1997) - short story
• The Sea of Time and Space - (2001) - short story
• The Daykeeper - (2000) - short story
• Dieudamour - (1998) - short story
• Sharecropper - (2002) - short story
• Nightside - (1999) - short story
• Dog Years - (2000) - short story
• Dancing Day - (2003) - short story
• The Banquet of the Lords of Night - (2002) - short story
• Loosestrife - (2004) - short story
• Ancestors' Song - (2000) - short story
• Orchidae - (2000) - short story
• Quantum Anthropology - (2002) - short story
• The Blood Thieves - (2000) - short fiction
• The Man from the Ministry - (2002) - short story

The fate of a planet lies with an outcast woman and a mysterious visitor....

In this richly imagined and thought-provoking novel, Liz Williams tells the story of a world engineered to preserve the precarious balance between animal and human. To this world comes an emissary from a distant planet who will walk the razor-thin line between consciousness and instinct, freedom and conformity, life and death.

On Monde D'Isle a rugged people live in union with their world. They migrate with the tides of the moon, sense the meridians of the planet, and slip into a Dreamtime that grants them access to -- and escape from -- the darker urges of their animal nature.

Mevennen ai Mordha is out of tune with her people's "bloodmind." She is protected by her devoted brother Eleres, who refuses to listen to those who say that Mevennen is not fit to live. Still, Mevennen fears that even her brother will give in to his instincts during the time of the hunt, when the Mondhaith seek out the weakest as their prey.

Taking her on an expedition in hope of a cure, Eleres has brought Mevennen deep into the wilderness. There they are visited by a strange woman who they are certain is a ghost, but who is really a Gaian anthropologist charged with bringing utopia to their world. She promises to heal Mevennen -- but it is a promise that comes with a terrible price....

On the planet of Latent Emanation, humans are the lowest class, at the mercy of their mysterious alien rulers, the Lords of Night. But Alivet Dee, an alchemist, can't help but question the Lords' rule ever since her twin sister was taken to serve in their palace. Alivet saves every penny to pay her sister's unbonding fee, but her plan is destroyed when one of her potions kills a wealthy client--and Alivet finds herself wanted for murder. Her only hope is the darkly attractive man who may have engineered her downfall but who still offers her a last chance of salvation.

A Poison Master from the planet Hathes, Arieth Mahedi Ghairen needs an alchemist of Alivet's expertise to find the one drug that can take down the Lords--and free the universe from their rule. Sequestered in Ghairen's fortress laboratory, lied to by both her new ally and his daughter's enigmatic governess, Alivet doesn't know whom to trust or where to turn for answers. But driven to undo her sister's fate, Alivet races to hone her skills in time--even as time runs out.

This short story originally appeared in Terra Incognita #3. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Sixteenth Annual Collection (1999). The story is included in the collection A Glass of Shadow (2011).

What if being a librarian was the most dangerous job in the world?

Worldsoul, a great city that forms a nexus point between Earth and the many dimensions known as the Liminality, is a place where old stories gather, where forgotten legends come to fade and die--or to flourish and rise again. Until recently, Worldsoul has been governed by the Skein, but they have gone missing and no one knows why. The city is also being attacked with lethal flower-bombs from an unknown enemy. Mercy Fane and her fellow Librarians are doing their best to maintain the Library, but... things... keep breaking out of ancient texts and legends and escaping into the city. Mercy must pursue one such nightmarish creature, and she turns to Shadow the alchemist for aid, with the fate of the Library--and Worldsoul itself--hanging in the balance...

In the far-distant future Vali Hallsdottir, assassin of an organisation known as the Skald, is sent on a mission to the world of Nhem. Her assignment is to eliminate the destructive patriarchal regime of the Hierolath. But shortly after her arrival, Vali finds herself betrayed by her mission partner, who is not the man he seems. Frey, once Vali's lover, has undergone a genetic transformation and has his own agenda for travelling to Nhem. After Vali's escape from the clutches of the Hierolath's militia she goes in search of Frey in order to discover the reasons for his betrayal. Her journey takes Vali to Darkland, where sinister forces known as the vitki wreak havoc ...

Vali Hallsdottir has returned to her home world of Muspell to discover that her nation is in chaos, preparing to face invasion from the neighbouring country of Darkland. When her friend and mentor Idhunn is brutally murdered and her spine removed and stolen, Vali falls under suspicion and is held by the army of the Morrighanu, but released by a mysterious force. Having nowhere else to run, she travels across the northern ice field to the hostile glacier territory of Darkland, where she meets an old enemy, Thorn Eld, a member of the elite security force known as the vitki.

Eld tells her that Darkland has spawned a rogue assassin, a female vitki killer known as Skinning Knife and despite their differences Vali and Eld decide to join forces and track down the vitki's most lethal weapon. Together they are facing some dangerous questions about the nature of Skinning Knife herself, and her impact on their world ...and they are not the only ones who are desperate to discover the assassin's whereabouts...

'Confirmation, if any were really needed, that Williams is one of the most original and distinctive voices in British SF' - "SFX".

BSFA nominated short story. It short story originally appeared in Interzone, #154 April 2000, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, July 2015. The story is included in the collection The Banquet of the Lords of Night and Other Stories (2004).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

You were supposed to go to Heaven, but ended up in one of the many Chinese hells instead. Who you gonna call? Nobody, you're dead. Luckily, in future Singapore, Detective Chen is on the case. Specializing in supernatural crimes, Chen finds himself in hell teaming up with a demon cop to solve the mystery, return a lost soul to its rightful reward, and restore harmony between Heaven and Earth.

The second Detective Inspector Chen novel (after Snake Agent) returns us to Singapore Three. A mysterious murder sends Chen and his demonic partner Zhu Irzh on the trail of a conspiracy between hell and one of the heavenly hosts.

In this, the third Detective Inspector Chen novel, Chen and Zhu are given a major assignment to escort an emissary from heaven on a diplomatic mission to hell. Zhu tries to dodge his demonic family's overtures, but ends up embroiled in hell's political intrigues. At the same time, a young boy born to ghostly parents in Hell is sent to live with his grandmother in Singapore Three. The boy, Precious Dragon, is being chased by Hell's most dangerous creatures and ends up being the key to unlock the mystery that is quickly spiraling out of control. Chen and Zhu find themselves in the middle of a struggle much bigger then they can fully comprehend, and when the dust finally settles, neither heaven nor hell will be the same.

Detective Inspector Chen is back!

The Snake Agent returns in The Shadow Pavilion, the fourth Detective Inspector Chen novel from Liz Williams. When Chen's partner, the demon Seneschal Zhu Irzh, disappears, along with Chen's wife and Inari's guardian badger, Chen must enlist all of his allies and assets in order to locate them!

From the strange streets of Singapore Three to the rough and tumble world of Bollywood, where money flows fast and emotions flare even faster; from the realms of the Celestial to the haunts of the Infernal and all the spaces in-between, The Shadow Pavilion delivers the thrills, excitement, and near-future occult action fans have come to expect.

Liz Williams possesses the mind of a scientist and the soul of a pagan; her words paint the world in eldritch shades, revealing the familiar in subtly altered forms that make us question our own understanding. In 2010, NewCon Press released Liz's last short story collection, the critically acclaimed 'A Glass of Shadow', and we are now proud to release her next, 'The Light Warden', as part of the Imaginings series.

What the critics said of 'A Glass of Shadow':

"Williams' prose is filled with an understated elegance... This is speculative fiction at its finest: challenging, rich, and, like a good red wine, rewardingly complex." - Strange Horizons

"Williams' rich, colourful stories uniquely combine the usually disparate and mutually incompatible genres of science fiction and fantasy: she writes with equal facility about geographically far-flung settings, ages past, and distant futures." - The Guardian

"From the moment you open this collection, you leave the Known behind and enter the brighter, darker, more actual possibility that lies just through that door, over that hill..." - Tanith Lee

"Williams has mastered the art of writing clearly and believably about weird, alien worlds." - The Times

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (The Light Warden) - essay by Kari Sperring
• The Dragon of Direfell Hall - short fiction (variant of The Dragon of Direfell 2009)
• Tiger, Tiger - (2006) - short story
• Spiderhorse - (2008) - short fiction
• Stormbird - short fiction
• Cad Coddeu - (2012) - short fiction
• The Hide - (2007) - short story
• The Light Warden - short fiction
• Milk - (2010) - short fiction
• Seamoth - short fiction
• The Drove - short fiction
• Skinnrig - short fiction
• Lily Juice - short fiction
• Enigma - (2009) - short story
• The Winter King - short fiction
• Isambard's Kingdom - (2009) - short fiction

A contemporary tale of four fey sisters.

Bee: the practical one, the lynchpin; still living in the family home of Mooncote in Somerset, where she has met an unconventional boyfriend that not even her sisters are aware of.

Stella: a DJ currently hanging around the Med after completing a series of gigs in Ibiza, she has vowed never to return to Mooncote following a row with Bee, but that was then...

Serena: a single mother and fashion designer living in Notting Hill, increasingly uncertain of her relationship with long-term boyfriend Ben, a Camden-based rock singer and the son of a family friend.

Luna: the youngest, head-strong and free-spirited, a wanderer living out of a horse-drawn van while she follows the Gypsy Switch: the route of horse fairs that spans the length of the country.

The four Fallow sisters, scattered like the four winds but now drawn back together with the comet due, united in their desire to find their mother, Alys - a former Vogue cover model who disappeared a year ago . They have help, of course, from the star spirits and the no-longer-living, but such advice tends to be cryptic and is hardly the most dependable of guides.

As they make preparations for Christmas, four fey sisters are drawn ever further from the familiar world of contemporary London and their Somerset home, from motorways, fashion design and music, into darker realms where no one is who they seem and nothing is to be trusted.

When Serena's latest collection is mysteriously shredded on the eve of fashion week, the arrival of a wealthy benefactor seems a godsend, but is he all he seems? And what of the green-skinned girl Bee takes in after finding her cowering in a churchyard? How are these connected to the magpie changeling (who claims to be an angel) sent to watch over Stella or the timeslips Luna is experiencing with ever greater frequency now that she's pregnant?

Something is coming for the Fallow sisters, for their friends and their lovers, but they have no idea what, and their mother Alys is no help as she's gone wandering again, though she did promise to return by Christmas, and December is already here...

The Fallow Sisters: Bee, Stella, Serena, Luna

Spring is in the air. As the Fallow Sisters and their friends recover from the events of Christmas, life has taken on a semblance of normality, but that's never going to last. They have made enemies, and it's not long before darker concerns intrude on their comfortable existence in contemporary London and their Somerset home. Once again they face danger beyond their understanding; a threat they are determined to identify and master.

Serena's relationship with the movie actor, Ward, is going from strength to strength, but when she is dragged back to the past while on location with him in Brighton, she knows the discovery of a dead airman is significant, but has no idea how. And what was Ward's ex Miranda doing there in the year 1893? Miranda had been present during some of the events of the winter, but was her role more significant than anyone realised?

When Diana, the Huntress, appears to Stella in central London and sets her a task to complete, Stella knows she can't refuse, but is it something she can hope to achieve?

If only the sisters could trust their mother, but they all sense there are things that Alys isn't telling them and instinct warns them to be wary of her...

The Fallow Sisters: Bee, Stella, Serena, Luna

Four Fey Sisters whose lives straddle the contemporary and the 'otherworld' -- comprising the past and alternative realms.

In this concluding volume of the magical quartet, new dangers arise as the focus shifts from the family home of Mooncote in rural Somerset to the rugged coastline of Cornwall. The sisters and their friends -- Ace, Ver, Dark, Davy, Nick, Laura, and Kit Coral -- find themselves embroiled in a deadly struggle between the land and sea: the Wild Hunt and the Wreckers and Pirates, a conflict that reaches down through the ages.

Their mother, Alys, claims amnesia after being thrown from a horse, but is she faking it? Who is the sinister Morlaker who first warns them off and then invades Mooncote itself, whose very presence chills them to the bone? Who is the mysterious woman -- first glimpsed in the crowds at the Wimbledon tournament -- who so resembles their deceased nemesis Miranda? And what part does Good Queen Bess have to play in all this? Is she all that she seems, or more than she seems? And then there's Hob, can he be trusted?

The most pressing question, of course, is: will all four sisters survive this latest adventure?

Far across the sands of Mars, deep within the walls of a dead city, something stirs; an awakening that threatens to return a malice so ancient it is no longer remembered, except in darkest legend...

Winterstrike is at war and the target of deadly bombardment. Even so, the last thing Canteley expects is for her mother to send her away, and in the company of her formidable aunt at that. Aunt Sulie is a member of the ruling Matriarchy, who wrap secrets around them as thick as winter snowfall.

When Sulie takes her to the abandoned city of Tharsis, Cateley little imagines that the trip will unearth secrets long hidden and reveal the truth behind her own past. Recurring images of a blood red tower standing in the shadow of Olympus Mons have haunted her dreams. Now, at last, she has the chance to discover what they mean.

In Phosphorus, Liz Williams returns to the harsh Mars of her critically acclaimed novels Banner of Souls (shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award) and Winterstrike, delivering a tale laden with mystery and menace, as the Red Planet's bloody past and troubled present collide.