Search Worlds Without End

Dr. Michael Drake, a great medical researcher, chose to disappear into the jungles of the world called Bushveld, but now the Human-settled Galaxy needs him to combat a new plague. Journalist-adventurer Robert Markham has determined to locate Drake and bring him back to civilization. But Markham is not after Drake for the same reason as the millions who may die. He is interested in his own reputation as a great explorer - and in the money he will make from selling his story.

How far would you go to unlock the mysteries of an alien culture? Journalist and adventurer Xavier William Lennox becomes obsessed with the rituals of the Fireflies, an alien culture of gold-skinned inhabitants living on the planet Medina. When he gets too close to their mysterious society, he's captured, tortured, and banished for defying their laws, but vows to learn what the aliens are so desperate to hide, even if it means becoming one of them. His curiosity doesn't end there.

As opportunities arise to study more alien races, Lennox takes cultural immersion to the breaking point. He not only buries himself in the language and customs of the aliens, but also undergoes severe surgeries to become one of them. Each time his humanity is stretched until he faces his biggest challenge-trying to return to the ordinary life of a man who has experienced the universe in ways he was never meant to.

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, December 1999. The story can also be found in the collections Hunting the Snark and Other Short Novels (2002), Dreamwish Beasts and Snarks (2009) and Win Some, Lose Some (2012).

In the year 6303, when earth is bare of anything larger than an insect or a mouse and most people have left for the stars, Duncan Rojas receives a most unusual visitor. His name is Bukoba Mandaka, and he is the last of the Maasai. Mandaka wants Rojas, senior researcher for Braxton's Records of Big Game, to find the tusks of the Kilimanjaro Elephant, tusks that weigh over 200 lb. each. Why? Mandaka will not say, but he will pay enormous sums for them. And Rojas cannot resist the challenge of tracing something lost for 3000 years. Back and forth through time, in card games, wars, and rivalries, Rojas searches. But as he begins to glimpse the elusive, lost power of ancient Africa, he is seduced, and before long the quest has become his own.

Hugo Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, July 2003. The story can also be found in the anthologies Robots (2005) edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois, and L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 30 (2014), edited by Dave Wolverton. It is included in the collections New Dreams for Old (2006) and Win Some, Lose Some: The Hugo Award Winning (and Nominated) Short Science Fiction and Fantasy of Mike Resnick (2012).

Read the full story for free at the Baen website.

Seven views of Olduvai Gorge is one of the most celebrated novellas ever written. It not only won both the Hugo and Nebula, but also the Homer award and the SF Chronicle Poll and was a nominee for the Locus Award and the Sturgeon Award. It was alo nominated for a number of international awards, winning the Ignotus and the Universitat Polytechnica Awards in Spain, the Prix Ozone award in France and the Futura Award in Croatia.

In the future, eons after the demise of Humanity and its far-flung galactic empire, a group of alien archiologists visits Earth to uncover the secret of the dead race's initial overwhelming success and its ultimate death.

Digging through layers of Archaeological strata at Olduvai Gorge, they discover seven unique artifacts, each related to a different era of humanity's history and each telling a unique story about humankind's strengths and weakness.

But are they prepared for the final discovery, which will change their worlds forever?

Read this story online for free at Subterranean Press.

Hugo Award winning and Sturgeon Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, December 1997. The story can also be found in the anthology Alien Contact (2012), edited by Marty Halpern. It is included in the collections A Safari of the Mind (1999), New Dreams for Old (2006) and Win Some, Lose Some (2012).

Read the full story for free at Marty Halpern's blog.

Award-winning author Mike Resnick takes us back to his wild and wooly Inner Frontier in this tall-tale of an adventure novel.

On the planet Henry II, orbiting the twin suns Plantagenet and Tudor, at the very edge of the great black hole at the center of the Milky Way, there is a tavern called The Outpost. Through the doors of The Outpost have come the greatest heroes, villains, and adventurers of the galaxcy - to drink, to brag, and to swap tales.

The Outpost is neutral territory where fighting is forbidden and blood enemies can have a drink together and tell stories of battles past. After all bounty hunters, con men, intinerant preachers, thieves, and assassins have more in common with each other than they do with the rest of the mundane galaxy.

But their pleasant life of recalling murder and mayhem is interrupted by an alien invasion, and to save their way of life these rugged individualists must try to work together for a change.

A professional hunter in the future forms a strange relationship with the creature he is hired to kill, and an obsession that begin like Ahab's for Moby Dick very subtly morphs into something closer to The Flying Dutchman.

He killed 11 million men in the death camps of Pilor IX during the brief reign of the mad Emperor Justacious. He killed 17 million men on Boriga II in a manner that made the gas ovens of ancient Earth and its Reich seem compassionate. He killed 5 million women and children on New Rhodesia. He killed 3,017 men on Cambria III, each in a different way. He invented torture devices that even Spica VI, which was in revolt against the Republic, would not use.

No photograph, holograph, or videodisc of him is known to exist. He has never been fingerprinted. There is no voice or retina identification pattern on him in any computer. He has no bank account on any world, no financial or property holdings that anyone has been able to trace. His planet of origin is unknown. Many men have served him; all but seven are dead, and none of those seven have ever seen him.

He is a fugitive.

His name is Conrad Bland and he is, for the moment, safe. But someone has sent an assassin to find him - and end him.

Chief Detective John Sable is caught between his badge and his conscience as the two most famous executioners of all time prepare to do battle in his territory.

The Earth-like planet Peponi has vast riches, an abundant and opulent wildlife, much like Kenya on old-Earth, and most importantly, compliant natives. But now that humanity is on the brink of opening up an entirely new world, has it learned its lessons from the past? Covers the time from colonization to independence.

When Karimon is claimed by human colonists, which bears an uncanny resemblence to Zimbabwe on old-Earth, the planet's intelligent reptile inhabitants fight back by forging an alliance with the invaders' enemies. Covers the time from colonization to independence.

A small group of humans hope to avoid the mistakes that destroyed many other worlds. They are raising the Jasons from barbarism to civilization, on a planet which has much in comman with Uganda from old-Earth, but something goes hideously wrong.

William Masterson must try to find out why Jehanum, a showplace planet with a model government, productive farms, and a thriving tourist industry, has descended into bloody barbarism. One dictator after another rises to power, and the culture of the world is torn to fragments.

The Democracy is at war with the alien Traanskei Coalition. War hero Colonel Nathan Pretorius has a record of success on dangerous behind-enemy-lines missions, missions that usually leave him in the hospital. Now he's recruited for a near-impossible assignment that may well leave him dead.

At the cost of many lives, the Democracy has managed to clone and train General Michkag, one of the Traanskei's master strategists. Colonel Pretorius and a hand-picked team must kidnap the real Michkag if they can, assassinate him if they can't, but no matter which, put the clone in his place, where he will misdirect the enemy's forces and funnel vital information to the Democracy.

Against the odds, Pretorius, along with Cyborg Felix Ortega, computer expert Toni Levi, convict and contortionist Sally "Snake" Kowalski, the near-human empath Marlowe, the alien Gzychurlyx, and Madam Methuselah - the Dead Enders - must infiltrate the Fortress in Orion, accomplish their mission, and escape with their lives.

The Traanskei Coalition's greatest weapon is the Q bomb, and after years of failure, the Democracy has come up with a defense against it. The problem is that they killed most of the team that created it. The sole survivor, Edgar Nmumba, was kidnapped by the Coalition. Only Nmumba can duplicate the work fast enough to prevent the loss of another dozen populated planets.

Nathan Pretorius and his team of Dead Enders will require all their skills and cunning to rescue him, sane and in one piece, from the Coalition's best-hidden and best-guarded prison, somewhere in the Antares sector. But in a game of cross and double-cross, can they find him before it's too late?

A crisis has arisen. In the first book of the series, THE FORTRESS IN ORION, Pretorius and his Dead Enders kidnapped the real General Michkag and substituted a clone who had been raised and trained in the Democracy. But now they find that the clone likes being the most powerful man in the hundred-world Traanskei Coalititon - and having been raised on Earth, he knows how humans think and react.

This becomes a many-layered problem for Pretorius and what is left of his Dead Enders. As the only humans on a totally militarized alien world, they must first find where the best-guarded member of the enemy's military - Michkag - is hiding and how many aliens, or regiments, or divisions, are guarding him, and then they must find a way past all his lines of defense to kill or capture him.

Larger than life, they stride the untamed galaxy. Heroes and villains, spacers and bounty hunters, with legendary names like Cemetery Smith, the Forever Kid, the Iceman, the Mock Turtle.

But the most dangerous - and wanted - being in the universe is a frightened little girl with the unearthly power to forsee, control or destroy. Her name is Penelope Bailey.

The furure will call her... Soothsayer.

Since she was a little girl, all humanity has been frightened by Penelope Bailey's awesome psychic talent and her ability to bend events--and men--to her will. Now a grown woman and living on the planet Hades, Penelope is caught in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with a bounty hunter, a government agent, and an out-for-profit, outlaw cyborg--none of who suspect the true depths of her power.

This is the final volume of a trilogy which started with "Soothsayer" and "Oracle". In this volume, the Ice Man is beseiged by people trying to kill him, five in one month. As he sends the Gravedancer to find out who wants him dead, what he really wants to know is why the Prophet has allowed him to live.

An epic novel of human expansion across the stars.

This brilliant science fiction novel constructs a blueprint of mankind's history-social, political, economic, scientific, and religious - for the next eighteen thousand years. Through a series of adventures, it illustrates clear, focused ideas about our birthright and our destiny.

Bandit, murderer, known to all, seen by none...has he killed a thousand men? Has he saved a dozen world? His legend is as large as the Rim itself, his trail as elusive as a wisp of starlight in the empty realms of space. The reward for him is the largest in history.

Bandit, murderer, known to all, seen by none....

Has he killed a thousand men? Has he saved a dozen worlds? His legend is as large as the Rim itself, his trail as elusive as a wisp of starlight in the empty realms of space. The reward for him is the largest in history.

She was old when the world was young. Her image appears in painting from before the Renaissance - but also from the Earth of 3,000 years from now, and from a dozen or more far-flung worlds around the galaxy. Who is she, and what is her secret? It remains for an alien art critic named Leonardo by his human associates to find the answer, and to put himself, his friends, and even some of those worlds at risk in the process.

The starship Theodore Roosevelt is fighting on the far outskirts of a galactic war, its crew made up of retreads and raw recruits. A new first officer reports, Wilson Cole, a man with a reputation for exceeding his orders (but getting results). He's been banished to the Teddy R. for his actions, but once there he again ignores his orders....

This is the first of five novels about the starship Theodore Roosevelt. The next four will be, in order, Pirate, Mercenary, Rebel, and Flagship.

The date is 1967 of the Galactic Era, almost three thousand years from now. The Republic, created by the human race but not yet dominated by it, is in the midst of an all-out war with the Teroni Federation. After his latest exploit saved millions of lives but embarrassed his superiors, Captain Wilson Cole, a man with a reputation for exceeding orders but getting results, found himself the victim of the media feeding frenzy, a political scapegoat despite years of dedicated military service. Faced with a court martial, he was rescued by the loyal crew of his ship, the Theodore Roosevelt. Now branded mutineers, the crew of the Teddy R. has quit the Republic, never to return.

Seeking to find a new life for themselves, Wilson Cole and comrades remake the Teddy R. as a pirate ship and set sail for the lawless Inner Frontier. Here, powerful warlords, cut-throat pirates, and struggling colonies compete for survival in a game where you rarely get a second chance to learn the rules.

But military discipline is poor preparation for a life of pillaging and plundering, and Cole's principles naturally limit his targets. Seeking an education on the nature of piracy, Cole hunts more knowledgeable players. Enter the beautiful but deadly Valkyrie, Val for short, and the enigmatic alien fence known as David Copperfield. But hanging over everything is the fearsome alien pirate -- the Hammerhead Shark.

With Starship: Pirate, five-time Hugo winner Mike Resnick continues the story begun in his very first military SF. Will the galaxy ever be the same?

The date is 1968 of the Galactic Era, almost three thousand years from now. The Republic, created by the human race but not yet dominated by it, is in the midst of an all-out war with the Teroni Federation. Captain Wilson Cole, a man with a reputation for exceeding orders but getting results, found himself the victim of a media feeding frenzy, a political scapegoat despite years of dedicated military service. Faced with a court martial, he was rescued by the loyal crew of his ship, the Theodore Roosevelt. Branded mutineers, the Teddy R. has quit the Republic, never to return.

Seeking to find a new life, Wilson Cole first remade the Teddy R. as a pirate ship plying the spaceways of the lawless Inner Frontier. But military discipline and honor were a poor match for a life of pillaging and plundering, and Cole's principles naturally limited his targets. Taking on a new role, the Teddy R. becomes a mercenary ship, hiring out to the highest bidder. Whether it's evacuating a hospital before war can reach it, freeing a client from an alien prison, or stopping a criminal cartel from extorting money from a terrified planet, the crew of the Teddy R. proves equal to the task. Along the way they form a partnership with the once human Platinum Duke, team up with a former enemy, and make the unique Singapore Station their headquarters.

But the life of a mercenary is not always predictable, and eventually circumstance pits Cole and the Teddy R. against his right-hand woman, the former Pirate Queen known as the Valkyrie. Soon the fragile trust that has grown between these two legends is put to the test as they find themselves on opposite sides of a job.

The date is 1968 of the Galactic Era, almost three thousand years from now. The Republic, dominated by the human race, is in the midst of an all-out war with the Teroni Federation.

Almost a year has passed since the events of Starship: Mercenary. Captain Wilson Cole now commands a fleet of almost fifty ships, and he has become the single greatest military force on the Inner Frontier.

With one exception. The Republic still comes and goes as it pleases, taking what it wants, conscripting men, and extorting taxes, even though the Frontier worlds receive nothing in exchange. And, of course, the government still wants Wilson Cole and the starship Theodore Roosevelt. He has no interest in confronting such an overwhelming force, and constantly steers clear of them.

Then an incident occurs that changes everything, and Cole declares war on the Republic. Outnumbered and always outgunned, his fleet is no match for the Republic's millions of military vessels, even after he forges alliances with the warlords he previously hunted down.

It's a hopeless cause... but that's just what Wilson Cole and the Teddy R. are best at.

The date is 1970 of the Galactic Era, almost three thousand years from now, and the Republic, created by the human race but not yet dominated by it, finds itself in an all-out war against the Teroni Federation, an alliance of races that resent Man's growing military and economic power.

The rebel starship, the Theodore Roosevelt, under the command of Wilson Cole, is preparing to lead Cole's ragtag armada into the Republic, even though he is outnumbered thousands to one. Cole is convinced that the government has become an arrogant and unfeeling political entity and must be overthrown.

The trick is to avoid armed conflict with the vast array of ships, numbering in the millions, in the Republic's Navy. For a time Cole's forces strike from cover and race off to safety, but he soon sees that is no way to conquer the mightiest political and military machine in the history of the galaxy. He realizes that he must reach Deluros VIII, the headquarters world of the Republic (and of the race of Man), in order to have any effect on the government at all—but Deluros VIII is the best-protected world in the Republic.

But a new threat looms on the horizon. Cole, the Valkyrie, David Copperfield, Sharon Blacksmith, Jacovic, and the rest of the crew of the Teddy R face their greatest challenge yet, and the outcome will determine the fate of the entire galaxy.

Traveling carnival owner Thaddeus Flint swindles the owner of a freak show into an unlikely business partnership. When Flint discovers that the freaks are a group of undercover alien tourists, he keeps the secret from the outside world and looks for an opportunity to expand his carny tour out to the stars.

Traveling carnival owner Thaddeus Flint expands his tour from the American Northeast out to the stars, only to discover that some of the attractions don't quite hold the audience like they did back on Earth. Realizing that his strip show has no more appeal to an alien audience than watching a saddle come off a horse, he reassigns his girls to work the game booths on the midway. When one of the girls can't make the transition, he improvises an alien solution.

The carnival has left Earth and is touring the stars, and is finding out that making a living light-years from Earth is no easier than doing it here. Thaddeus Flint and his crew have to come up with fresh solutions to totally unexpected problems. The carnival tries a typical carny scam that backfires when their animal trainer and his sentient "animal" go to war every night in the big cage.

Five years into his traveling carnival tour of the galaxy, Thaddeus Flint and his alien business partner are rolling in the dough for the Corporation. When Billybuck Dancer, the trick shot artist, gets bored and starts taking dangerous chances with his own safety, Flint captures his attention by arranging a much-publicized and highly-profitable showdown between Dancer and his nemesis, Doc Holliday.

The Velvet Comet is one of the most profitable and popular pleasure palaces in space. The company that owns it is hit by internal power struggles for dominance.

Harry Redwine is sent onboard to secretly ruin the palace but finds more of a fight than he bargained for against the Leather Madonna palace ruler and her lovely no-holds barred crew of women.

Arrogant and overbearing Syndicate detective Andrew Crane arrives aboard the Velvet Comet to investigate a murder. When Crane discovers that the murderer is setting a trap to lure a notorious criminal aboard the Comet, the consequences of solving the mystery forces Crane to become judge, jury, and executioner.

In an attempt to financially persuade the Reverend Thomas Gold to discontinue his public condemnations the Velvet Comet, the Vainmill Syndicate invites the popular cult leader to a charity event aboard the galaxy's most notorious house of ill repute. But when the Reverend is exposed to an alien twist on the sins of the flesh, his own weakness threatens to topple his ministry - and his sanity.

Screenwriter and novelist Nate Page arrives aboard the empty Velvet Comet twenty-three years after it is decommissioned by the Vainmill Syndicate. The light-topic musical holographic production that Nate is writing is based on the Velvet Comet in its prime, and requires research available only through Cupid, the ship's still-functioning and nearly-self-aware onboard computer.

As the cynical screenwriter and the unemotionally truthful computer struggle to create a work of fiction true to the reality of life aboard the Comet, Nate's agent makes it clear that prostituting your art is not any different from prostituting your body.

One of the major voices in science fiction, Mike Resnick presents the first volume in a bold new trilogy.Jefferson Nighthawk--known and feared by many as the Widowmaker, the consummate bounty hunter--has been frozen for a century in order to defeat a deadly disease. Only now the cost of his care has risen, so the Widowmaker is called out of retirement for one special commission, and a very large chunk of cash. A notorious assassin has been wrecking havoc on the Frontier; who better but the Widowmaker to defeat him?

Jefferson Nighthawk, once the galaxy's most feared killer, is cloned again and given a new mission. This time he is not only armed with the Widowmaker's killing skills, but also with his lifetime of knowledge. Nighthawk's new mission involves the rescue of a corrupt politician's daughter, and the assassination of the rebel leader who holds her captive. But the daughter puts a wrinkle in the plan when she offers her father's fortune if Nighthawk kills her father instead. While the odds are overwhelming, the price may be right.

Jefferson Nighthawk -- the Widowmaker -- is finally cured of his disease. A man in his sixties, who has been in a coma for a century, all he wants to do is live out his life peacefully and tend his garden...but he is continually sought out, not by his own enemies who are long dead, but by enemies made by his two clones, men he has never seen before, perfect strangers who are out to kill him. His retirement will have to be put on hold until he solves this ongoing and deadly problem.

Jefferson Nighthawk, the original Widowmaker, is married and retired, looking forward to a peaceul old age. But when his two clones try to kill each other, he realizes that he can't turn his back on the situation -- or the fact that there is an alien menace out there that will require the combined might of all three Widowmakers, if even that is enough.