Search Worlds Without End

Eight journeys into the future from this prize-winning author: a civilized society where barbarism is the norm; a search for super-intelligence that goes horribly wrong; a world where to be Non-Legal is to be non-human; an experiment to test the very nature of reality.

Contents:

• Story Introductions (A Pursuit of Miracles: Eight Stories) - essay
• vii - Introduction (A Pursuit of Miracles: Eight Stories) - essay by Michael J. Tolley
• 3 - A Pursuit of Miracles - (1982) - novelette
• 37 - Not in Front of the Children - (1987) - novelette
• 63 - Feedback - (1983) - novelette
• 85 - Shut the Door When You Go Out - (1986) - short story
• 95 - On the Nursery Floor - (1985) - novelette
• 131 - In a Petri Dish Upstairs - (1978) - novelette
• 167 - Generation Gap - (1990) - short story
• 175 - The Fittest - (1985) - novelette
• 208 - Envoi (A Pursuit of Miracles: Eight Stories) - essay

David Chance, the unknowing offspring of a long-forgotten experiment that produced genetically engineered child geniuses, learns terrible secrets about his own conception and discovers the horrifying course that human history is taking.

This novel chronicles the future destruction and eventual rebirth of human civilization. It is linked to the future world of both Beloved Son and Drowning Towers, as well as others of his works.

About a hundred years in the future, two men, one of them a policeman, are investigating a death involving a large international genetic engineering corporation. They become bothersome to the corporate owners and are taken out of action not by being killed but by being put to sleep for hundreds of years. But this may be a fate worse than death. They awaken to a distant future in which contemporary industrial civilization has been "cleansed" from the earth and what humanity survives is learning to live a very low-technology lifestyle, being bred eugenically to this life.

The cleansing was done on purpose, an international plot by the rich and powerful who in fact rule the world - and who, in this distant future, are dying off.

This is a complex and morally tortuous vision, and Turner's characters find it nearly impossible to adapt without killing someone, perhaps even themselves.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Alien Shores: An Anthology of Australian Science Fiction (1994), edited by Peter McNamara and Margaret Winch. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twelth Annual Collection (1995), edited by Gardner Dozois, The Good New Stuff: Adventure SF in the Grand Tradition (1999), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Centaurus: The Best of Australian Science Fiction (1999), edited by David G. Hartwell and Damien Broderick.

Returning to an overpopulated Earth after an unsuccessful, seven-century search for habitable planets, the crew of the starship Search is confronted by a hostile, anarchistic Earth culture that resists their peaceful overtures.

Nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book in 1985. No synopsis available. Most likely an autobiography.

In the era of "the big squeeze" - when an environmentally ravaged Earth groans beneath the weight of twelve billion people - two men control the destiny of humankind. One was recently senile... the other is going insane.

In the year 2069, with the Earth's population dangerously out of control, procreation and the medical treatment of terminal illness are the two most heinous crimes against society. But behind the doors of the top secret Biophysical Institute, an old man has been illegally cured of the ravages of Alzheimer's disease and made artificially younger - to serve the unspecified purposes of Premier Jeremy Beltane, one of the world's most powerful leaders.

A member of the underprivileged "Wardie" class, Detective Sergeant Harry Ostrov has been assigned to serve as a guardian to the mysteriously rejuvenated nonagenarian - and entrusted with a devastating secret that could topple the unstable "Minder" government. But once within the confines of the Beltane family enclave, the dedicated police officer is dragged deeper and deeper into a lethal mire of scandal, corruption, political outrage, and moral dilemma - sworn to silence even as he observes his nation's ruler, a man ultimately responsible for the future of civilization, descend steadily into depression, uncertainty... and madness.

Francis Conway is Swill - one of the millions in the year 2041 who must subsist on the inadequate charities of the state. Life, already difficult, is rapidly becoming impossible for Francis and others like him, as government corruption, official blindness and nature have conspired to turn Swill homes into watery tombs. And now the young boy must find a way to escape the approaching tide of disaster.

The Sea and Summer, published in the US as Drowning Towers, is George Turner's masterful exploration of the effects of climate change in the not-too-distant future. Comparable to J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World, it was shortlisted for the nebula and won the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

After forty years in space the first interstellar expedition comes home, and the twentieth century confronts the twenty-first -- an Earth struggling for recovery from the Collapse of the 1990s, a youth growing up with new creeds and new ethics, taught to think straight and clearly, to do what is necessary not what is merciful, what is sensible, not what is enjoyable.

One of the few survivors of a destroyed human race, Will Santley of the newly emerging Ethical Culture is caught up in the mysterious biopolitical affairs of radioactive immortals and must remember his frightening past in order to survive.

An experiment recreating the mind-set of World War II escalates into an actual battleground between native revolutionaries and space colonists bent on subverting the power of the central government. In the midst of this turmoil, a physically enhanced agent questions his upbringing and training.