Search Worlds Without End

Young people log their lives with hourly True Confessions. Cops wear lapel-cams and spy agencies peer at us -- and face defections and whistle blowers. Bank records leak and "uncrackable" firewalls topple. As we debate internet privacy, revenge porn, the NSA, and Edward Snowden, cameras get smaller, faster, and more numerous.

Has Orwell's Big Brother finally come to pass? Or have we become a global society of thousands of Little Brothers -- watching, judging, and reporting on one another?

Partnering with the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination, and inspired by Brin's nonfiction book, The Transparent Society: Will Technology Make Us Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?, noted author and futurist David Brin and scholar Stephen W. Potts have compiled essays and short stories from writers such as Robert J. Sawyer, James Morrow, William Gibson, Damon Knight, Jack McDevitt, and many others to examine the benefits and pitfalls of technological transparency in all its permutations.

Among the many questions...

Do we answer surveillance with sousveillance, shining accountability upward?

Will we spiral into busybody judgmentalism? Or might people choose to leave each other alone?

Will empathy increase or decrease in a more transparent world?

What if we could own our information, and buy and sell it in a web bazaar?

Table of Contents:

• "Introduction: Private Lives" (2016) essay by James E. Gunn [as by James Gunn] [Tor.com, December 2016]

Ad Justitiam Per Lucem

• "Mine, Yours, Ours" (2017) short story by Jack Skillingstead
• "Insistence of Vision" (2013) short story by David Brin [Twelve Tomorrows]
• "Planetbound" (2017) short story by Nancy Fulda
• "The Right's Tough" (2004) short story by Robert J. Sawyer [Visions of Liberty]
• "The Circuit Riders" (1962) short story by R. C. FitzPatrick [Analog, April 1962]
• "The Werewolves of Maplewood" (2017) short story by James Morrow
• "The Road to Oceania" (2003) essay by William Gibson [The New York Times, 2003]

Surveillance--Sousveillance

• "I See You" (1976) short story by Damon Knight [The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1976]
• "Eyejacked" (2017) short story by David Walton
• "FeastWar" (2016) short story by Vylar Kaftan [Tor.com, December 2016]
• "Your Lying Eyes" (2017) short story by Jack McDevitt
• "The Disaster Stack" (revised version, 2017) short story by Vernor Vinge (original version available to read for free here)

Lies And Private Lives

• "First Presentation" (2017) short story by Aliette de Bodard
• "AfterShift Memories" (2017) short story by David Ramirez
• "Spew" (1994) short story by Neal Stephenson [WIRED Magazine, 1994 and Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing, 2012]
• "Private Life in Cyberspace" (1991) essay by John Perry Barlow [Communications of the ACM, June 1991]

Big Brother, Little Brother, Village

• "Elderjoy" (2016) short story by Gregory Benford [Analog Science Fiction and Fact, March 2016]
• "Street Life in the Emerald City" (2017) short story by Brenda Cooper
• "The Eyes Have It" (2017) short story by Stephen W. Potts

No Place To Hide

• "Preferences" (2017) short story by Cat Rambo
• "Vectors" (2017) short story by Stephen Gaskell
• "Public Domain" (2017) short story by Scott Sigler
• "To See the Invisible Man" (1963) short story by Robert Silverberg [Worlds of Tomorrow, April 1963]
• "The Disconnected" (2017) short story by Ramez Naam

Looking Back... And Looking Up

• "Eminence" (2017) short story by Karl Schroeder
• "Sport" (2014) short story by Kathleen Ann Goonan [Exit Strategies, New Scientist]
• "Elephant on Table" (2017) short story by Bruce Sterling
• "Afterword: A Tsunami of Light" (2017) essay by David Brin

The award-winning Uplift novels comprise one of the greatest achievements in science fiction history. Dramatic, thought-provoking, and inventive, these books describe a fully realized world rich in character, detail, and ideas. Now Uplift author David Brin collaborates with acclaimed artist Kevin Lenagh to compile the definitive guide to the species, societies, and technology of one of the greatest feats of literary world-building ever accomplished.

Here in the form of a handbook for Terran field agents is a detailed look at Uplift's many alien races--from the friendly Tymbrimi to the warlike Tandu, from the wise and enigmatic Kanten to the fiercely reptilian Soro, from the bureaucratic Hoon to the manipulative Thennanin--their physiology, psychology, history; their clans and alliances; and their shifting attitudes toward Earth and its representatives.

Here, too, is a history of Earth's contact and challenging interactions with the mysterious and powerful Civilization of Five Galaxies, a look at its institutions, languages, and customs, plus a time line of momentous events going back 3 billion years. For the millions of fans of the Uplift novels, this long-awaited guide will be an essential reference work, filled with vital information and never-before-seen illustrations that reveal, for the first time in one volume, the keys to the ambitious vision and bold speculation of the Uplift universe.

Hugo Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, March 1984. There are no other known publictation but the novella was incorporated in slightly edited form in the novel The Postman (1985).

What if education could be extended into the womb? Would we get brilliant, well-balanced babies? Monsters? Or a frightening/hopeful combination of both?

Chilling and plausible and under option to be made a feature film, Dr. Pak's Preschool explores the bright and very dark possibilities when science meddles in the most intimate human act - bearing and delivering a child.

This short story originally appeared as a limited edition chapbook before being reprinted in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July 1990. A more affordable chapbook edition appeared in 1992. The story is also included in the collection Otherness (1994).

It's fifty years from tomorrow, and a black hole has accidentally fallen into the Earth's core. A team of scientists frantically searches for a way to prevent the mishap from causing harm, only to discover another black hole already feeding relentlessly at the core - one that could destroy the entire planet within two years.

But some even argue that the only way to save the Earth is to let its human inhabitants become extinct: to let the million-year evolutionary clock rewind and start all over again.

From an underground lab in New Zealand to a space station in Low Earth Orbit, from an endangered species conservation ark in Africa to a home in New Orleans, EARTH is a gripping novel peopled with extraordinary characters and abundant with challenging new ideas. Above all, it is an impassioned testament about our own responsibility to our endangered planet.

For a hundred years, people have been abandoning things in space, and Gerald Livingston has to clean up the mess. Only... there's something spinning a little bit higher than he expects. It isn't on the orbital maps. An hour after he grabs the Object and brings it in, rumors fill Earth's infomesh about an "alien artifact." Thrown into the maelstrom of worldwide shared experience, this is a game-changer. A message in a bottle; an alien capsule that wants to communicate. The world reacts as humans always do: with fear and hope and selfishness and love and violence. And insatiable curiosity.

Young Maia is fast approaching a turning point in her life. As a half-caste var, she must leave the clan home of her privileged half sisters and seek her fortune in the world. With her twin sister, Leie, she searches the docks of Port Sanger for an apprenticeship aboard the vessels that sail the trade routes of the Stratoin oceans.

On her far-reaching, perilous journey of discovery, Maia will endure hardship and hunger, imprisonment and loneliness, bloody battles with pirates and separation from her twin. And along the way, she will meet a traveler who has come an unimaginable distance--and who threatens the delicate balance of the Stratoins' carefully maintained, perfect society....

Both exciting and insightful, Glory Season is a major novel, a transcendent saga of the human spirit.

An odyssey of discovery, from a shattered society through the solar system with a handful of men and women who ride a cold, hurtling ball of ice to the shaky promise of a distant, unknowable future.

What may we become? How will we endure? The future is a daunting realm, filled with real and imagined perils. So enter it prepared! Here are vivid tales about possible tomorrows, from the keen eye and colorful pen of David Brin, a modern master of speculative fiction. Visit a chillingly plausible tomorrow, when prisoners may be sent to asteroidal gulags. Or might prisons vanish and felons roam, seeing only what society allows? Suppose, amid lavish success, we gain the superpower to fly! Will we even appreciate it... or will we find new reasons to complain? In "Mars Opposition," you'll experience an alien invasion like no other, confronting humanity with a stark and terrible choice... followed by several more tales of conquest from beyond, each of them wildly different. On the other hand, might fantastically potent new beings emerge out of ourselves, as revealed in "Chrysalis"? Featuring guest appearances by Gregory Benford, Jules Verne, and Galileo, this adventure takes you beyond the very singularity in "Stones of Significance," pondering what could happen after humans are like gods. And "Reality Check" asks one of you readers -- just one of you -- to wake up! Tomorrow awaits. We can face it and prevail. So long as our stance is brave INSISTENCE OF VISION.

Table of Contents

• Introduction - essay by Vernor Vinge
• The Heresy of Science Fiction - essay
• Insistence of Vision - (2013) - short story
• Transition Generation - (2014) - short story
• Chrysalis - (2014) - short story
• Stones of Significance - (1998) - novelette
• News from 2035: A Glitch in Medicine Cabinet 3.5 - (2003) - short story
• The Logs - (2013) - short story
• The Tumbledowns of Cleopatra Abyss - (2015) - novelette
• Eloquent Elepents Pine Away for the Moon's Crystal Forests - (2006) - short story
• Mars Opposition - (2005) - novelette
• A Professor at Harvard - (2003) - short story
• I Could've Done Better - (2007) - short story, with Gregory Benford
• Paris Conquers All - (1996) - short story, with Gregory Benford
• A Retrospective by Jules Verne - (1996) - short story, with Gregory Benford
• Fortitude - (1996) - short story
• An Ever-Reddening Glow - (1996) - short story
• The Diplomacy Guild - (1990) - short story
• The Other Side of the Hill - (1994) - short story
• Temptation - (1999) - novella
• Avalon Probes - (2014) - short story
• Six-Word Tales - (2006) - short story
• Reality Check - (2000) - short story
• Waging War with Reality - (1992) - essay
• Afterword & Book Notes - essay

In a perilous future where disposable duplicate bodies fulfill every legal and illicit whim of their decadent masters, life is cheap. No one knows that better than Albert Morris, a brash investigator with a knack for trouble, who has sent his own duplicates into deadly peril more times than he cares to remember.

But when Morris takes on a ring of bootleggers making illegal copies of a famous actress, he stumbles upon a secret so explosive it has incited open warfare on the streets of Dittotown.

Dr. Yosil Maharal, a brilliant researcher in artificial intelligence, has suddenly vanished, just as he is on the verge of a revolutionary scientific breakthrough. Maharal's daughter, Ritu, believes he has been kidnapped-or worse. Aeneas Polom, a reclusive trillionaire who appears in public only through his high-priced platinum duplicates, offers Morris unlimited resources to locate Maharal before his awesome discovery falls into the wrong hands.

To uncover the truth, Morris must enter a shadowy, nightmare world of ghosts and golems where nothing -and no one-is what they seem, memory itself is suspect, and the line between life and death may no longer exist.

In a major science fiction event, Nebula Award winners Poul Anderson, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, David Brin, Nancy Kress, and Frederik Pohl join forces--under the editorship of Robert Silverberg--to create a triumph of world-building: Murasaki, a science fiction novel in six parts. Murasaki is completely based in hard science and what we know of the Murasaki star system--which actually exists.

Authors Poul Anderson and Frederik Pohl painstakingly constructed the working mechanics of a real star system, projecting the atmosphere, geology, chemistry, flora, and fauna of the two planets on which the work is set. They and four more of America's best science fiction authors--known for their "hard" speculative fiction--used Pohl and Anderson's essays (included as appendixes to this book) as source material to create this amazing story of the earliest human explorations of the twenty-third century--an epic tale of discovery, conflict, and resolution told by the masters of imaginative writing.

Murasaki, star HD 36395... where the gristmill of Darwinism produced two vastly different alien ecologies on two closely revolving planets, circling each other since scouring lightning storms stirred them to life billions of years ago. The two planets are Genji, violent and reckless, filled with a variety of winged life; and Chujo, a cooling world of ancient, crumbling cities, slowly going through its glacial death throes. Both planets are host to intelligences that are strange in ways Man can only guess at...and the planets have an eerie connection that will soon come to fruition after the first human explorers arrive. Exceeding light-speed for twenty years and decelerating by plasma exhaust drive, the first ship bearing humans arrives at Murasaki. The wealth, pride, and future of nations depend upon the outcome as the first contact team sets foot on a Murasaki-system world--while the hope of mankind, a planet capable of supporting human life, awaits the first explorer to touch the strangely colored alien soil....

Contains:

• Introduction (Murasaki) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Treasures of Chujo - novelette by Frederik Pohl
• Genji - novelette by David Brin
• Language - novelette by Poul Anderson
• World Vast, World Various - novella by Gregory Benford
• A Plague of Conscience - novelette by Greg Bear
• Birthing Pool - novelette by Nancy Kress
• Appendix A: Design for Two Worlds (Murasaki) - essay by Poul Anderson
• Appendix B: Murasaki's Worlds (Murasaki) - essay by Frederik Pohl

From multiple award-winning author David Brin comes this extraordinary collection of tales and essays of the near and distant future, as humans and aliens encounter the secrets of the cosmos--and of their own existence.

In "Dr. Pak's Preschool" a woman discovers that her baby has been called upon to work while still in the womb.

In "NatuLife" a married couple finds their relationship threatened by the wonders of sex by simulation.

In "Sshhh..." the arrival of benevolent aliens on Earth leads to frenzy, madness... and unimaginable joy.

In "Bubbles" a sentient starcraft reaches the limits of the universe--and dares to go beyond.

These are but a few of the challenging speculations in Otherness, from the pen of an author whose urgent and compelling imaginative fiction challenges us to wonder at the shape and the nature of the universe--as well as at its future.

In "Piecework," the most sophisticated "engineering" process on Earth is pregnancy among mammals -- especially among humans. There is already talk of using goats and cattle to produce industrial products instead of milk, and possibly bringing to term organic machines, programmed in eggs to develop in the womb. What if this happens... and continues? Might poor women earn a living by renting out their wombs for industrial "piecework" production of high-end organic machinery?

This story originally appeared in Interzone, #33 January-February 1990. The story can also be found in the anthology The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories (1992), edited by Tom Shippey. It is included in the collection Otherness (1994).

Based on Clarke's concept of solar sailing, this anthology of tales and essays features the work of such authors as Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Poul Anderson...

Table of Contents:

• Foreword: The Winds of Space - essay by Arthur C. Clarke
• Introduction: Sailing the Void - essay by Isaac Asimov
• The Wind from the Sun - (1964) - novelette by Arthur C. Clarke
• To Sail Beyond the Sun (A Luminous Collage) - poem by Ray Bradbury and Jonathan V. Post
• The Canvas of the Night - essay by Eric Drexler
• Ice Pilot - short story by David Brin
• A Solar Privateer - (1981) - poem by Jonathan Eberhart
• Sunjammer - (1964) - novelette by Poul Anderson
• A Rebel Technology Comes Alive - essay by Chauncey Uphoff and Jonathan V. Post
• Argosies of Magic Sails (excerpts from "Locksley Hall") - (1842) - poem by Lord Alfred Tennyson
• Ion Propulsion: The Solar Sail's Competition for Access to the Solar System - essay by Bryan Palaszewski
• The Grand Tour - (1987) - short story by Charles Sheffield
• Lightsail - poem by Scott E. Green
• Rescue at L-5 - short story by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason
• Lightsails to the Stars - essay by Robert L. Forward and Joel Davis
• The Fourth Profession - (1971) - novelette by Larry Niven
• Goodnight, Children - short story by Joe Clifford Faust
• Solar Sails in an Interplanetary Economy - essay by Robert L. Staehle and Louis Friedman
• Afterword - essay by Arthur C. Clarke

Do you ever get that sense of deja vu... a feeling that you've experienced something before? As computers get more and more complex, they are able to replicate the nature of reality in ever finer detail. How would we recognize if we were living in a computer simulation - a highly accurate world of virtual reality? Perhaps this isn't your first time...

This short story originally appeared in Nature, March 16, 2000. It can also be found in the anthologies Year's Best SF 6 (2001), edited by David G. Hartwell, The Hard SF Renaissance (2002), edited by Kathryn Cramer and David G. Hartwell, and Live Without a Net (2003), edited by Lou Anders. The story is included in the collection Tomorrow Happens (2003) and Insistence of Vision (2016).

Read the full story for free at Nature.

"Some of the Math Club nerds have got a real live alien! They're hiding it in a basement rec room."

High School junior Mark Bamford didn't believe the silly rumor. For one thing, California homes don't have basements. Besides. A stranded alien? Such a cliche. A movie rip-off. Couldn't the math geeks think up a better hoax? Only... was it a hoax? What about all those black vans from the super-secret Cirrocco Corp cruising all over town, as if searching for something?

Time to do some investigating of his own. Only, who could he turn to for help? The skateboarding "X" crowd? The varsity climbing team? When it it came right down to it, should he turn to the least likely ally of them all? Sky Horizon explores a possibility that has always fascinated, since the days of Homer -- that of strangers from beyond -- and gives it new shape under the deft hand of one of science fiction's modern masters.

Hugo Award winning short story.

In a universe filled with habitable worlds why have we had no contact with extraterrestrial intelligence? David Brin's "The Crystal Spheres" offers a fantastic explanation for the Great Silence. Instead of being late-comers - might humanity have come upon the scene too early? This haunting tale was voted one of the "most beautiful of the eighties

The Crystal Spheres originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, January 1984, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, May 2018. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Science Fiction Yearbook (1985) edited by John F. Carr, Jim Baen and Jerry Pournelle, and The New Hugo Winners: (1983-85) (1989), edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg. It is included in the collection The River of Time (1986).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Hugo Award nominated short story.

Not all villains succeed at being evil. Not all diseases deserve the word plague. Fate can be ironic indeed. The chilling short story, The Giving Plague, follows microbiologist Forry, a self-proclaimed cynic, jealous of his "boy wonder" colleague who discovers a unique virus that could change humanity. Transmitted by blood donations, the virus manipulates humans toward altruism and charity. Forry decides that he will do anything to take credit for this discovery... until a more deadly alien virus infects the human race, forcing him to wrestle with his own inner demons.

The Giving Plague originally appeared in Interzone, #23 Spring 1988. It was reprinted in Lightspeed, July 2012. The story can also be found in the anthologies Full Spectrum 2 (1989), edited by Lou Aronica, Shawna McCarthy, Amy Stout and Pat LoBrutto, and The 1989 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha. The story is included in the collection Otherness (1994).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Hugo Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, November 1982. The story can also be found in the anthologies Novel Ideas-Science Fiction (2006) edited by Brian M. Thomsen and Wastelands 2: More Stories of the Apocalypse (2015), edited by John Joseph Adams. The story was later expanded to the novel The Postman (1985).

This is the story of a lie that became the most powerful kind of truth. A timeless novel as urgently compelling as War Day or Alas, Babylon, David Brin's The Postman is the dramatically moving saga of a man who rekindled the spirit of America through the power of a dream, from a modern master of science fiction.

He was a survivor--a wanderer who traded tales for food and shelter in the dark and savage aftermath of a devastating war. Fate touches him one chill winter's day when he borrows the jacket of a long-dead postal worker to protect himself from the cold. The old, worn uniform still has power as a symbol of hope, and with it he begins to weave his greatest tale, of a nation on the road to recovery.

Physicist Dennis Nuel's career has taken a sudden and startling turn. After being denied access to the Zievatron Project through the political machinations of his chief rival, the self-righteous, priggish Bernard Brady, Dennis is need back - badly. The zievatron, a device created to provide access to parallel worlds, has indeed made contact. But now the return mechanism is malfunctioning, and the only way to repair it is for someone to go through to this alien world where no human has yet ventured. That someone is to be Dennis Nuel.

The River of Time brings together twelve of David Brin's finest stories, including "The Crystal Spheres", which won the Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction Short Story in 1985. Here are powerful tales of heroism and humanity, playful excursions into realms of fancy, and profound meditations on time, memory, and our place in the universe. Who guides our fate? And can we ever hope to wrest control for ourselves?

Table of Contents:

• The Crystal Spheres - (1984) - shortstory
• The Loom of Thessaly - (1981) - novella
• The Fourth Vocation of George Gustaf - (1984) - shortstory
• Senses Three and Six - (1986) - novelette
• Toujours Voir - (1986) - shortstory
• A Stage of Memory - (1986) - novelette (with Daniel Brin)
• Just a Hint - (1981) - shortstory
• Tank Farm Dynamo - (1983) - novelette
• Thor Meets Captain America - (1986) - novelette
• Lungfish - (1986) - novelette
• The River of Time - shortstory (variant of Co-existence 1982)

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 anthologies The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 1 (2016), edited by Neil Clarke, and The Year's Best Military & Adventure SF 2015 (2016), edited by David Afsharirad. The story is included in the collection Insistence of Vision (2016).

Read the full story for free at the author's website.

Locus Award winning and Hugo Award noninated novelette.

Thor Meets Captain America offers an alternate history exploring a chilling scenario behind the Holocaust. In this parallel world, the Nazis narrowly avoid defeat in World War II when they are championed by the gods of the Norse Pantheon. At a dramatic turn, Loki joins the Allies and they prepare a last-ditch raid to blow up Valhalla.

Thor Meets Captain America originally appeared in the collection The River of Time (1986) and a month later in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July 1986. The story can also be found in the anthology Hitler Victorious: 11 Stories of the German Victory in World War II (1987), edited by Gregory Benford and Martin H. Greenberg.

Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy is one of the highwater marks of science fiction.The monumental story of a Galactic Empire in decline and a secret society of scientists who seek to shorten the coming Dark Age with tools of Psychohistory, Foundation pioneered many themes of modern science fiction.Now, with the approval of the Asimov estate, three of today's most acclaimed authors have completed the epic the Grand Master left unfinished.

The Second Foundation Trilogy begins with Gregory Benford's Foundation's Fear, telling the origins of Hari Seldon, the Foundation's creator. Greg Bear's Foundation and Chaos relates the epic tale of Seldon's downfall and the first stirrings of robotic rebellion. Now, in David Brin's Foundation's Triumph, Seldon is about to escape exile and risk everything for one final quest-a search for knowledge and the power it bestows. The outcome of this final journey may secure humankind's future-or witness its final downfall...

No species has ever reached for the stars without the guidance of a patron--except perhaps mankind. Did some mysterious race begin the uplift of humanity aeons ago? Circling the sun, under the caverns of Mercury, Expedition Sundiver prepares for the most momentous voyage in history--a journey into the boiling inferno of the sun.

David Brin's Uplift novels are among the most thrilling and extraordinary science fiction ever written. Sundiver, Startide Rising, and The Uplift War -- a New York Times bestseller -- together make up one of the most beloved sagas of all time. Brin's tales are set in a future universe in which no species can reach sentience without being "uplifted" by a patron race. But the greatest mystery of all remains unsolved: who uplifted humankind?

The Terran exploration vessel Streaker has crashed in the uncharted water world of Kithrup, bearing one of the most important discoveries in galactic history. Below, a handful of her human and dolphin crew battles armed rebellion and a hostile planet to safeguard her secret -- the fate of the Progenitors, the fabled First Race who seeded wisdom throughout the stars.

David Brin's Uplift novels are among the most thrilling and extraordinary science fiction ever written. Sundiver, Startide Rising, and The Uplift War--a New York Times bestseller--together make up one of the most beloved sagas of all time. Brin's tales are set in a future universe in which no species can reach sentience without being "uplifted" by a patron race. But the greatest mystery of all remains unsolved: who uplifted humankind?

As galactic armadas clash in quest of the ancient fleet of the Progenitors, a brutal alien race seizes the dying planet of Garth. The various uplifted inhabitants of Garth must battle their overlords or face ultimate extinction. At stake is the existence of Terran society and Earth, and the fate of the entire Five Galaxies. Sweeping, brilliantly crafted, inventive and dramatic, The Uplift War is an unforgettable story of adventure and wonder from one of today's science fiction greats.

David Brin's Uplift novels -- Sundiver, Hugo award winner The Uplift War, and Hugo and Nebula winner Startide Rising--are among the most thrilling and extraordinary science fiction tales ever written. Now David Brin returns to this future universe for a new Uplift trilogy, packed with adventure, passion and wit.

The planet Jijo is forbidden to settlers, its ecology protected by guardians of the Five Galaxies. But over the centuries it has been resettled, populated by refugees of six intelligent races. Together they have woven a new society in the wilderness, drawn together by their fear of Judgment Day, when the Five Galaxies will discover their illegal colony. Then a strange starship arrives on Jijo. Does it bring the long-dreaded judgment, or worse -- a band of criminals willing to destroy the six races of Jijo in order to cover their own crimes?

Nebula and Hugo award-winning author David Brin continues his bestselling Uplift series in this second novel of a bold new trilogy. Imaginative, inventive, and filled with Brin's trademark mix of adventure, passion, and wit, Infinity's Shore carries us further than ever before into the heart of the most beloved and extraordinary science fiction sagas ever written.

For the fugitive settlers of Jijo, it is truly the beginning of the end. As starships fill the skies, the threat of genocide hangs over the planet that once peacefully sheltered six bands of sapient beings. Now the human settlers of Jijo and their alien neighbors must make heroic, and terrifying, choices. A scientist must rally believers for a cause he never shared. And four youngsters find that what started as a simple adventure - imitating exploits in Earthling books by Verne and Twain - leads them to the dark abyss of mystery. Meanwhile, the Streaker, with her fugitive dolphin crew, arrives at last on Jijo in a desperate search for refuge. Yet what the crew finds instead is a secret hidden since the galaxies first spawned intelligence - a secret that could mean salvation for the planet and its inhabitants... or their ultimate annihilation.

Winner of the Nebula and Hugo Awards, David Brin brings his bestselling Uplift series to a magnificent conclusion with his most imaginative and powerful novel to date--the shattering epic of a universe poised on the brink of revelation...or annihilation.

The brutal enemy that has relentlessly pursued them for centuries has arrived. Now the fugitive settlers of Jijo--both human and alien--brace for a final confrontation. The Jijoans' only hope is the Earthship Streaker, crewed by uplifted dolphins and commanded by an untested human.

Yet more than just the fate of Jijo hangs in the balance. For Streaker carries a cargo of ancient artifacts that may unlock the secret of those who first brought intelligent life to the Galaxies. Many believe a dire prophecy has come to pass: an age of terrifying changes that could end Galactic civilization.

As dozens of white dwarf stars stand ready to explode, the survival of sentient life in the universe rests on the most improbable dream of all--that age-old antagonists of different races can at last recognize the unity of all consciousness.

This short story originally appeared in Popular Science, August 1998. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 4 (1999), edited by David G. Hartwell. The story is included in the collection Tomorrow Happens (2003).