Search Worlds Without End

This short story originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, July-August 2000. It can also be found in the anthologies Year's Best SF 6 (2001), edited by David G. Hartwell, and The Hard SF Renaissance (2002), edited by Kathryn Cramer and David G. Hartwell.

Fine literary writing meets Science Fiction. A thematic tour-de-force exploring the concept of being human through the eyes of imperfect protagonists struggling with their demons. More than just great SF, these are great stories told with style, wit and sensitivity. Six memorable stories, each independent, but each tangentially touching on the others.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay
• Melodies of the Heart - (1994) - novella
• Captive Dreams - (1992) - novelette
• Hopeful Monsters - shortstory
• Places Where the Roads Don't Go - novelette
• Remember'd Kisses - (1988) - novelette
• Buried Hopes - shortstory

Hugo and Sturgeon Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, October-November 2006. The story can aslo be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 12 (2007), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer.

In 1349, one small town in Germany disappeared and has never been resettled. Tom, a contemporary historian, and his theoretical physicist girlfriend Sharon, become interested. Tom indeed becomes obsessed. By all logic, the town should have survived, but it didn't and that violates everything Tom knows about history. What's was special about Eifelheim that it utterly disappeared more than 600 years ago?

Father Deitrich is the village priest of Oberhochwald, the village that will soon gain the name of Teufelheim, in later years corrupted to Eifelheim, in the year 1348, when the Black Death is gathering strength across Europe but is still not nearby. Deitrich is an educated man, knows science and philosophy, and to his astonishment becomes the first contact between humanity and an alien race from a distant star when their interstellar ship crashes in the nearby forest. It is a time of wonders, in the shadow of the plague.

Tom and Sharon, and Father Deitrich, have a strange and intertwined destiny of tragedy and triumph in this brilliant SF novel by the winner of the Robert A. Heinlein Award.

Hugo Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, November 1986. There are no other known publications but the novella was later expanded to the full novel Eifelheim (2006).

As the world reels under the sudden onslaught of the new ice age, the lunatic fringe of the environmental movement controls the U.S. government. Abandoned by Earth, the space colonies must replenish their air supply by scoopships diving into the atmosphere -- but Alex and Gordon's ship was hit by a missile, sending them tumbling out of the sky to be hunted by authorities who want them dead or alive. . . . But wait! There is one pro-tech group left on Earth: science fiction fandom! How they get our guys from the permafrost to orbit in twenty incredibly difficult stages -- and why they bother -- is the story of two very "Fallen Angels."

Sturgeon Award winning novelette. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, October-November 1997. There are no other known publications available at this time.

In the nineteenth century, a small group of American idealists managed to actually build Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine and use it to develop Cliology, mathematical models that could chart the likely course of the future. Soon they were working to alter history's course as they thought best. By our own time, the Society has become the secret master of the world. But no secret can be kept forever, at least not without drastic measures. When her plans for some historic real estate lead developer and ex-reporter Sarah Beaumont to stumble across the Society's existence, it's just the first step into a baffling and deadly maze of conspiracies.

Sturgeon and Hugo Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, January 1994. The story can aslo be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twelth Annual Collection (1995), edited by Gardner Dozois. It is included in the collections The Forest of Time and Other Stories (1997) and Captive Dreams (2012).

This novella originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, March-April 2017. 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 Analog Science Fiction and Fact, March 1998. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 4 (1999), edited by David G. Hartwell.

Hugo Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, July-August 2004. The story can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Second Annual Collection (2005), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Hugo Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, June 1987. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifth Annual Collection (1988), edtied by Gardner Dozois and Roads Not Taken: Tales of Alternate History (1998), edted by Gardner Dozois and Stanley Schmidt. It is included in the collection The Forest of Time and Other Stories (1997).

Before he wrote the critically acclaimed "Firestar, " the first volume of a contemporary future history, Michael Flynn was one of the most popular regular contributors to Analog. Collected here are the stories that first won Michael Flynn recognition and acclaim, with comments by Flynn on the background and the writing of each piece in prefaces that are intelligent, insightful, and humorous.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Michael F. Flynn
• The Forest of Time - (1987) - novella
• Great, Sweet Mother - (1993) - shortfiction
• On the High Frontier - (1982) - shortfiction
• The Common Goal of Nature - (1990) - novelette
• Grave Reservations - (1988) - shortfiction
• Mammy Morgan Played the Organ; Her Daddy Beat the Drum - (1990) - shortfiction
• Spark of Genius - (1991) - shortfiction
• On the Wings of a Butterfly - (1989) - shortfiction
• The Feeders - (1990) - shortfiction
• Melodies of the Heart - (1994) - novella

In a world in which horses survived to flourish in 13th-century America, the wars and rivalries of thirteenth-century Ireland have new players: the mysterious warriors from across the Western Sea, called by some the "ó Gonklins." They and their Irish hosts have much in common--enough to misunderstand one another far more than utter aliens ever could.

This story was anthologized in Gardner Dozois' The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Ninth Annual Collection (2012).

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

This short story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March 1995, and was reprinted in Clarkesworld, Issue 117, June 2016. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirteenth Annual Collection (1996), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

Michael Flynn has written the best SF in the tradition of Robert A. Heinlein of the last decade. His major work was the Firestar sequence, a four-book future history. "As Robert A. Heinlein did and all too few have done since, Michael Flynn writes about the near future as if he'd been there and was bringing back reports of what he'd seen," said Harry Turtledove. Now, in this sweeping stand-alone epic of the spaceways, Flynn grows again in stature, with an SF novel worthy of the master himself. Indeed, if Heinlein's famous character, the space-faring poet Rhysling, had ever written a novel, this would be it.

This is a compelling tale of the glory that was. In the days of the great sailing ships, in the mid-twenty-first century, when magnetic sails drew cargo and passengers alike to every corner of the solar system, sailors had the highest status of all spacemen, and the crew of the luxury liner the River of Stars, the highest among all sailors.

But development of the Farnsworth fusion drive doomed the sailing ships, and now the River of Stars is the last of its kind, retrofitted with engines, her mast vestigial, her sails unraised for years. An ungainly hybrid, she operates in the late years of the century as a mere tramp freighter among the outer planets, and her crew is a motley group of misfits. Stepan Gorgas is the escapist executive officer who becomes captain. Ramakrishnan Bhatterji is the chief engineer who disdains him. Eugenie Satterwaithe, once a captain herself, is third officer and, for form's sake, sailing master.

When an unlikely and catastrophic engine failure strikes the River, Bhatterji is confident he can effect repairs with heroic engineering, but Satterwaithe and the other sailors among the crew plot to save her with a glorious last gasp for the old ways, mesmerized by a vision of arriving at Jupiter proudly under sail. The story of their doom has the power, the poetry, and the inevitability of a Greek tragedy. This is a great science fiction novel, Flynn's best yet.

In 1972, young corporate heiress Mariesa van Huyten sees a meteor streak across the daytime sky over the Grand Tetons. It awakens an all-consuming fear in her, a fear that the Earth is living on borrowed time in a hostile solar system. With a trusted inner circle and vast resources, she aims to make her planet strong.

It is the early twenty-first century. There's a space station being built, and the first manned flight to the asteroids is in progress. The grand plan of Mariesa Van Huyten to give humanity a big push back into space, and in the process save the human race from terrible disaster, continues. And there are enemies who will kill to stop it.

In the early years of the twenty-first century, humanity has progressed into space, having established a permanent presence with LEO (Low Earth Orbit) Station. Science and commerce in space are booming and humanity's future looks bright. But one man's desire for vindication and revenge could end it all.

Lodestar chronicles the complex conflicts-political, personal, and scientific-on Earth and in orbit, that must be resolved if humanity is to claim its destiny among the stars.

In the early years of the 21st century humanity has advanced step by slow step into space, but has discovered through constant monitoring of the heavens that certain asteroids have changed their orbits and are headed for horrifying impact with Earth. Urgent action is required, but politics and a worldwide financial crash get in the way.

The members of the van Huyten family, led by matriarch Mariesa who heads the vast space industry complex she has spent her life developing, the Pooles with their computer and security expertise, many political movers and shakers and dedicated pilots and space travelers of all stripes must pull together to save humanity from disaster. From the government offices and factories of Earth, to the Low Earth Orbit station, to manufacturing facilities on the moon, all of space-going humanity is united in an epic effort to save the planet from certain destruction and a new Dark Age, or perhaps even the extinction of all life on Earth.

The January Dancer tells the fateful story of an ancient pre-human artifact of great power, and the people who found it.

Starting with Captain Amos January, who quickly loses it, and then the others who fought, schemed, and killed to get it, we travel around the complex, decadent, brawling, mongrelized interstellar human civilization the artifact might save or destroy. Collectors want the Dancer; pirates take it, rulers crave it, and they'll all kill if necessary to get it. This is a thrilling yarn of love, revolution, music, and mystery, and it ends, as all great stories do, with shock and a beginning.

There is a river on Dangchao Waypoint, a small world out beyond Die Bold. It is a longish river as such things go, with a multitude of bayous and rapids and waterfalls, and it runs through many a strange and hostile country. Going up it, you can lose everything.

Going up it, you can find anything. The Hound Bridget ban has vanished and her employer, the Kennel (the mysterious superspy agency of the League) has given up the search. But her daughter, the harper Mearana, has not. She enlists the scarred man, Donovan, to aid her in her search. With the reluctant assent and financial aid of the Kennel, they set forth. Bridget ban was following hints of an artifact that would "protect the League from the Confederacy for aye." Mearana is eager to follow that trail, but Donovan is reluctant, because whatever is at the end of it made a Hound disappear. What it would do to a harper and a drunk is far too easy to imagine.

Donovan's mind had been shattered by Those of Name, the rulers of the Confederacy, and no fewer than seven quarreling personalities now inhabit his skull. How can he hope to see her through safely? Together, they follow Bridget ban's trail to the raw worlds of the frontier, edging ever closer to the uncivilized and barbarian planets of the Wild.

It's a big Spiral Arm, and the scarred man, Donavan buigh, has gone missing in it, upsetting the harper Mearana's plans for a reconciliation between her parents. Bridget ban, a Hound of the League, doubts that reconciliation is possible or desirable; but nonetheless has dispatched agents to investigate the disappearance.

The powerful Ravn Olafsdottr, a Shadow of the Names, slips into Clanthompson Hall to tell mother and daughter of the fate of Donovan buigh. In the Long Game between the Confederation of Central Worlds and the United League of the Periphery, Hound and Shadow are mortal enemies; yet a truce descends between them so that the Shadow may tell her tale. There is a struggle in the Lion's Mouth, the bureau that oversees the Shadows--a clandestine civil war of sabotage and assassination between those who would overthrow Those of Name and the loyalists who support them. And Donovan, one-time Confederal agent, has been recalled to take a key part, willingly or no.

The secret war among the Shadows of the Name is escalating, and there are hints that it is not so secret as the Shadows had thought. The scarred man, Donovan buigh, half honored guest and half prisoner, is carried deeper into the Confederation, all the way to Holy Terra herself, to help plan the rebel assault on the Secret City. If he does not soon remember the key information locked inside his fractured mind, his rebel friends may resort to torture to pull it from his subconscious.

Meanwhile, Bridget ban has organized a posse--a pack of Hounds--to go in pursuit of her kidnapped daughter, despite knowing that Ravn Olafsdottr kidnapped the harper precisely to lure Bridget ban in her wake. The Hound, the harper, and the scarred man wind deeper into a web of deceit and treachery certain of only one thing: nothing, absolutely nothing, is what it seems to be.