Search Worlds Without End

Ursula K. Le Guin and Poul Anderson are the best known of the 22 talented contributors to this diverse and richly imaginative collection, the third in a series of speculative fiction anthologies.

In "Desert Rain," Mark L. Van Name and Pat Murphy give a high-tech variation on the familiar relationship triangle: a man named Jeff, a woman named Teresa and a prototype of a computerized home management system named Ian, a caring kind of guy who could "steal your heart."

In Wolfgang Jeschke's "Loitering at Death's Door" (translated from the German), coming back from the dead isn't all it's cracked up to be, when Kristos Katsuranis returns as a "really lousy copy" of his former self.

An Afrikaner realizes what it means to be black in South Africa when he becomes invisible to other whites in Michael Bishop's "Apartheid, Superstrings, and Mordecai Thubana."

In Ted Chiang's "Division by Zero," a brilliant mathematician's world begins to crumble when she discovers she can prove, irrefutably, that one equals two.

The people of Earth learn a lesson in humanity when they detect a sign of life on another planet: an SOS from "alien, but cute" beings, in Norman Spinrad's "The Helping Hand." -- Publishers Weekly

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (Full Spectrum 3) - essay by Lou Aronica
• Daughter Earth - shortstory by James Morrow
• Dogstar Man - shortstory by Nancy Willard
• Prism Tree - shortstory by Tony Daniel
• Desert Rain - novella by Mark L. Van Name and Pat Murphy
• Precious Moments - shortstory by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
• Lethe - novelette by Peg Kerr
• Lake Agassiz - shortstory by Jack McDevitt
• Transfusion - shortstory by Joëlle Wintrebert (trans. of Transfusion 1988)
• The Dark at the Corner of the Eye - shortstory by Patricia Anthony
• Tracking the Random Variable - shortstory by Marcos Donnelly
• Division by Zero - shortstory by Ted Chiang
• Matter's End - (1989) - novella by Gregory Benford
• Newton's Sleep - novelette by Ursula K. Le Guin
• The Helping Hand - shortstory by Norman Spinrad
• Fondest of Memories - shortstory by Kevin J. Anderson
• Loitering at Death's Door - novelette by Wolfgang Jeschke (trans. of Nekromanteion 1985)
• Rokuro - shortstory by Poul Anderson
• Police Actions - shortstory by Barry N. Malzberg
• Black Glass - novelette by Karen Joy Fowler
• Chango Chingamadre, Dutchman, & Me - shortstory by R. V. Branham
• Apartheid, Superstrings, and Mordecai Thubana - (1989) - novella by Michael Bishop
• Snow on Sugar Mountain - novelette by Elizabeth Hand
• When the Rose Is Dead - novelette by David Zindell

The editors of Full Spectrum have gathered here original speculative fiction that is astonishing both in range and quality. From medieval sorcery to dystopian futures, from computer-generated virtual realities to space research outposts, from idol worship to scientific philosophy, the volume shows off the best of well-known (Stephen Donaldson, Ursula Le Guin) and not so well-known SF and fantasy authors.

Dave Smeds conjures a future where regeneration and eternal youth are made possible through biotechnology; his story tells what happens to a dysfunctional mother and daughter in a world where suicide is a hobby and murder a misdemeanor. A. R. Morlan's men and women have changed social roles due to a disease that has reduced male births to less than 15%. David Brin and L. Timmel Duchamp also weigh in with reproduction stories, Brin through a highly technical story of a future in which cloning has made men unnecessary, Duchamp through a tale of an infectious hermaphrodite from another world. The focus on women throughout and the general excellence of the stories should give this volume broad appeal. -- Publishers Weekly

Table of Contents:

• Fragments from the Women's Writing - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Fragments from the Women's Writing - poem by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Motherhood, Etc. - (1993) - novelette by L. Timmel Duchamp
• The Saints - (1993) - shortstory by Bonita Kale
• The Best Lives of Our Years - (1993) - shortstory by A. R. Morlan
• Embodied In Its Opposite - (1993) - shortstory by John M. Landsberg
• Foreigners - (1993) - shortstory by Mark Rich
• The Googleplex Comes and Goes - (1993) - shortstory by Del Stone, Jr.
• The Beauty Addict - (1993) - novella by Ray Aldridge
• In Medicis Gardens - shortstory by Jean-Claude Dunyach (trans. of Dans les jardins Médicis 1986)
• The Woman Who Loved Pigs - (1993) - novella by Stephen R. Donaldson
• The Story So Far - (1993) - shortstory by Martha Soukup
• Suicidal Tendencies - [Nanodocs] - (1993) - novelette by Dave Smeds
• The Mind's Place - (1993) - novelette by Gregory Feeley
• Ah! Bright Wings - (1993) - novelette by Howard V. Hendrix
• Vox Domini - (1993) - novelette by Bruce Holland Rogers
• The Erl-King - (1993) - novelette by Elizabeth Hand
• The Death of John Patrick Yoder - (1993) - shortstory by Nancy Kress
• Human, Martian - One, Two, Three - (1993) - novelette by Kevin J. Anderson
• What Continues, What Fails ... - (1991) - novelette by David Brin
• Roar at the Heart of the World - (1993) - shortstory by Danith McPherson