Search Worlds Without End

This short story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, March 2006, and was reprinted in Clarkesworld Magazine, June 2013. It can also be found in the anthologies Year's Best SF 12 (2007), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Kramer, The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection (2007), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Space Opera (2007), edited by Rich Horton.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology The Starry Rift: Tales of New Tomorrows (2008), edited by Jonathan Strahan. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection (2009).

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Edge of Infinity (2012), edited by Jonathan Strahan. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirtieth Annual Collection (2013), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Seven (2013).

'Making History', is chronologically the first of a brief series of stories ('Sea Change, With Monsters', 'Second Skin', and 'The Gardens of Saturn' have already appeared elsewhere) dealing with the aftermath of the Quiet War, and, more importantly, with the biotechnology bubbling underfoot which is rapidly transforming the Solar System.

Sturgeon Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the antholgoy Skylife: Space Habitats in Story and Science, ed. Gregory Benford & George Zebrowski. The story can also be found in the anthologies Year's Best SF 6 (2001), edited by David G. Hartwell, The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighteenth Annual Collection (2001), edited by Gardner Dozois, The Hard SF Renaissance (2002), edited by Kathryn Cramer and David G. Hartwell and Beyond Flesh (2002), edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois. It is included in teh collection Stories from the Quiet War (2012).

This novella originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, September 1998. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Sixteenth Annual Collection (1999), editd by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collection A Very British History (2013).

This short story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, April 1997. It can also be found in the anthologies:

• The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifteenth Annual Collection (1998), edited by Gardner Dozois
• Future War (1999), edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois
• Isaac Asimov's Solar System (1999), edited by Gardner Dozois and Sheila Williams
• Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year's Best Science Fiction (2005), edited by Gardner Dozois

The story is included in the collection A Very British History (2013).

This novelette originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, March 2002. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twentieth Annual Collection (2003), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Twenty-third century Earth, ravaged by climate change, looks backwards to the holy ideal of a pre-industrial Eden. Political power has been grabbed by a few powerful families and their green saints. Millions of people are imprisoned in teeming cities; millions more labour on Pharaonic projects to rebuild ruined ecosystems.

On the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, the Outers, descendants of refugees from Earth's repressive regimes, have constructed a wild variety of self-sufficient cities and settlements: scientific utopias crammed with exuberant creations of the genetic arts; the last outposts of every kind of democratic tradition. The fragile detente between the Outer cities and the dynasties of Earth is threatened by the ambitions of the rising generation of Outers, who want to break free of their cosy, inward-looking pocket paradises, colonise the rest of the Solar System, and drive human evolution in a hundred new directions.

On Earth, many demand pre-emptive action against the Outers before it's too late; others want to exploit the talents of their scientists and gene wizards. Amid campaigns for peace and reconciliation, political machinations, crude displays of military might, and espionage by cunningly wrought agents, the two branches of humanity edge towards war...

The Quiet War is over. The city states of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn have fallen to the Three Powers Alliance of Greater Brazil, the European Union and the Pacific Community. A century of enlightenment, rational utopianism and exploration of new ways of being human has fallen dark. Outers are herded into prison camps and forced to collaborate in the systematic plundering of their great archives of scientific and technical knowledge, while Earth's forces loot their cities, settlements and ships, and plan a final solution to the 'Outer problem'.

But Earth's victory is fragile, and riven by vicious internal politics. While seeking out and trying to anatomise the strange gardens abandoned in place by Avernus, the Outers' greatest genius, the gene wizard Sri Hong-Owen is embroiled in the plots and counterplots of the family that employs her. The diplomat Loc Ifrahim soon discovers that profiting from victory isn't as easy as he thought.

And in Greater Brazil, the Outers' democratic traditions have infected a population eager to escape the tyranny of the great families who rule them. After a conflict fought to contain the expansionist, posthuman ambitions of the Outers, the future is as uncertain as ever. Only one thing is clear. No one can escape the consequences of war - especially the victors.

Fomalhaut was first colonised by the posthuman Quick, who established an archipelago of thistledown cities and edenic worldlets within the star's vast dust belt. Their peaceful, decadent civilisation was swiftly conquered by a band of ruthless, aggressive, unreconstructed humans who call themselves the True, then, a century before, the True beat back an advance party of Ghosts, a posthuman cult which colonised the nearby system of Beta Hydri after being driven from the Solar System a thousand years ago. Now the Ghosts have returned to Fomalhaut, to begin their end game: the conquest of its single gas giant planet, a captured interstellar wanderer far older than the rest of Fomalhaut's system. At its core is a sphere of hot metallic hydrogen with strange and powerful properties based on exotic quantum physics. The Quick believe it is inhabited by an ancient alien Mind; the True believe it can be developed into a weapon, and the Ghosts believe it can be transformed into a computational system so powerful it can reach into their past, collapse timelines, and fulfil the ancient prophecies of their founder.

In the far future, a young man stands on a barren asteroid. His ship has been stolen, his family kidnapped or worse, and all he has on his side is a semi-intelligent spacesuit. The only member of the crew to escape, Hari has barely been off his ship before. It was his birthplace, his home and his future. He's going to get it back. McAuley's latest novel is set in the same far-flung future as his last few novels, but this time he takes on a much more personal story. This is a tale of revenge, of murder and morality, of growing up and discovering the world around you. Throughout the novel we follow Hari's viewpoint, and as he unravels the mysteries that led to his stranding, we discover them alongside him. But throughout his journeys, Hari must always bear one thing in mind. Nobody is to be trusted.