Search Worlds Without End

Table of Contents:

• 7 - Introduction (Jupiter Laughs and Other Stories) - (1979) - essay
• 13 - Jupiter Laughs - (1975) - short story
• 25 - Falcon Chase - (1956) - short story
• 39 - Death Watch - (1963) - short story
• 50 - The Life and Death of Plunky Goo - (1963) - short story
• 56 - The Menhir - (1968) - short story
• 64 - The Doomsday Story - (1963) - short story
• 77 - Tomorrow's Gift - (1958) - short story
• 89 - The Jar of Latakia - (1954) - short story
• 102 - The Unicorn - (1960) - short story
• 111 - Nineteen Ninety-Four - (1960) - short story
• 133 - M81: Ursa Major - (1956) - short story (variant of The End of the Journey)
• 158 - The Brain Child - (1956) - short story
• 174 - Welcome Home - (1963) - short story
• 189 - Judgment Day - (1963) - short story (variant of Judgement Day)
• 203 - The Butterflies - (1956) - short story

A wild young Chicano artist who covers Greater Los Angeles with fantastic graffiti. A beautiful African telepath who opens the door to communications with the deadly Sirens of Jupiter.

A Plague on Ganymede. When his father's sudden illness stranded the Wilsons in the tiny human colony on Jupiter's moon, Bob gave up his plans for college and joined the colonists in their struggle against he brutal environment of Ganymede.

The challenges, the comradeship he found, and the awe-inspiring spectacle of Jupiter filling the sky--all exhilarated Bob far beyond his expectations. So did his investigation of the major mystery behind the strange globe that was hidden out in the hills and that seemed to be trying to communicate with the colony.

Before he could find the answer, a plauge struck and crippled the colony. Then enraged and fearful colonists accused Bob of being the carrier!

Once upon a time the Crown Prince of Jupiter glimpsed a miniature of Esmerelda, Princess of the Sun, and fell instantly in love. But was that really such a good idea?

Read the full story for free at Tor Reactor.

This story originally appeared in StoryQuarterly in 2007 and was reprinted in Lightspeed, May 2011. It can also be found in the anthology Lightspeed: Year One (2011), edited by John Joseph Adams. The story is included in the collection Lungs Full of Noise (2013).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

The Lunar Observatory on Earth is picking up a very strange and unidentifiable signal from the direction of Cygnus. When the meaning of this signal is finally understood, it clearly spells disaster for Earth. An immense object is rushing toward the Solar System, traveling nearly at the speed of light, its intense nuclear radiation sure to kill all life on Earth within months. As it moves closer the humans can discern that it is an enormous convoy of some sort, nearly as large as a planet. And there is nothing anyone can do to divert such an enormous alien object. Then, unexpectedly, the object changes course and heads toward the dead planet of Jupiter... but what could an enormous alien convoy want with such a useless planet?

Contains:

• Darwinian Pool Room
• Day of the Hunters
• Shah Guido G.
• Button, Button
• The Monkey's Finger
• Everest
• The Pause
• Let's Not
• Each an Explorer
• Blank!
• Does a Bee Care
• Silly Asses
• Buy Jupiter!
• A Statue for Father
• Rain, Rain, Go Away
• Founding Father
• Exile to Hell
• Key Item
• The Proper Study
• 2430 A.D.
• The Greatest Asset
• Take a Match
• Thiotimoline to the Stars
• Light Verse

Contents:

• vii - Introduction: Jupiter the Giant - essay by Isaac Asimov
• xv - Preface: Jupiter at Last - essay by Carol Pohl and Frederik Pohl
• 1 - Bridge - [Cities in Flight] - (1952) - novelette by James Blish
• 39 - Victory Unintentional - [Jovians - 2] - (1942) - short story by Isaac Asimov
• 65 - Desertion - [City] - (1944) - short story by Clifford D. Simak
• 81 - The Mad Moon - (1935) - novelette by Stanley G. Weinbaum
• 111 - Heavyplanet - (1939) - short story by Milton A. Rothman (variant of Heavy Planet)
• 125 - The Lotus-Engine - (1940) - short story by Raymond Z. Gallun
• 149 - Call Me Joe - (1957) - novelette by Poul Anderson
• 193 - Habit - (1939) - short story by Lester del Rey
• 211 - A Meeting with Medusa - [A Meeting with Medusa - 1] - (1971) - novelette by Arthur C. Clarke

Jupiter, magnified so as to fill half the sky, appears in the night sky suddenly. All the world sees it. From that night onwards, life continues as best it can under this sublime and overwhelming apparition in the heavens. People everywhere struggle to come to terms with what the apparition means, with how it can have happened. Is it portent of the end of the world? Or something more positive, something magical? Is it a freak of physics, or is it a message--and if so, how can it be decoded? For Stina Ekman, a frustrated poet and e-zine editor, this extraordinary omen seems to promise fearful and exotic changes for her blocked life.

Stina's narrative recounts the impact of this inexplicable event upon an ordinary life. All her life she has been fascinated by light and the effects of light on life; this enormous new fact in the sky forces her to confront the routines into which her life has fallen, the silence which has infected her poetry, the possibilities of existence itself.

This complex novella interrogates the way symbol and image govern our lives; the ways in which we attempt to bring meaning to the things with which life presents us; the balance we strive for between purity and admixture. It is an exploration the ways poetry, science and fiction might interact.

This novelette originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, July 2008. It can also be found in the antholgy The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection (2009), edited by Gardner Dozois.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, October 2014.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

The first manned expedition to Jupiter reaches speeds never experienced before; despite this it takes several months to reach its objective, leading to tensions among the crew, as well as serious vision problems caused by "light slip" A miscalculation in the gravity of Jupiter means that they will not be able to stop in time and will crash into the giant planet. A diversion to the jagged Io offers their only chance of survival.

When Rick Luban's high school prank to impress his buddies gets him thrown out of school, a long-suffering teacher recommends he apply for a job with a mining company in space. So begins an exciting adventure, the kind that one day will be open to many young men and women.

Shelby Cheever is a spoiled brat. He is also the richest kid in the country. Actually, make that the universe. Bored with his all-the-amusements-money-can-buy life, he decides on a bit of interstellar action, Shelby-style. But it turns out life on a starship is not all fun and games. As part of a crew, Shelby has a few things to learn. Such as how to follow orders instead of simply giving orders. Can Shelby learn how to cooperate with his crewmates?

He may not have a choice. When Shelby becomes the target of a hostage-for-ransom scheme, he'll need all the help he can get.

Scheming to get rid of obstacles, Josh Kerrigan's step-aunt ships him and her autistic step-daughter to Solferino to work for Foodlines. Josh and Dawn join a small training group that is ostensibly doing scientific research and exploration under the watchful eye of the company.

But as the days go by and strange occurrences and mysterious happenings continue, it becomes apparent that something is very wrong and that someone has very different plans for the planet.

Even more importantly, Josh and the other members of the training team realize that they are being lied to about intelligent life existing on the planet and then it becomes a race against time to save those creatures as well as themselves.

Jefferson Kopal, the privileged son of a wealthy family, knows he is a coward and a failure. He dreads appearing for and then barely passes the Space Navy test to qualify for service as an officer--something that has been an integral part of his family's tradition.

He is assigned to the remote Border Command by the Navy and eventually to a ship commanded by Captain Dufferin, who hates everything that the Kopal family stands for.

But when he is abandoned by his Captain and the rest of the crew, left for dead and possibly framed as a traitor, he must find his inner courage and resolve, not only to save himself, but to save his world as well.

Living with his Uncle Mike at Starswarm Station on a planet called Paradise, Kip's best friend is Gwen who answers questions and seems to know everything. But Gwen is an implant in Kip's head, connected to an Artificial Intelligence at the planet's central computer, and Kip learns some secrets that put not only his and his Uncle Mike's lives in danger, but also threaten the existence of the aliens called centaurs and the starswarms, mysterious but highly intelligent organisms living in lakes and streams.

Fifteen-year-old Linc Marani is from the wrong side of twenty-second century L.A.'s tracks. Everyone he knows is addicted to dope, booze, and the violence that masquerades as bravado in life on the streets. When a chance at some cold hard cash is offered to him by a slick associate in a fancy Cadillac, Linc jumps at the bait, only to find himself sentenced to a juvenile labor camp when the heist goes sour.

Labor camp, to Linc, means an aching, dawn-to-dusk bootcamp-style grind with no hope of escape or parole. He is about to give up and head out for a precisely regimented and miserable future when a mysterious psychologist offers him the chance of a lifetime. Can Linc overcome one of the worst neighborhoods on Earth by proving his worth on a mission beyond the stars?

Outward Bound is the sixth book in the Jupiter series. Patterned after the inspiring coming-of-age novels that Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov used to write, the Jupiter series has laid claim to that same imaginative drive and skillful storytelling that has delighted generations of science fiction readers worldwide.

The Jovian Astronautical-Biological Orbital Laboratory circles Jupiter and its moons--a metal shell bathed in lethal radiation, held in tenuous place by the gravity of the massive gas giant like a fragile glass ornament in a monstrous fist.

For seventeen-year-old Matt Bohles and his friends, "the Can" is home.

Life onboard the aging space station is cramped, spartan, and dangerous. Its mission--to monitor incoming signals and transmissions in search of alien life--has so far proven fruitless.

It is the only world Matt has ever known.

But now, as the threshold of adulthood--with its onset of new questions, confusions and feelings --Matt Bohles faces an impending crisis that threatens everything he knows and is. For unless he can prove himself an invaluable member of the scientific team--and quickly--he will be exiled to a filthy, perilous and unfamiliar hell called Earth.

On the poisonous, icy surface of Ganymede, a man and a boy are on a hunt for the Aleph--an alien artifact that ruled Ganymede for countless millenia, Infinitely dangerous, the Aleph haunts men's dreams and destroys all efforts to terraform Ganymede into an habitable planet. Now an ancient struggle is joined, as a boy seeks manhood, a man seeks enlightenment, and a society seeks the power to rule the universe.

Lucky Starr & his sidekick Bigman Jones hunt for a spy and saboteur who is trying to wreck the test flight of the first anti-gravity space ship.

War threatens to destroy Earth's last hope in the final installment of the Owner trilogy!

Alan Saul is now part human and part machine. He craves the stars, yet his human side still controls him; he can't leave his to sister die. He must leave Argus Station and stage a dangerous rescue. But Saul's robots make his crew feel increasingly redundant, sowing the seeds of mutiny and betrayal.

Serene Galahad, Earth's ruthless dictator, hides her crimes from a cowed populace as she desperately readies a new attack on Saul. She aims to destroy her enemy in a vicious display of violence.

The Scourge limps back to Earth, its earlier mission to annihilate Saul a failure. Some members of the decimated crew plan to murder Galahad before she has them murdered for their failure, but Clay Ruger plans to negotiate for his life. Events build to a climax as Ruger holds humanity's greatest asset--seeds to rebuild a dying Earth. This stolen Gene Bank data is offered at a price, but what will Galahad pay for humanity's future?

Neal Asher has been thrilling science fiction fans for over a decade with his Polity series. Jupiter War brings his new Owner trilogy to a stunning conclusion.

A revolutionary experiment in space opens a woman's eyes to the meaning of solitude in a thought-provoking short story by New York Times bestselling, award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor.

Tornado Onwubiko is one of seven people on Earth paired with sentient ships to explore and research the cosmos for twenty million euros. A decade of solitary life for a lifetime of wealth. Five years into the ten-year mission of total isolation comes a consolation: a temporary meetup among fellow travelers. A lot can happen in a week. For Tornado, who left a normal life behind, a little company can be life-changing.

Grant Archer only wanted to study astrophysics. But the forces of the "New Morality," the coalition of censorious do-gooders who run 21st-century America, have other plans for him.

To his distress, Grant is torn from his young bride and sent to a research station in orbit around Jupiter, to spy on the scientists who work there. Their work may lead to the discovery of higher life forms in the Jovian system-with implications the New Morality doesn't like at all.

What Grant's would-be controllers don't know is that his loyalty to science may be greater than his desire for a quiet life. But that loyalty will be tested in a mission as dangerous as any ever undertaken-a mission to the middle reaches of Jupiter's endless atmosphere, a place where hydrogen flows as a liquid, and cyclones larger than planets rage for centuries at a time.

What lurks there is more than anyone has counted on...and stranger than anyone could possibly have imagined.

In Ben Bova's novel JUPITER, physicist Grant Archer led an expedition into Jupiter's hostile planetwide ocean, attempting to study the unusual and massive creatures that call the planet their home. Unprepared for the hostile environment and crushing pressures, Grant's team faced certain death as their ship malfunctioned and slowly sank to the planet's depths. However one of Jupiter's native creatures--a city-sized leviathan--saved the doomed ship. This creature's act convinced Grant that the huge creatures were intelligent, but he lacked scientific proof.

Now, several years later, Grant prepares a new expedition to prove once and for all that the huge creatures are intelligent. The new team faces dangers from both the hostile environment and from humans who will do anything to make sure the mission is a failure, even if it means murdering the entire crew.