Search Worlds Without End

One of Niven's most beloved characters, Beowulf Shaeffer, is forced to take a dangerous mission to explore a neutron star. The last group who went there never came back alive, but Shaeffer faces life imprisonment if he doesn't take the job. Will he determine the mysterious force that turned the prior crew to hamburger before he suffers a similar fate?

Hugo Award winner "Neutron Star" and seven other groundbreaking stories and novellas by the author of RINGWORLD. Well-known Niven characters -- including Beowulf Schaeffer, Sigmund Ausfaller, Nessus and other alien Puppeteers, the ferocious Kzinti -- appear in these pages. As Tom Clancy says, "The scope of Larry Niven's work is so vast that only a writer of supreme talent could disguise the fact as well as he can."

Contents:

• Neutron Star
• A Relic of the Empire
• At the Core
• The Soft Weapon
• Flatlander
• The Ethics of Madness
• The Handicapped
• Grendel

Fleet of Worlds marks Larry Niven's first full novel-length collaboration within his Known Space universe, the playground he created for his bestselling Ringworld series. Teaming up with fellow SF writer Edward M. Lerner, Fleet of Worlds takes a closer look at the Human-Puppeteer (Citizens) relations and the events leading up to Niven's first Ringworld novel.

Kirsten Quinn-Kovacs is among the best and brightest of her people. She gratefully serves the gentle race that rescued her ancestors from a dying starship, gave them a world, and nurtures them still. If only the Citizens knew where Kirsten's people came from....

A chain reaction of supernovae at the galaxy's core has unleashed a wave of lethal radiation that will sterilize the galaxy. The Citizens flee, taking their planets, the Fleet of Worlds, with them.

Someone must scout ahead, and Kirsten and her crew eagerly volunteer. Under the guiding eye of Nessus, their Citizen mentor, they explore for any possible dangers in the Fleet's path--and uncover long-hidden truths that will shake the foundations of worlds.

For too long, the Puppeteers have controlled the fate of worlds. Now Sigmund is pulling the strings...

Covert agent Sigmund Ausfaller is Earth's secret weapon, humanity's best defense against all conspiracies, real and potential - and imaginary - of foes both human and alien. Who better than a brilliant paranoid to expose the devious plots of others?

He may finally have met his match in Nessus, representative of the secretive Puppeteers, the elder race who wield vastly superior technologies. Nessus schemes in the shadows with Earth's traitors and adversaries, even after the race he represents abruptly vanishes from Known Space.

As a paranoid, Sigmund had always known things would end horribly for him. Only the when, where, how, why, and by whom of it all had eluded him. That fog has begun to lift...

But even Sigmund has never imagined how far his investigations will take him - or that his destiny is entwined with the fates of worlds.