Search Worlds Without End

After a fateful confrontation with her former ally, Tony Barlow, Amira Valdez is on the run, pregnant with her own clone and desperate. The fundamentalist Trinity Compound has grown in strength and numbers, and with the help of the powerful mind-controlling drug Tiresia, is ready to march on the city of Westport. All of Amira';s hopes lie with finding Nova, the first human clone, and solving the greatest riddle in human history -- how to preserve human consciousness after death. Only Amira and Nova, together, can stand in the face of a world on the brink of disaster.

Flinx is the only one with even the tiniest chance of stopping the evil colossus barreling in to destroy the Humanx Commonwealth (and everything else in the Milky Way). With time running out, Flinx is a man in search of a solution and in search of himself. His efforts take him to the land of his mortal enemies, the bloodthirsty AAnn, where chances are excellent that Flinx's discovery-and summary execution-will eliminate all his demons and doubts in one masterstroke.

The way Flinx is feeling, that might not be the worst imaginable end. After years of searching for his father, he finally has-and must bear-the truth. And now he must also seek out an ancient sentient weapons platform wandering around somewhere in the galaxy and then communicate with it, a powwow that could very well fry his already frazzled brain. Then there are the oblivion-craving assassins determined to stop Flinx before he can prevent total annihilation.

With a future that rosy, it's no surprise he's flirting with disaster. Still, Flinx is no quitter, and he's got something else going for him-an uncanny ability to improvise and triumph (or at least survive) in impossible situations. He's certainly been through enough of them, and now he's going to need every ounce of that know-how, because he's venturing to places where the laws of physics fear to tread, where no one's ever been, to do what no one's ever done, and where his deadliest enemy is so close it's invisible.

Table of Contents:

• vii - Introduction (Transcendent) - essay by K. M. Szpara
• 1 - The Shape of My Name - short story by Nino Cipri
• 17 - into the waters I rode down - short story by Jack Hollis Marr
• 25 - Everything Beneath You - short story by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam
• 37 - Contents of Care Package to Etsath-tachri, Formerly Ryan Andrew Curran (Human English Translated to Sedrayin) - short story by Holly Heisey
• 41 - The Petals Abide - short story by Benjanun Sriduangkaew
• 59 - Treasure Acre - short story by Everett Maroon
• 63 - Splitskin - short story by E. Catherine Tobler
• 77 - The Need for Overwhelming Sensation - short story by Bogi Takács
• 91 - The Scaper's Muse - short story by B. R. Sanders
• 99 - The Librarian's Dilemma - short story by E. Saxey
• 119 - Chosen - short story by Margarita Tenser
• 123 - Where Monsters Dance - short story by A. Merc Rustad
• 143 - Be Not Unequally Yoked - short story by Alexis A. Hunter
• 161 - The Thing on the Cheerleading Squad - short story by Molly Tanzer
• 177 - Kin, Painted - short story by Penny Stirling

Table of Contents:

• Because Change Was the Ocean and We Lived by Her Mercy - by Charlie Jane Anders
• Skerry-Bride - by Sonya Taaffe
• Transitions by - Gwen Benaway
• This is Not a Wardrobe Door - by A. Merc Rustad
• Three Points Masculine - by An Owomoyela
• The L7 Gene - by Jeanne Thornton
• Rhizomatic Diplomacy - by Vajra Chandrasekera
• The Pigeon Summer - by Brit Mandelo
• The Road, and the Valley, and the Beasts - by Keffy R. M. Kehrli
• About a Woman and a Kid - by M Eighteen Téllez
• Sky and Dew - by Holly Heisey
• The Nothing Spots Where Nobody Wants to Stay - by Julian K. Jarboe
• Lisa's Story: Zombie Apocalypse - by Gillian Ybabez
• Happy REGARDS - by RoAnna Sylver
• The Way You Say Good-Night - by Toby MacNutt
• Her Sacred Spirit Soars - by S. Qiouyi Lu

Table of Contents:

• The Chameleon's Gloves - [The Machineries of Empire] - novelette by Yoon Ha Lee
• Death You Deserve - short fiction by Ryley Knowles
• Fire Fills the Belly - short story by Noa Josef Sperber
• Small Changes Over Large Periods of Time - short fiction by K. M. Szpara
• Heat Death of Western Human Arrogance - short fiction by M. Téllez
• Praying to the God of Small Chances - short story by L. Chan
• The Mouse - short fiction by Larissa Glasser
• Cooking with Closed Mouths - short story by Kerry Truong
• World of Three - short fiction by Shweta Narayan
• A Spell to Signal Home - short story by A. C. Buchanan
• Feed - short fiction by Rivers Solomon
• Hello, World - short fiction by Polenth Blake
• A Splendid Goat Adventure - short fiction by Rose Lemberg
• A Complex Filament of Light - short story by S. Qiouyi Lu
• Minor Heresies - short story by Ada Hoffmann
• The Heavy Things - short fiction by Julian K. Jarboe
• Don't Press Charges and I Won't Sue - novelette by Charlie Jane Anders
• The Worldless - short story by Indrapramit Das
• The Heart's Cartography - short story by Susan Jane Bigelow

Table of Contents:

• Ad Astra Per Aspera - by Nino Cipri
• The Substance of My Lives, the Accidents of Our Births - by José Pablo Iriarte
• You Inside Me - by Tori Curtis
• Sphexa, Start Dinosaur - by Nibedita Sen
• Apotheosis - by Catherine Kim
• Assistance - by Kathryn DeFazio
• Ports of Perception - by Izzy Wasserstein
• Therapeutic Memory Reversal - by Everett Maroon
• The Art of Quilting - by Matthias Klein
• The Sixth World - by Kylie Ariel Bemis
• When the South Wind Whispers - by H. Pueyo
• The Face of the Waters - by Sonya Taaffe
• Into the Gray - by Margaret Killjoy
• The God of Small Chances - by L. Chan
• Chokechain - by Andrew Joseph White
• Sandals Full of Rainwater - by A. E. Prevost
• Of Warps and Wefts - by Innocent Chizaram Ilo
• Control - by Davian Aw
• Ghosts - by Blue Neustifter
• Nuclear Disassociations - by Aqdas Aftab

Riley, a veteran of interstellar war, is one of many beings from many different worlds aboard a ship on a pilgrimage that spans the galaxy. However, he is not journeying to achieve transcendence, a vague mystical concept that has drawn everyone else on the ship to this journey into the unknown at the far edge of the galaxy. His mission is to find and kill the prophet who is reputed to help others transcend. While their ship speeds through space, the voyage is marred by violence and betrayal, making it clear that some of the ship's passengers are not the spiritual seekers they claim to be.

Like the pilgrims in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, a number of those on the starship share their unique stories. But as tensions rise, Riley realizes that the ship is less like the Canterbury Tales and more like a harrowing, deadly ship of fools. When he becomes friendly with a mysterious passenger named Asha, he thinks she's someone he can trust. However, like so many others on the ship, Asha is more than she appears. Uncovering her secrets could be the key to Riley's personal quest, or make him question everything he thought he knew about Transcendentalism and his mission to stop it.

Transgalactic: the latest novel in Hugo Award Winner James Gunn's SF Grandmaster Career!

When Riley and Asha finally reached the planet Terminal and found the Transcendental Machine, a matter transmission device built by an ancient race, they chose to be "translated." Now in possession of intellectual and physical powers that set them above human limitations, the machine has transported them to two, separate, unknown planets among a possibility of billions.

Riley and Asha know that together they can change the galaxy, so they attempt to do the impossible--find each other.

Riley and Asha have traveled across the galaxy, found the Transcendental Machine, and been translated into something more than human. They've returned to Earth and won over the artificial intelligence which once tried to destroy the Transcendental Machine.

Now they must save the fringes of the Federation.

Planets at the edge of the Federation have fallen silent. The arrogant Federation bureaucracy grudgingly send Riley and Asha to investigate. They join forces with a planetary A.I., a paranoid Federation watchdog, and a member of a splinter group who vows to destroy the A.I. No one trusts anyone or their motives.

They need to find common ground and the answer in order to confront an enemy more ancient and powerful than the Transcendentals.

It is the year 2047, and nuclear engineer Michael Poole is still in the throes of grief. His beloved wife, Morag, died seventeen years ago, along with their second child. Yet Michael is haunted by more than just the memory of Morag. On a beach in Miami, he sees his dead wife. But she vanishes as suddenly as she appears, leaving no clue as to her mysterious purpose.

Alia was born on a starship, fifteen thousand light years from Earth, five hundred thousand years after the death of Michael Poole. Yet she knows him intimately. In this distant future, when humanity has diversified as a species and spread across the galaxy, every person is entrusted with the duty of Witnessing the life of one man, woman, or child from the past, recovered by means of a technology able to traverse time itself. Alia's subject is Michael Poole.

When his surviving, estranged son is injured, Michael tries to reconnect with him–and to stave off a looming catastrophe. Vast reservoirs of toxic gases lie buried beneath the poles, trapped in crystals of ice. Now that ice is melting. Once it goes, the poisons released will threaten all life on Earth. A bold solution is within reach, if only Michael can convince a doubting world. Yet as Morag's ghostly visitations continue, Michael begins to doubt his own sanity.

In the future, Alia is chosen to become a Transcendent, an undying member of the group mind that is shepherding humanity toward an evolutionary apotheosis. The Witnessings are an integral part of their design, for only by redeeming the pain of every human who has lived and died can true Transcendence be achieved. Yet Alia discovers a dark side to the Transcendents' plans, a vein of madness that may lead to an unthinkable renunciation.

Somehow, Michael Poole holds the fate of the future in his hands. Now, to save that future, Alia must undertake a desperate journey into the past....