Search Worlds Without End

This novelette originally appeared in The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume Three (2009), edited by George Mann. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2010, edited by Rich Horton.

This novella originally appeared in the anthology Live Without a Net (2003), edited by Lou Anders. It can also be found in the anthology Best Short Novels: 2004 edited by Jonathan Strahan.

This novelette originally appeared in Interzone, #183 October 2002. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twentieth Annual Collection (2003), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Devastated by her husband's death, Earth-based biologist Yoshiko Sunadomari journeys to the paradise world of Fulgar to see her estranged son in the hope of bridging the gulf between them. But Tetsuo is in trouble. His expertise in mu-space technology and family links with the mysterious Pilots have ensured his survival - so far. Now he's in way over his head - unwittingly caught up in a conspiracy of illegal tech-trafficking and corruption, and in the sinister machinations of one of Fulgar's ruling elite: the charismatic Luculentus, Rafael Garcia de la Vega.

When his home is attacked, Tetsuo flees to the planet's unterraformed wastes, home to society's outcasts and eco-terrorists. So Yoshiko arrives on Fulgar to discover Tetsuo gone…and wanted for murder. Ill at ease in this strange, stratified new world seething with social and political unrest but desperate to find her son and clear his name, she embarks on a course of action that will bring her face to face with the awesome, malevolent mind of Rafael.

Lieutenant Donal Connor has been given the most bizarre of new cases. Four famous stage performers have died in recent months, thee of them in state capitals within Transifica, the fourth in far Zurinam. And now the idolised diva Maria deLivnova is coming to Tristopolis. Donal's boss is determined that nothing like this is ever to happen in his city. Connor is to have anything he needs, as long the diva lives.

And so begins a dark investigation through a world where corpses give up their pyschic energy in the massive necroflux generators which power the city, where gargoyles talk, where wraiths work in slavery, a world of the dead where corruption is alive.

This is an extraordinary SF novel set in alternate universe quite unlike any imagined in SF before; a universe where magic and the supernatural and the undead are given a scientific rationale and hoorfyingly plausible rationale.

The novel's setting, Tristopolis, is the ultimate noir city; an immense baroque creation of haunted stone skyscrapers, black metal and city-wide catacombs. Its hero Donal Connor is immensely likeable and easy to identify with. Even once he's dead.

Police officer Donal Riordan, killed and brought back to life with the heart of his undead lover beating in his chest, is getting used to a bizarre and frightening new existence. As one of the undead the living citizens of Tristopolis distrust and fear him. But death has its advantages. He can sense the presence, the thoughts the feelings of his fellow zombies, he is tireless, he can see better, hear more acutely.

But none of this will necessarily save him as he begins to investigate who is behind a plot to ensorcel the entire population of Tristopolis. The plot goes right to the top and anyway who gets in the way will be killed again.

And all the time the members of the Unity party are stoking the fires of hatred towards the undead.

600 years from now on the world of Fulgor Roger Blackstone, son of two Pilots (long-time alien spies, masquerading as ordinary humans) aches to see the mythical Pilot's city of Labyrinth, in the fractal ur-continuum of mu-space. In 8th century Norseland, a young carl called Wulf kills a man, watched by a mysterious warrior who bears the mark of Loki the Trickster God. In 1920s Zurich, Gavriela Silberstein enters the long, baroque central hallway of the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule where Einstein so recently studied. And on a nameless world, not knowing his human heritage, a silver-skinned youth tries to snatch back an Idea - but it floats away on gentle magnetic currents.

There are others across the ages, all with three things in common: they glimpse shards of darkness moving at the edge of their vision; they hear echoes of a dark, disturbing musical chord; and they will dream of joining a group called the Ragnarok Council. ABSORPTION is the first novel of RAGNAROK, a new space opera trilogy of high-tech space warfare, unitary intelligences made up of millions of minds, the bizarre physics of dark energy, quantum mechanics and a mindblowing rationale for Norse mythology.

The second volume of Meaney's epic Ragnarok space opera trilogy. The dark matter in the universe is alive and is seeking to pervert human history to its own ends. Its influence has reached back into the dark ages, to the centre of the 3rd Reich and 600 years into the future. The Ragnarok universe not only provides a stunning SF rationale for Norse mythology but posits a world where pilots are locked into symbiotic relationships with their ships and the cities can come alive.

From the leader of a Norse raiding party in 7th-century England to a young symbiotically bonded Pilot-and-Ship in the far future. From a female German scientist during the Second World War to a member of an alien race who communicates by smell. From the past to the future, war is coming. And only a few can see the darkness.

Hidden at the centre of the Universe, the darkness spreads its tendrils throughout space and time. Those it touches become puppets, dedicated to slowing down the improvement of the human race and preventing it from reaching its true potential. For the darkness knows that when it makes its final invasion of our space, humanity will stand against it.

And in the far, far future, knowing that they are the last hope for the galaxy, the Ragnarok council is forming...

Centuries of self-imposed isolation have transformed Nulapeiron into a world unlike any other - a world of vast subterranean cities maintained by extraordinary organic technologies. For the majority of its peoples, however such wonders have little meaning. Denied their democratic rights and restricted to the impoverished lower levels, they are subjected to the brutal law of the Logic Lords and the Oracles, supra-human beings whose ability to truecast the future maintains the status quo. But all this is about to change.

In a crowded marketplace a mysterious, beautiful woman is brutally cut down by a militia squad's graser fire. Amongst the horrified onlookers is young Tom Corcorigan. He recognizes her. Only the previous day she had presented him with a small, seemingly insignificant info-crystal. And only now, as the fire in the dying stranger's obsidian eyes fades, does he comprehend who - or what - she really was: a figure from legend, one of the fabled Pilots.

What Tom has still to discover is that his crystal holds the key to understanding mu-space, and so to freedom itself. He doesn't know it yet, but he has been given a destiny to fulfill - nothing less than the rewriting of his future, and that of his world.

Spectacularly staged, thrillingly written and set in a visionary future, Paradox places John Meaney at the forefront of science fiction in this new century.

Nulapeiron: a world isolated for twelve centuries. Its billions of inhabitants occupy subterranean strata, ruled by a logosophically trained aristocracy of Lords and Ladies whose power base is upheld by Oracles. But revolution has touched all of its many cultures - failing in its intent, yet changing everything.

Now Lord Tom Corcorigan - the commoner-turned-noble who renounced his power, the poet, logosopher, and holder of the key to understanding the myriad wonders of mu-space, the legendary one-armed warrior, former revolutionary and would-be peacemaker - lies fatally wounded. His survival is dependant on his meeting with a mysterious Seer whose spacetime-warping talents transcend the merely Oracular. It is a confrontation that will result in bitter tragedy and loss. Can the woman he loves be truly dead, or can quantum mysteries lie beyond the grave?

Turning his back on a society sliding once more into anarchy and chaos, a disillusioned and despairing Tom wanders this strange, stratified world in search of meaning, love and his own salvation. But it seems Nulapeiron is threatened by a vast, insidious and terrifying enemy whose origins may lie beyond their world, beyond their understanding. And now is the time for legends to be reborn...

The war against The Blight is over, and the subterranean realms of Nulapeiron have a chance for peace. But Tom Corcorigan, revolutionary and war hero, newly married and longing for the quiet life, knows that a greater force threatens his world: the planet-consuming Anomaly, which has absorbed billions of humans and alien beings into itself. Tom's association with the disembodied Eemur's Head, the flensed and bloody remains of a powerful Seer, changes him into something more than a poverty-stricken Lord. The spacetime-warping science of Seers and Oracles penetrates the heart of reality, bringing new enemies and allies into Tom's life.

And his story crystal, gift from a mysterious mu-space Pilot, reveals more of the Pilots' history and true nature, and the existence of their home in a universe no ordinary human being can experience: the strange, shifting, living fractal city that is Labyrinth.

Soon the Anomaly, an evil far more powerful than its offspring Blight, rips into the world, decimating the human realms. Among the free humans who survive in the floating terraformer spheres of Nulapeiron's skies, only the forces commanded by Tom Corcorigan have the smallest of chances against this omnipotent invader. For only a Warlord who is no longer human, who is willing to sacrifice everything, can deliver humanity from darkness.

RESOLUTION concludes the trilogy of Nulapeiron tales featuring Tom Corcorigan, bringing the story to a triumphant climax and revealing the devastating secret of the Oracles' creation