Search Worlds Without End

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1975. The story can also be found in the anthologies Best SF: 75, The Ninth Annual, edited by Harry Harrison and Brian W. Aldiss, Alpha 7 (1977), edited by Robert Silverberg. The Arbor House Treasury of Modern Science Fiction (1980), edited by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg and Inside the Funhouse: 17 SF Stories About SF (1992) edited by Mike Resnick. It is included in the collections Down Here in the Dream Quarter (1976) and The Very Best of Barry N. Malzberg (2013).

A chilling, ingenious brain-teaser by two masters of the psychological thriller. Nicholas Augustine was a rancher and a railroad enthusiast, a popular maverick whose meteoric rise to the Presidency dumbfounded every self-styled expert in Washington. But scandal threatens when someone is murdered in the White House. Loyal secret service agent Christopher Justice will do anything to protect the President. A masterful thriller of murder in the White House.

Barry N. Malzberg reflects back over four decades of writing science fiction, giving an insider's view of the field during that time which few can match, both for its authority and for the sharp and witty way he describes the highs and lows of one science fiction writer's career. He also writes vivid profiles of writers and editors, ranging from the titans who transformed the field, such as John W. Campbell, to once popular writers who are now all but forgotten, such as Hugo Award-winner Mark Clifton. ''If there is any particular cachet to my perspective,'' he writes, ''it comes because my career is, perhaps more than some, metaphoric.'' The original, shorter version of the book was widely praised, as by the San Francisco Chronicle: ''Contains literary criticism ranging over the whole history of the field. . . . this is a mordant, brilliant book,'' and by The Washington Post Book World: ''Malzberg makes persuasively clear that the best of science fiction should be valued as literature and nothing else.'' Breakfast in the Ruins is an indispensable book for every science fiction reader.

The first half of the book reprints Malzberg's early '80s classic Engines of the Night.

Kemper had the answer; Reuter had the problem. Kemper had figured it all out by the twenty-second century; he was a man of temporal science. The past did not exist. The past upon which the present was based had no credence unless it could be reconstructed, bit by tiny bit. Surrogates would have to go back in time and become the cast of thousands. Napoleon was needed; likewise the Kennedys, all four of them. There were those who would have taken argument with Kemper, but Kemper, unfortunately, was beyond dispute; in other words he, like all the other famous and infamous, was dead. Reuter's problem was that he had gone back to Vienna in the early 1800s to be Beethoven. Beethoven, Reuter has decided, was a disgusting man. Someone must listen - don't they realise that it was all a fraud?

This is the story of a strange and terrible world of the future. A world where children live without parents and family. There is no sense of the past in this world, no sense of history except in the mind of Lothar. Some say he is crazy; others only know that the Elders do not approve of his peculiar ways and that all conversations with him are forbidden. Dal is somehow attracted to Lothar, tolerating his impatience as he tells of past times that he has constructed in his mind from the scrapbooks he has hidden away in his cubicle.

Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in The Engines of the Night: Science Fiction in the Eighties (1982), a collection of essays. It can also be found in the anthologies The Nebula Awards #18 (1983), edited by Robert Silverberg and Light Years and Dark: Science Fiction and Fantasy Of and For Our Time (1984), edited by Michael Bishop. The story is included in the collections The Passage of the Light: The Recursive Science Fiction of Barry N. Malzberg (1994) and Breakfast in the Ruins (2007).

Malzberg's fifth collection of short fiction. Many of these stories originally appeared in the various original anthologies of the '70s, where his uncompromising approach to SF was welcomed.

Contents:

• Introduction: A Short One for the Boys in the Back Room
• A Galaxy Called Rome - (1975)
• Thirty-Seven Northwest - (1976)
• Sedan Deville - (1974)
• State of the Art - (1974)
• Isaiah - (1973)
• On the Campaign Trail - (1975)
• Report to Headquarters - (1975)
• Streaking - (1975)
• Making It to Gaxton Falls on the Red Planet in the Year of Our Lord - (1974)
• After the Great Space War - (1974)
• Trashing - (1973)
• Vox Populi - (1973)
• Fireday: Firenight - (1974)
• Making the Connections - (1975)
• January 1975 - (1975)
• The Destruction and Exculpation of Earth - (1973)
• Transfer - (1975)
• The Ballad of Slick Sid - (1972)
• Notes Leading Down to the Events at Bedlam - (1975)
• Seeking Assistance - (1976)
• Redundancy - (1976)
• Leviticus: In the Ark - (1975)
• Rage, Pain, Alienation and Other Aspects of the Writing of Science Fiction - (essay)
• Down Here in the Dream Quarter - (essay)

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1974) - essay by Edward L. Ferman and Barry N. Malzberg
• We Purchased People - (1974) - shortstory by Frederik Pohl
• Afterword (We Purchased People) - (1974) - essay by Frederik Pohl
• The Voortrekkers - (1974) - novelette by Poul Anderson
• Afterword (The Voortrekkers) - (1974) - essay by Poul Anderson
• Great Escape Tours, Inc. - (1974) - shortstory by Kit Reed
• Afterword (Great Escape Tours, Inc.) - (1974) - essay by Kit Reed
• The Girl in the Tau-Dream - (1974) - shortstory by Brian W. Aldiss
• The Immobility Crew - (1974) - shortstory by Brian W. Aldiss
• A Cultural Side-Effect - (1974) - shortstory by Brian W. Aldiss
• Afterword (Diagrams for Three Enigmatic Stories) - (1974) - essay by Brian W. Aldiss
• That Thou Art Mindful of Him! - (1974) - novelette by Isaac Asimov
• Afterword (That Thou Art Mindful of Him!) - (1974) - essay by Isaac Asimov
• We Three - (1974) - shortstory by Dean R. Koontz
• Afterword (We Three) - (1974) - essay by Dean R. Koontz
• An Old-Fashioned Girl - (1974) - shortstory by Joanna Russ
• Afterword (An Old-Fashioned Girl) - (1974) - essay by Joanna Russ
• Catman - (1974) - novelette by Harlan Ellison
• Afterword (Catman) - (1974) - essay by Harlan Ellison
• Space Rats of the CCC - (1974) - shortstory by Harry Harrison
• Afterword (Space Rats of the CCC) - (1974) - essay by Harry Harrison
• Trips - (1974) - novelette by Robert Silverberg
• Afterword (Trips) - (1974) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Wonderful, All-Purpose Transmogrifier - (1974) - shortstory by Barry N. Malzberg
• Afterword (The Wonderful, All-Purpose Transmogrifier) - (1974) - essay by Barry N. Malzberg
• Her Smoke Rose Up Forever - (1974) - shortstory by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Afterword (Her Smoke Rose Up Forever) - (1974) - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• A Little Something for Us Tempunauts - (1974) - novelette by Philip K. Dick
• Afterword (A Little Something for Us Tempunauts) - (1974) - essay by Philip K. Dick

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1968. The story can also be found in the anthologies Best SF: 1968 (1969), edited by Brian Aldiss and Harry Harrison and The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: 18th Series (1969) edited by Edward L. Ferman. It is included in The Many Worlds of Barry Malzberg (1975), Malzberg at Large (1979) and The Very Best of Barry N. Malzberg (2013).

Science fiction writer Sanford Kvass has a problem. Three problems, actually. He suffering from terrible writer's block and owes his agent a large sum of money. The last thing he needs is the approaching distraction of the World Science Fiction Convention, with it's obsessive fans, sex-mad SF groupies and professional writers and editors getting drunk and behaving badly. But we said 'three problems', didn't we?

The best that can be said about Sanford Kvass' third problem is that it renders his first two irrelevant. Kvass is approached by an alien (a genuine alien, not a cosplay one) who informs him that the human race is to be tested: an alien will appear at the World Science Fiction Convention, disguised as a human being, and unless Kvass can unmask it, the Earth will be destroyed. Under normal circumstances, this wouldn't present much of a challenge. All he's have to do, is to observe as many people as he could and identify the one who clearly had no experience of normal social interaction. Voila! One unmasked alien. There's just one problem: this is Worldcon...

This short story originally appeared in Galaxy Magazine, March 1971. It can also be found in the anthologies The 1972 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha, Best SF: 1971, edited by Harry Harrison and Brian W. Aldiss, and The Arbor House Treasury of Science Fiction Masterpieces (1983), edited by Robert Silverberg and Martin. H. Greenberg. The story is included in Ace Double #27415 (as by K. M. O'Donnel) and the collection Malzberg at Large (1979).

A rash of suicides has sent shock waves through a tightly organized society that officially frowns on such an act but privately makes it unavoidable. How else could people endure in a world carefully calculated to rob its citizens of self-respect and dignity? One man struggles against the overpowering temptation to take his own life, because he realizes that he must survive or else give the strange unseen rulers final victory. The characters in this extraordinary novel of the future share a host of psychiatric disturbances. One is haunted by strange visions in the night; another can reach sexual climax only in the confines of an old jalopy; others share schizophrenic fantasies that give frightening insight into the nature of their anguish.

Jonathan Herovit is a science fiction writer in a state of deep personal and professional crisis. Whilst struggling to deal with his wife's post-partum depression, his own alcoholism and a long-overdue novel that he has no motivation to write, the pseudonym under which he writes begins talking to him?

Escape is all that Quir thinks about. Escape from the enclosure on Earth. Escape from the endless interrogations. Quir's memories have been burned out; all he knows is that he must give scientific data to humans whenever they ask for it.

Hugo Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology Alternate Kennedys (1992), edited by Mike Resnick. It is include in the collection In the Stone House (2000).

A collection of Malzberg's short ficton published between 1985 and 1999.

This collection of 24 tales serves as a timely reminder that Malzberg, author of some 90 novels and 350 short stories, has long been a master of "what if" fiction. The centerpieces here are the three sardonic alternative-world versions of John F. Kennedy's election to the presidency and assassination ("Heavy Metal," "All Assassins" and the title story). A tale like the Hugo-nominated "In the Stone House," in which JFK's ill-starred older brother, Joe Jr., survives WWII to fight another day, cannot help shocking and even offending. Other tales of this type, portraying such varied luminaries as Emily Dickinson, Raymond Chandler, Leonard Bernstein and a Jewish "Christoforo" Columbus, may be less sensational, but are never less than thought provoking. In a different, more whimsical mode, "Prince of the Steppes" features a cabdriver who's a walking bomb and some hilarious Russian spy dialect worthy of Boris Badenov, while "Major League Triceratops" is a somewhat wordy riff on the dinosaur hunt theme. Malzberg's characters flail in an existential world they don't understand, and you may not either, but the challenge is always worth accepting. [Publisher's Weekly]

Contents:

• Heavy Metal (1992)
• Turpentine (1991)
• Quartermain (1985)
• The Prince of the Steppes (1988)
• Andante Lugubre (1993)
• Standards & Practices (1993)
• Darwinian Facts (1990)
• Allegro Marcato (1994)
• Something From the Seventies (1993)
• The High Purpose (1985) with Carter Scholz
• All Assassins (1989)
• Understanding Entropy (1994)
• Ship Full of Jews (1992)
• Amos (1992)
• Improvident Excess (1992)
• Hitler at Nuremberg (1994)
• Concerto Accademico (1992)
• The Intrasigents (1993)
• Hieratic Realignment (1999)
• The Only Thing You Learn (1994)
• Police Actions (1991)
• Fugato (1993)
• Major League Triceratops (1992) with Joyce Malzberg
• In the Stone House (1992)

This short story originally appeared in the uncredited anthology Their Immortal Hearts: Three Visions of Time (1980). It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction of the Year #10 (1981), edited by Terry Carr, and The Mammoth Book of Modern Science Fiction: Short Novels of the 1980s (1993), edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh.

The 1979 collection reprints Malzberg's 1970 novel Dwellers of the Deep, along with five early short stories. Malzberg provides a new introduction to each story.

Contents:

• Dwellers of the Deep - (1970)
• Final War - (1968)
• Death to the Keeper - (1968)
• Gehenna - (1971)
• Notes Just Prior to the Fall - (1970)
• A Soulsong to the Sad, Silly, Soaring Sixties - (1971)

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1979) - essay by Barry N. Malzberg
• Clerical Error - (1956) - novelette by Mark Clifton
• Mind Partner - (1960) - novelette by Christopher Anvil
• Ballenger's People - (1967) - shortstory by Kris Neville
• The Hunting Lodge - (1954) - novelette by Randall Garrett
• Lost Memory - (1952) - shortstory by Peter Phillips
• Junior - (1956) - shortstory by Robert Abernathy
• Laugh Along With Franz - (1965) - novelette by Norman Kagan
• My Darling Hecate - (1953) - novelette by Wyman Guin
• Delay in Transit - (1952) - novella by F. L. Wallace

They had all died screaming. She had seen them in her psychic visions. And she saw herself.

Folsom's Planet - An Alien land yet so familiar. If the mission were a success, Folsom's planet would bear his name for eternity. The barbarians would be civilized; the planet would join the Federation; the Federation's integrity would be preserved. But Hans Folsom had to be on guard. The aliens were intractable, his crew possibly traitorous. There was an incident during the voyage he couldn't quite remember. And a prophetic runic stone Had ancient spacemen visited here in the past? Did that explain the strange religions, the ancient ruins, the mysterious runic stone?

On Account of Darkness and Other Stories brings together for the first time every science fiction story that Bill and Barry wrote together during their long careers, featuring a brand-new introduction. These short, sharp stories, each a paradigm of the craft of science fiction, are prime examples of two authors working at the height of their collaborative powers, resulting in a collection of truly speculative fiction.

Contents:

• On Account of Darkness (1977) by Barry N. Malzberg and Bill Pronzini
• A Clone at Last (1978) by Barry N. Malzberg and Bill Pronzini
• "Do I Dare to Eat a Peach?" (1982) by Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg
• On the Nature of Time (1981) by Barry N. Malzberg and Bill Pronzini
• Night Rider (1977) by Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg
• Opening a Vein (1980) by Barry N. Malzberg and Bill Pronzini
• Reading Day (1979) by Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg
• Fascination (1980) by Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg
• The Lyran Case (1980) by Barry N. Malzberg and Bill Pronzini
• Whither Thou, Ghost (1981) by Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg
• Vanishing Point (1982) by Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg
• Out of Quarantine (1978) by Barry N. Malzberg and Bill Pronzini
• Shakespeare MCMLXXXV (1982) by Barry N. Malzberg and Bill Pronzini
• In Our Image (1981) by Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg
• Another Burnt-Out Case (1978) by Barry N. Malzberg and Bill Pronzini
• Inaugural (1976) by Barry N. Malzberg and Bill Pronzini
• The Last One Left (1980) by Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg
• Coming Again (1975) by Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg
• Multiples (1976) by Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg
• Prose Bowl (1979) by Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg
• Final War (1968) by Barry N. Malzberg
• Epitaph (1983) by Bill Pronzini
• Toy (1985) by Bill Pronzini
• The Rec Field (1980) by Bill Pronzini
• The Hungarian Cinch (1976) by Bill Pronzini

Barry N. Malzberg's third story collection.

Contents:

• Out from Ganymede - (1972)
• November 22, 1963 - (1974)
• Still-Life - (1972)
• The Conquest of Mars - (1972)
• Some Notes Toward a Useable Past - (1972)
• Linkage - (1973)
• The Union Forever - (1973)
• Yearbook - (1971)
• Inter Alia - (1972)
• Allowances - (1972)
• The Helmet - (1973)
• Breaking In - (1972)
• Pater Familias - (1972) with Kris Neville
• Causation - (1971)
• The Art of Fiction - (1972)
• A Short Religious Novel - (1972)
• Report of the Defense - (1972)
• Notes for a Novel About the First Ship Ever to Venus - (1971)
• Beyond Sleep - (1970)
• The Interceptor - (1972)
• Agony Column - (1971)
• The Sense of the Fire - (1967)

Earth was a planet of incompetents, but Simmons was the greatest loser of all. It seemed as if the powers of the Universe were concentrated on grinding his small soul into ultimate insignificance until the aliens came. To them, Simmons was the most important human on the planet - for only through his mind could they overcome this world.

Is there a creature who could challenge man's supremacy on Earth?

The answer came one hot day in the Arizona desert when a hord of ants turned a thriving city into a ghost town. Then it was only a matter of time until the final confrontation. The terrrible battle pitted the human race against a formidable insect civilization that far surpassed Man's paltry brain and weapons!

As we follow Rex Sackett ("The Metaphor Kid") on his way to the top in that great spectator sport of the future, hack-writing, we realize that this a fast-moving, ribald parody of the writing profession. From the moment the Head Editor waves his red flag to the second the typewriting stops and a victor is chosen, every reader will be cheering at the sidelines of Prose Bowl.

Bitterly, Bitterly, Scop is a failure! Scop is doing his job... He has spoken to President Kennedy, warning him to leave Dallas immediately... spoken to Zapruder, asking him not to take pictures... pleaded with Elaine Kozciouskos, begging her only to scream, has even fornicated with her - part of the job. In spite of the pain, he has witnessed, on location, the last minutes of Jack Kennedy, King, Malcolm, Robert Kennedy - all for the fate of mankind. But bitterly, bitterly, he knows he is a failure. Scop is trying to alter, has merely reinforced the future...

This short story originally appeared in Science Fiction Age, May 1999. It can alos be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 5 (2000), edited by David G. Hartwell. The story is included in the collection The Very Best of Barry N. Malzberg (2013).

You mean we're truly going to play for the fate of the Universe? "Exactly," the Overlord said, "a forty-one game chess match to be broadcast throughout all civilized sectors of your Universe so that everyone can witness it." "But why chess? Why me? Why this planet?" "Because chess is ideal for such a final judgement; it is a methodical game with absolutely no element of luck, and therefore there can be no complaints by the loser. Chess is known only to your plant, and you and your opponent are the most evenly matched living players. Good against evil. No other chess players are so close in true potential abilities. There is no other reason."

A 400-page collection of Malzberg's short works from the first half of the seventies, including story introductions by the author.

Contents:

• A Reckoning (1973)
• Letting It All Hang Out (1974)
• The Man in the Pocket (1972)
• Pater Familias (1972) with Kris Neville
• Going Down (1975)
• Those Wonderful Years (1973)
• On Ice (1973)
• Revolution (1973)
• Ups and Downs (1973)
• Bearing Witness (1973)
• At the Institute (1974)
• Making It Through (1972)
• Tapping Out (1973)
• Closed Sicilian (1973)
• Linkage (1973)
• Introduction to the Second Edition (1973)
• Trial of the Blood (1974)
• Getting Around (1973)
• Track Two (1974)
• The Battered-Earth Syndrome (1973)
• Network (1974)
• A Delightful Comedic Premise (1974)
• Geraniums (1973) with Valerie King
• City Lights, City Nights (1973)
• Culture Lock (1973)
• As in a Vision Apprehended (1974)
• Form in Remission (1974)
• Opening Fire (1973)
• Running Around (1973)
• Overlooking (1974)
• Twenty Sixty-one (1974)
• Closing the Deal (1974)
• What the Board Said (1976)
• Uncoupling (1975)
• Over the Line (1974)
• Try Again (1974)
• An Oversight (1974)
• And Still in the Darkness (1976)

Two prolific and award-winning science fiction writers, Mike Resnick and Barry N. Malzberg, have been publishing a "Dialogue" in every issue of the SFWA Bulletin, official publication of the Science Fiction Writers of America, for more than a decade. These collected columns explore every aspect of the literary genre, from writing to marketing to publishing, combining wit and insight with decades of experience.

In the far future, it has become possible in advanced psychotherapy for a man to be given dreams as vivid as reality in which he may play any part he chooses. If that man were inclined to see his life as a struggle between good and evil, and if he were blessed with a profound sense of the black humour inherent in his situation, he might choose to play the part of Jesus, called the Christ. If he were inclined to write a book, it might be this one.

It was a sultry summer day in 1981, and the 3 billion or so inhabitants of the world went about their daily routine unaware that, possibly, the fate of the human race lay in the shaking hands of one George Mercer, an insignificant and slightly neurotic employee of the New York City Department of Welfare. For George had been informed, by an accredited emissary of the Galactic Overlords, that he had 12 hours in which to prove the people of the Earth worthy of admission into the Galactic Federation. George, and George alone, would represent all of mankind. If he failed the entire planet would be destroyed. Was this all a nightmare of delusions dredged up by his tortured subconscious? Or a very real nightmare that would end in the Day of the Burning...

The year is 2016, and President Kennedy is being murdered - again and again and again The director has come to the charred ruins of New York to re-enact a mad dream from the past - the assassination of President Kennedy. As actors, he has the primitive race who inhabit the city. With them and his glamorous, dark haired lover, he rehearses everything - the motorcade, the shots, the panic. But at the last moment it all goes wrong. When the flower-filled limousine rounds the bend, the passenger is not Kennedy - but the Director himself. Shots ring out in a wild explosion of roses.

Aspiring science fiction writers, take heed! If you want to understand where the field has been and where it's going--if you want a career--you need this book. In The Engines of the Night, Malzberg reviews his own ambivalent relationship with science fiction up to 1980 and gauges its past and future potentials. Would science fiction have been better off without Hugo Gernsback and the pulp-literature stigma with which he cursed it? What are the seminal works of science fiction? Can science fiction kill you? His answers are brilliant, unequivocal, and surprising. Updated with a 2001 introduction, this award-winning collection remains an essential and enduring history and critique of a fascinating and problematic genre.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay
• The Number of the Beast - (1981) - essay
• L'Etat c'est moi - (1981) - essay
• I Could Have Been a Contender, Part One - essay
• Anonymity & Empire - (1981) - essay
• I Don't Know How to Put It Love but I'll Surely Surely Try - essay
• Memoir from Grub Street - (1981) - essay
• The Fifties - (1978) - essay
• The Fifties: Recapitulation and Coda - essay
• Ah Tempora! Ah Portions! Ah Mores! Ah Outlines! - essay
• Science Fiction and the Academy: Some Notes - essay
• At the Divining Edge - essay
• Some Notes Toward the True and the Terrible - (1981) - essay
• Wrong Rabbit - essay
• John W. Campbell: June 8, 1910 to July 11, 1971 - essay
• The Science Fiction of Science Fiction - (1980) - essay
• I Don't Want Her You Can Have Her-- - essay
• Onward and Upward With the Arts Part II - essay
• Tell Me Doctor If You Can That It's Not All Happening Again - essay
• The Richard Nixon-John B. Mitchell-Spiro Agnew Blues - essay
• Cornell George Hopley Woolrich: December 1903 to September 1968 - essay
• A Few Hard Truths for the Troops - essay
• Onward and Upward With the Arts Part III - essay
• Science Fiction As Picasso - (1981) - essay
• Mark Clifton: 1906-1963 - essay
• September 1973: What I Did Last Summer - essay
• The Cutting Edge - (1981) - essay
• Son of the True and Terrible - (1981) - essay
• The All-Time, Prime-Time, Take-Me-to-Your-Leader Science Fiction Plot - (1980) - essay
• Grandson of the True and the Terrible - essay
• Give Me That Old-Time Religion - (1981) - essay
• SF Forever - essay
• What I Won't Do Next Summer, I Guess - essay
• Come Fool, Follify - (1981) - essay
• The Engines of the Night - (1981) - essay
• Con Sordino - essay
• Corridors - shortstory
• L'Envoi - essay

The space programme has finally lost its novelty, and a jaded public hardly notices another moon launch. Skilful PR men preserve the illusion that the missions have become routine. But astronaut Richard Martin can tell a different story. Of panic in deep space, of crewmen pushed beyond breaking point, of official indifference towards his own shattered life. Martin is effectively put under wraps - until the pilot of a moon capsule, loaded with nuclear weaponry goes beserk and a nightmare develops, threatening to engulf the world - a nightmare that only Martin could end.

A staggering vision of Earth in the not-so-distant future... In a controlled and mechanical world, the only reality is fear and killing boredom. The only escape from mind-blowing monotony is the Game, with predictable rules of stimulus and response. And if you pit yourself against the Games Master, you may lose your last vestige of sanity. Or your life!

The Last Transaction is a deep and fascinating glimpse into the memories, inner compulsions, torments, triumphs, and events in the life of a President of the United States in a world gone mad, from 1980 to 1985. Even more, it is a perceptive vision of the major issues our society will face tomorrow. Sure to be a controversial, possibly prophetic, like anything Barry Malzberg writes, this novel is an experience you will not forget.

A collection of Malzberg's short work from the second half of the seventies.

Contents:

• On the Air (1976)
• Here, For Just a While (1978)
• In the Stocks (1977)
• The Fifties (1978) essay
• The Man Who Married a Beagle (1977)
• Big Ernie, the Royal Russian and the Big Trapdoor (1978)
• Ring, the Brass Ring, the Royal Russian, and I (1978)
• Of Ladies' Night Out and Otherwise
• The Annual Once-a-Year Bash and Circumstance Party (1979)
• The Appeal (1979)
• Yahrzeit (1973)
• Another Burnt-Out Case (1978) with Bill Pronzini
• I'm Going Through the Door (1976)
• Cornell (1972)
• On Account of Darkness (1977) with Bill Pronzini
• Impasse (1976)
• Varieties of Technological Experience (1978)
• Varieties of Religious Experience (1979)
• Inside Out (1978)
• Line of Succession (1978)
• Reaction-Formation (1979)
• Indigestion (1977)
• A Clone at Last (1978) with Bill Pronzini
• Backing Up (1978)
• September 1958 (1980)
• Into the Breach (1980)
• On "Revelations" (1976) essay
• Thirty-Six Views of His Dead Majesty (1980)
• The Trials of Sigmund
• The Man Who Loved the Midnight Lady (1977)

Barry Malzberg's fourth collection, including several previously unpublished stories. Includes an introduction by Malzberg and a preface by Roger Ellwood.

Contents:

• Initiation - (1975)
• Management - (1975)
• The Union Forever - (1973)
• Reconstitution - (1975)
• Final War - (1968)
• Closed Sicilian - (1973)
• After the Unfortunate Accident - (1975)
• The Second Short Shortest Fantasy Story Ever Published - (1973)
• In the Cup - (1972)
• Death to the Keeper - (1968)
• Chronicles of a Comer - (1972)

Earth's Elite - or its outcasts? For a selected, genetically-fitted few among the teeming millions of the twenty-first century, to become a Messenger for the Hulm Institute is to escape the prison that is life, that is earth. A Messenger is Noble! A Messenger is One of the Chosen. A Messenger is a Forerunner of a Time in which Fear and Disease will Disappear Forever. And inside a Messenger's head is murder, impotence and despair.

An omnibus of Malzberg's fiction about science fiction and science fiction writing. Includes the novels Dwellers of the Deep, Gather in the Hall of the Planets, and Herovit's World, along with ten shorter works.

This collection contains over 170,000 words of some of the funniest and most biting science fiction ever written-science fiction stories that question the very values and dreams of the field.

"It was the stories that comprise this book that made Malzberg the center of controversy... even more than his award-winning Beyond Apollo." --Mike Resnick, in the introduction to this collection

Contents:

• Introduction by Mike Resnick
• Dwellers of the Deep (1970)
• Gather in the Hall of the Planets (1971)
• July 24, 1970 (1969)
• Notes Toward a Useable Past (1994)
• A Question of Slant (1971)
• A Galaxy Called Rome (1975)
• A Delightful Comedic Premise (1974)
• January 1975 (1975)
• Prose Bowl (1979) with Bill Pronzini
• Another Goddamned Showboat (1990)
• Herovit's World (1973)
• Corridors (1982)
• The Passage of the Light (1993)
• Afterword by Anthony R. Lewis

When a terrestrial spaceship encounters intelligent aliens, the explorers from Earth activate their Freud simulacrum for its advice in handling the situation.

THEY ARE DEAD. THEY ARE HIDEOUSLY DEAD. FIVE WOMEN ARE DEAD. A HOMICIDAL MANIAC HAS KILLED FIVE WOMEN. Three down when Ferrara, a psychiatrist, and Valerie Broome, New York feature writer, arrive in the Adirondacks to see when the local Jack the Ripper will kill again. Fatalities and failed assaults ensue. Is it Steven Hook, failed actor, alcoholic, track loser? Or Jack Cross, local newspaperman, with too much mother and a girl who's pregnant? They have their reasons to rage against women...

In most of the stories Neville writes of loneliness, isolation, alienation, intol­erance of anything or anyone different, and of insanity created by the pressures of living. Along with madness of various kinds, his stories explore the essence of human nature and individuals interact­ing with one another as well as with so­ciety. As Malzberg notes, Neville, unlike many science fiction writers, was a se­rious author interested in "Big ideas."

Contents:

• vii - Kris Neville: An Appreciation (The Science Fiction of Kris Neville) - (1984) - essay by Barry N. Malzberg
• 1 - Cold War - (1949) - short story
• 13 - Bettyann - [Bettyann - 1] - (1951) - novelette
• 57 - Old Man Henderson - (1951) - short story
• 67 - Hunt the Hunter - (1951) - short story
• 83 - Underground Movement - (1952) - short story
• 96 - Overture - [Bettyann - 2] - (1954) - novella
• 150 - New Apples in the Garden - (1963) - short story
• 162 - The Price of Simeryl - (1966) - novelette
• 214 - The Forest of Zil - (1967) - short story
• 219 - From the Government Printing Office - (1967) - short story
• 226 - Ballenger's People - (1967) - short story
• 238 - Bibliography of Kris Neville (The Science Fiction of Kris Neville) - (1984) - essay by uncredited

Death and Disorder 104. Institute courses told a grim story about the Network - that savage world beyond the closely guarded Institute gates. But they wanted to see for themselves. They had to know. Were they really females there? Would their training as mercenaries prepare them for the wild bands of grisly subhumans? They set out on a journey of discovery only to become the unwitting agents of forces that threatened to destroy the only world they'd ever known.

For nearly half a century, Barry N. Malzberg has been stretching the boundaries of the science fiction and fantasy genres to tell truly entertaining tales. In a collection of fiction that Malzberg himself considers his very best, this anthology showcases a literary career spanning almost 50 years, dozens of novels, hundreds of stories, and countless classic books. Each of the 32 stories in this compilation offers Malzberg's trademark vision of a future that is equal parts cautionary tale and social commentary. In the fictional world depicted in one story, dreams turn into frightening trips through time to reveal an ultimate horror; in another the rules in a war game change with every flip of the manic military command. Including pieces appearing for the first time in book form alongside rediscovered gems, these hand-picked selections exhibit his versatile imagination and the dark humor so characteristic of his work.

Contents:

• Introduction by Joseph Wrzos
• A Galaxy Called Rome (1975)
• Agony Column (1971)
• Final War (1968)
• The Wooden Grenade (2013)
• Anderson (1982)
• Death to the Keeper (1968)
• State of the Art (1974)
• The Only Thing You Learn (1994)
• Police Actions (1991)
• Report to Headquarters (1975)
• The Shores of Suitability (2013)
• Hop Skip Jump (1988)
• What I Did to Blunt the Alien Invasion (1991)
• Shiva (1999)
• Rocket City (1982)
• Tap-Dancing Down the Highways and Byways of Life, etc. (1986)
• Coursing (1982)
• Blair House (1982)
• Quartermain (1985)
• Playback (1990)
• Corridors (1982)
• Icons (1981)
• Something From the Seventies (1993)
• Le Croix (1980)
• The Lady Louisiana Toy (1993)
• The Men's Support Group (2003)
• Out from Ganymede (1972)
• Kingfish (1992)
• Morning Light (1991)
• The Men Inside (1972)
• Standing Orders (1993)
• Most Politely, Most Politely (1992)
• Heliotrope Bouquet Murder Case (1997)

Hugo, Nebula and Sturgeon Award nominated short story. It was originally published in Science Fiction Age, July 1994. It can aslo be found in the anthology Nebula Awards 30 (1996), edited by Pamela Sargent and the collection In the Stone House (2000).

The Outer limit. When man's ambition expanded to fill the solar system, his technology expanded to take him as far as he wanted to go. Technology went on expanding. So did man's ambitions. But there was a danger only dimly suspected, and only poorly comprehended when it began to make itself felt. It was that man's ambition would outleap his imagination; that his technology would outstrip his emotional capacity. It might be that it was just too big, the universe. That there was just too much to of nothing for man to bear.

originally published under the pseudonym K. M. O'Donnell

Anguished by hyper-lucidity, a disemboded science fiction writer taps out the letters "LENA THOMAS" and instantly finds himself "warped" to the female astronaut's domane of the 40th century. Lena and the writer's subconscious then develop a strange intimacy while they attempt to explore a mysterious "black galaxy." But theirs is a fleeting and rarified relationship, constantly hounded by greedy, homicidal bureaucrats committed to the expansion of bureaus and tormented by the idea of fragmentation.

A two-man mission to Venus fails and is aborted. When it returns, the Captain is missing and the other astronaut, Harry M. Evans, is unable to explain what has happened. Or, conversely, he has too many explications. His journal of the expedition -- compiled in the mental institution to which NASA has embarrassedly committed him -- offers contradictory stories: he murdered the Captain, mad Venusian invaders murdered the Captain, the Captain vanished, no one was murdered and the Captain has returned in Evans' guise....

As the explanations pyramid and as the supervising psychiatrist's increasingly desperate efforts to get a straight story fail, it becomes apparent that Evans's madness and his inability to explain what happened are expressions of humanity's incompetence at the enormity of space exploration.

Marvin Martin, the show's host, is angry. Night after night he strips his guests of their pitiful pretensions, their commonplace hypocrisies - but how long has it been since he uncovered a genuine revelation? Hurwitz, who selects Martin's victims, is scared. He made a bad mistake when he chose Doris Jensen; she turned out to be from a competitive network and ruined a taping. Hurwitz's job is in danger. Walter Monaghan, historically, the 29th man to have walked on the moon, is desperate. He wants to tell the Revelations audience the truth about America's "space program" - that it never got off the ground. If he's just another nut, why is it so important that he be silenced?

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Stephen King
• Hop Frog - (1849) - shortstory by Edgar Allan Poe
• Rappaccini's Daughter - (1844) - novelette by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Squire Toby's Will - (1868) - novelette by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
• The Squaw - (1893) - shortstory by Bram Stoker
• The Jolly Corner - (1908) - novelette by Henry James
• "Man Overboard!" - (1899) - shortstory by Winston Churchill
• The Hand - (1919) - shortstory by Theodore Dreiser
• The Valley of Spiders - (1903) - shortstory by H. G. Wells
• The Middle Toe of the Right Foot - (1890) - shortstory by Ambrose Bierce
• Pickman's Model - (1927) - shortstory by H. P. Lovecraft
• Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper - (1943) - shortstory by Robert Bloch
• The Screaming Laugh - (1938) - novelette by Cornell Woolrich
• A Rose for Emily - (1930) - shortstory by William Faulkner
• Bianca's Hands - (1947) - shortstory by Theodore Sturgeon
• The Girl with the Hungry Eyes - (1949) - shortstory by Fritz Leiber
• Shut a Final Door - (1947) - shortstory by Truman Capote
• Come and Go Mad - (1949) - novelette by Fredric Brown
• The Scarlet King - (1954) - shortstory by Evan Hunter
• Sticks - (1974) - novelette by Karl Edward Wagner
• Sardonicus - (1961) - novelette by Ray Russell
• A Teacher's Rewards - (1970) - shortstory by Robert S. Phillips
• The Roaches - (1965) - shortstory by Thomas M. Disch
• The Jam - (1958) - shortstory by Henry Slesar
• Black Wind - (1979) - shortstory by Bill Pronzini
• The Road to Mictlantecutli - (1965) - shortstory by Adobe James
• Passengers - (1968) - shortstory by Robert Silverberg
• The Explosives Expert - (1967) - shortstory by John Lutz
• Call First - (1975) - shortstory by Ramsey Campbell
• The Fly - (1952) - shortstory by Arthur Porges
• Namesake - shortstory by Rosalind M. Greenberg
• Camps - (1979) - novelette by Jack Dann
• You Know Willie - (1957) - shortstory by Theodore R. Cogswell
• The Mindworm - (1950) - shortstory by C. M. Kornbluth
• Warm - (1953) - shortstory by Robert Sheckley
• Transfer - (1975) - shortstory by Barry N. Malzberg
• The Doll - (1980) - novelette by Joyce Carol Oates
• If Damon Comes - (1978) - shortstory by Charles L. Grant
• Mass Without Voices - (1979) - shortfiction by Arthur L. Samuels
• The Oblong Room - (1967) - shortstory by Edward D. Hoch
• The Party - (1967) - shortstory by William F. Nolan
• The Crate - (1979) - novelette by Stephen King