Search Worlds Without End

An exciting and accessible study of the genre of fantasy.

One of the dominant modes of storytelling in the twenty-first century, fantasy can mirror contemporary experiences and convey our anxieties and longings better than any representation of the merely real. It is the lie that speaks truth. This book addresses two central questions about fantastic storytelling: first, how can it be meaningful if it doesn't claim to represent things as they are, and second, what kind of change can it make in the world? How can a form of storytelling that alters physical laws and denies facts about the past be at the same time a source of insight into human nature and the workings of the world? What kind of social, political, cultural, intellectual work does fantasy perform in the world - the world of the reader, that is, not that of the characters?

In the tradition of other groundbreaking Norton Collections, Ursula K. Le Guin and Brian Attebery's Norton Book of Science Fiction provides the first truly comprehensive and coherent look at the best of contemporary science fiction.

Successfully used at over one hundred schools nationwide, these sixty-seven stories offer compelling evidence that science fiction is a source of the most thoughtful, imaginative-indeed, literary-fiction being written today.

Readers will be introduced to some rarely anthologized gems from well-known authors-Poul Anderson, Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, Samuel R. Delany, Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, Joanna Russ, Theodore Sturgeon, James Tiptree, Jr., Gene Wolfe, Roger Zelazny-as well as starling work by today's rising stars. Students and teachers alike will appreciate the sophisticated range of voices exploring the nature of reality and the condition of the human spirit.

Table of Contents

• Introduction - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• The Handler - (1960) - shortstory by Damon Knight
• Alpha Ralpha Boulevard - (1961) - novelette by Cordwainer Smith
• Tandy's Story - (1961) - novelette by Theodore Sturgeon
• 2064, or Thereabouts - (1964) - shortstory by David R. Bunch
• Balanced Ecology - (1965) - shortstory by James H. Schmitz
• The House the Blakeneys Built - (1965) - shortstory by Avram Davidson
• Over the River and Through the Woods - (1965) - shortstory by Clifford D. Simak
• How Beautiful With Banners - (1966) - shortstory by James Blish
• Nine Hundred Grandmothers - (1966) - shortstory by R. A. Lafferty
• When I Was Miss Dow - (1966) - shortstory by Sonya Dorman
• Comes Now the Power - (1966) - shortstory by Roger Zelazny
• Day Million - (1966) - shortstory by Frederik Pohl
• The Winter Flies - (1967) - shortstory by Fritz Leiber
• High Weir - (1968) - novelette by Samuel R. Delany
• Kyrie - (1968) - shortstory by Poul Anderson
• For the Sake of Grace - (1969) - novelette by Suzette Haden Elgin
• As Simple as That - (1971) - shortstory by Zenna Henderson
• Good News from the Vatican - (1971) - shortstory by Robert Silverberg
• Gather Blue Roses - (1972) - shortstory by Pamela Sargent
• The Women Men Don't See - (1973) - novelette by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Feather Tigers - (1973) - shortstory by Gene Wolfe
• The Mountains of Sunset, the Mountains of Dawn - (1974) - shortstory by Vonda N. McIntyre
• The Private War of Private Jacob - (1974) - shortstory by Joe Haldeman
• The Warlord of Saturn's Moons - (1974) - shortstory by Eleanor Arnason
• Making It All the Way into the Future on Gaxton Falls of the Red Planet - (1974) - shortstory by Barry N. Malzberg
• The New Atlantis - (1975) - novelette by Ursula K. Le Guin
• A Few Things I Know about Whileaway - (1974) - shortfiction by Joanna Russ
• Strange Wine - (1976) - shortstory by Harlan Ellison
• Lollipop and the Tar Baby - (1977) - novelette by John Varley
• Night-Rise - (1978) - shortstory by Katherine MacLean
• Frozen Journey - (1980) - shortstory by Philip K. Dick
• Precession - (1980) - shortstory by Edward Bryant
• Elbow Room - (1980) - novelette by Marion Zimmer Bradley
• Tauf Aleph - (1981) - novelette by Phyllis Gotlieb
• Exposures - (1981) - shortstory by Gregory Benford
• The Gernsback Continuum - (1981) - shortstory by William Gibson
• The Start of the End of the World - (1981) - shortstory by Carol Emshwiller
• Schrödinger's Plague - (1982) - shortstory by Greg Bear
• "...The World As We Know't." - (1982) - shortstory by Howard Waldrop
• The Byrds - (1983) - shortstory by Michael G. Coney
• Speech Sounds - (1983) - shortstory by Octavia E. Butler
• Distant Signals - (1984) - shortstory by Andrew Weiner
• The Lucky Strike - (1984) - novelette by Kim Stanley Robinson
• The Life of Anybody - (1984) - shortstory by Robert Sheckley
• Interlocking Pieces - (1984) - shortstory by Molly Gloss
• The War at Home - (1985) - shortstory by Lewis Shiner
• The Lake Was Full of Artificial Things - (1985) - shortstory by Karen Joy Fowler
• Snow - (1985) - shortstory by John Crowley
• After the Days of Dead-Eye 'Dee - (1985) - shortstory by Pat Cadigan
• The Bob Dylan Tambourine Software & Satori Support Services Consortium, Ltd. - (1985) - shortstory by Michael Bishop
• His Vegetable Wife - (1986) - shortstory by Pat Murphy
• The Brains of Rats - (1986) - shortstory by Michael Blumlein
• Out of All Them Bright Stars - (1985) - shortstory by Nancy Kress
• Rat - (1986) - shortstory by James Patrick Kelly
• America - (1987) - novelette by Orson Scott Card
• Schwarzschild Radius - (1987) - shortstory by Connie Willis
• Stable Strategies for Middle Management - (1988) - shortstory by Eileen Gunn
• Kirinyaga - (1988) - novelette by Mike Resnick
• A Midwinter's Tale - (1988) - shortstory by Michael Swanwick
• (Learning About) Machine Sex - (1988) - shortstory by Candas Jane Dorsey
• We See Things Differently - (1989) - novelette by Bruce Sterling
• Half-Life - (1989) - shortstory by Paul Preuss
• Homelanding - (1989) - shortstory by Margaret Atwood
• And the Angels Sing - (1990) - shortstory by Kate Wilhelm
• Aunt Parnetta's Electric Blisters - (1991) - shortstory by Diane Glancy
• Midnight News - (1990) - shortstory by Lisa Goldstein
• Invaders - (1990) - novelette by John Kessel
• Notes on the Authors