Search Worlds Without End

Hugo Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology Orbit 14 (1974), edited by Damon Knight. The story is included in the collection Children of the Wind (1989).

Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in the anthology Orbit 6 (1970), edited by Damon Knight.

They came to his deathbed. Four dutiful children. Each the victim of a different mother. Each mother the victim of a tragic accident, unsolved murder, mysterious disappearance. As he sank away they glowered their hatred. It was a hatred he expected, and his revenge was well-planned. He left a multimillion dollar legacy, bearing a ghoulish price tag. They could pay with their sanity, or their psyches, or their souls, they would be part of an experiment., something to do with brain waves. It would be a great service to science, they were told. Just one last little joke on his kids, and they swore they could hear him laughing all the way to hell.

Abyss Anyone?

Enter Kate Wilhelm's realm of extrasensory perception, alternate universes, alien monsters, and something else, something much more strange... the abyss that lurks near each of us, ready to destroy us... or set us free.

Table of Contents

• The Plastic Abyss - (1971)
• Stranger in the House - (1968)

This short story oriignally appeared in Omni, May 1990. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighth Annual Collection (1991), edited by Gardner Dozois, The Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction, 1960-1990 (1993), edited by Ursula K. Le Guin and Brian Attebery, and Angels! (1995), edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collection And the Angels Sing (1992).

The dozen stories in this delightful volume span the career of Kate Wilhelm, showcasing the wide-ranging works of this exceptional stylist. These stories include:

"The Look Alike", in which a grieving young mother encounters a doppelganger of her lost daughter.

"Forever Yours, Anna", recipient of the 1988 Nebula Award for best short story.

"The Day of the Sharks", presents a relentless account of a woman recovering from a breakdown.

Ranging from the harrowing to the humorous, from the charming to the strange, And the Angels Sing is a chorus of literary delights.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword - essay by Karen Joy Fowler
• The Look Alike - (1988) - novella
• O Homo; O Femina; O Tempora - (1985) - shortstory
• The Chosen - (1970) - shortstory
• On the Road to Honeyville - (1972) - shortstory
• The Great Doors of Silence - (1986) - shortstory
• The Day of the Sharks - shortstory
• The Loiterer - (1986) - shortstory
• The Scream - (1974) - novelette
• Strangeness, Charm and Spin - (1984) - shortstory
• The Dragon Seed - (1985) - shortstory
• Forever Yours, Anna - (1987) - shortstory
• And the Angels Sing - (1990) - shortstory

Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in the anthology Orbit 7 (1970), edited by Damon Knight. The story is included in the collection The Infinity Box (1975).

Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in the anthology Orbit 2 (1967), edited by Damon Knight. The story can also be found in the anthologies Apha 5, edited by Robert Silverberg, Women of Wonder (1975), edited by Pamela Sargent, and The Future Is Female!: 25 Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women, from Pulp Pioneers to Ursula K. Le Guin (2018), edited by Lisa Yaszek. The story is included in the collection The Downstairs Room and Other Speculative Fiction (1968).

Cambio Bay, in the shadow of the Sierra Madre, is rich in mystic heritage and Indian legend. When a fierce mudslide washes out the California freeway, an odd assortment of travellers find haven in Cambio Bay, at the mysterious Miss Luisa's guest house. By the author of "Sweet, Sweet Poison".

This collection assembles in one volume five works by Kate Wilhelm, masterful fantasist and one of science fiction's premier storytellers:

In 'Children of the Wind', identical twins J-1 and J-2 play subtle games with their parents' lives. Are the boys just precocious, or are they far more strange - and powerful? 'The Gorgon Field' finds Charlie and Constance caught in a mystery of mystical proportions in the Arizona desert. 'A Brother to Dragons, a Companion of Owls' depicts a future in which survival may not be merely enough - it may be too much, whilst 'The Blue Ladies' studies a disabled woman's abilities to share his vision. 'The Girl Who Fell Into the Sky', winner of the Nebula Award for best novelette, weaves a dreamy tale of love, death and an old piano amid the Kansas plains.

These five tales present luminous, absorbing visions of the world as it could be and as it is.

Table of Contents:

• Children of the Wind - (1989) - novella
• The Gorgon Field - (1985) - novella
• A Brother to Dragons, a Companion of Owls - (1974) - novelette
• The Blue Ladies - (1983) - novella
• The Girl Who Fell into the Sky - (1986) - novelette

"My lover, my protector, my friend, my doctor, my brother - they're all killing me."

Peter Roos cannot help knowing the thoughts of those around him. A rare physical condition has given him that power. Now he has "heard" about the government's secret plan to give up control of America to the military - to build an underground city for themselves in the event of a nuclear attack. Unfortunately for Roos, the government knows he knows. And the project's sponsors - including his senator brother - have no choice.

They must get him out of the way - permanently!

Why is Lauren Steele being followed around by a mysterious red-haired ghost? Why is the Pentagon after her? And why doesn't anyone believe her?
As a psychologist at the Waycross Clinic in Seattle, she has enough problems. Her clients never seem to listen to anything she says, and her co-workers could use extensive counseling themselves. The last thing she needs is an obnoxious figment of her own imagination showing up at the least opportune moments.
But Daniel ("Corky") Corcoran is actually the victim of a fault experimental laser, having been accidentally "dispersed" when the device misfired during a demonstration. He has literally gathered his wits about him by focusing on the last person he saw - Lauren. The trouble is, Corky's attempts at communication only convince Lauren that she is going crazy.
Add to this one paranoid colonel from the Pentagon who is convinced that both Corky and Lauren are Soviet spies, and you have a mix of zany and colourful characters caught up in a plot that is quintessential Wilhelm.

Emily Carmichael was always her own woman - as the men in her life found out - from the days when she was an aristocrat's wife in New York high society, through the great events of an era, to the years that bring her to San Francisco, divorced and disillusioned, to take in destitute artists.

Now she lies trapped by an earthquake, under the rubble of her California cottage. As she waits to be freed, memories crowd her mind - of her husband, her son, her lovers. She has reached a crossroads, and for Emily, life will never be the same.

Nebula Award winning and Hugo Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Omni, July 1987. The story can be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifth Annual Collection (1988), edited by Gardner Dozios, The 1988 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Arthur W. Saha and Donald A. Wollheim, Nebula Awards 23 (1989) edited by Michael Bishop and Visions of Wonder (1996), edited by David G. Hartwell and Milton T. Wolf. It is included in the collection And the Angels Sing (1992).

Stanley Huysman was a Nobel laureate whose visionary theories of his later years, bridging biology and physics, came to be labelled crackpot ideas. The true genius of these experiments became clear only when Huysman's widow called on Drew Lancaster to write the scientist's biography. As Drew deciphers the man's notes, to crack the code of government-funded projects and the secrecy of Huysman's unscrupulous assistant, it is revealed that the great man actually achieved what he set out to do. By genetic manipulation, he induced telepathy in his subjects. But Dohemy is now holding those subjects' children prisoner, and it is only their extraordinary powers that can save them.

Hugo, Nebula and Locus Award nominated short stoty. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, November 1994 and can aslo be found in the anthology Nebula Awards 30 (1996), edited by Pamela Sargent.

Kate Wilhelm is at the top of her form in Juniper Time, her first science fiction novel since she won the Hugo Award for Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang.

Juniper Time is a panoramic and hauntingly beautiful novel of the survival of hunamkind and nature. Drought has devastated the western United States and the people migrate eastward to settle in squalid concentration camps called "Newtowns." One woman, Jean Brighton, flees in the opposite direction. A linguist who can decode secret messages and make sense of alien languages, Jean has found governmental pressure on her university work untenable, and she heads for the only place she knows she will be safe - her grandfather's new-deserted house in the Pacific Northwest.

Yet her survival does not come from her own devices alone, for she receives the help of Indians who have stayed to reclaim the land that was once theirs. Through them and the mysteries of their world, Jean masters the art of survival, not only in the desolate Northwest but also in the white man's world she must return to someday.

Rich in feeling and insight, Juniper Time ranks among Kate Wilhelm's most compelling novels.

The alien spaceship landed in a cornfield. Its crew died rapidly, leaving only one survivor - a baby, conceived on an unknown world, carried in its mother's womb across space and delivered even as the mother died on a hostile Earth. But the alien woman had given birth to more than a child. With her last act she had bequeathed to the Earth that hated her and her kind decades of turmoil and strife that would come close to tearing the whole planet apart.

This book contains four striking novellas, and the author's own philosophy of fiction writing expressed in her speech as a guest of honour at the 38th World Science Fiction Convention.

Table of Contents:

• The Winter Beach - (1981) - novella
• Julian - (1978) - novelette
• With Thimbles, with Forks, and Hope - (1981) - novella
• Moongate - (1978) - novella
• The Uncertain Edge of Reality - (1980) - essay

Someone is thinking about Margaret. "I wondered about Margaret, and what she would do next. I didn't care unless she went the route of drugs They make her try and get at me sometimes, and that can be bothersome. She is so terribly afraid of me."Who so casually draws Margaret to the brink of hysteria - then, just as casually, tries to walk away?Her subconsciousness does, when it becomes a living, breathing personality with an ego all its own - setting the stage for a remarkable transformation scarcely envisioned by the science of man.

Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared as a chapbook in 1992 and was reprinted in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, February 1993. The story can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Tenth Annual Collection (1993), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Susannah runs away from her husband, loses her memory, and - with new innocence - rediscovers life in America, becoming involved with thieves and terrorists, relating to people on disconcerting levels, and falling for a most unlikely Mr. Right...

Eight stories by science fiction's finest prose stylist... Speculation, not science, is Wilhelm's forte, and these stories deal with a town in a state of perpetual intellectual somnambulism, two strange hounds that show up on the stoop of a young housewife's home, a man and a woman who take refuge from a snow storm in a bus stop, and a woman who abandons her dreary family to dream about adventures on Mars. -- Booklist

Table of Contents:

• Foreword - (1978) - essay by R. Glenn Wright
• Somerset Dreams - (1969)
• The Encounter - (1970)
• Planet Story - (1975)
• Mrs. Bagley Goes to Mars - (1978)
• Symbiosis - (1972)
• Ladies and Gentlemen, This Is Your Crisis - (1976)
• The Hounds - (1974)
• State of Grace - (1977)

She was consumed by two passions - her husband and her medical research. Or was it first her work and then her husband? At twenty-eight Anne had made a scientific breakthrough that would be a financial miracle for her employers. But was it safe yet to use the serum on humans? Anne found the answer - after her perfect marriage and her courage had been tested by inward conflict and the politics of power.

One night, beneath the streets of the city, four ingredients found their way into the same collector box in the underground sewer system, combined in a warm , seething liquid and gave birth to a hideous, destructive force...

Life is accidentally created in the catch basin of a Chicago drain; this 'clone' grows into a miles-square blob that eats organic material, including people. The city is threatened as the clone adapts to eating parts of buildings.

What happens when...
...An all-powerful killing machine is equipped with a human brain on the brink of madness?
...A group of apes are injected with human intelligence and build their own strange empire?
...A child with an other-worldly intellect is locked in mortal combat with his own down-to-earth father?
...A hand-picked space team convenes at a countdown that can mean the start of a new era - or the end of mankind?

You'll find out when you enter - THE DOWNSTAIRS ROOM.

Table of Contents:

• Unbirthday Party - (1968)
• Baby, You Were Great - (1967)
• When the Moon Was Red - (1960)
• Sirloin and White Wine - (1968)
• Perchance to Dream - (1968)
• How Many Miles to Babylon? - (1968)
• The Downstairs Room - (1968)
• Countdown - (1968)
• The Plausible Improbable - (1968)
• The Feel of Desperation - (1964)
• A Time to Keep - (1962)
• The Most Beautiful Woman in the World - (1968)
• The Planners - (1968)
• Windsong - (1968)

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It orginally appeared in the anthology Orbit 8 (1970), edited by Damon Knight. The story can also be found in the anthology Nebula Award Stories Seven (1972), edited by Lloyd Biggle, Jr. It is included in the collection Somerset Dreams and Other Fictions (1978).

Nebula Award nominated novelette.

A girl reaches her teenage years in a near future earth where society has become cruelly regimented.

This story originally appeared in the anthology Again, Dangerous Visions (1972), edited by Harlan Elison. It can also be found in the anthologies More Women of Wonder (1976) and Women of Wonder: The Classic Years: SF by Women from the 1940s to the 1970s (1995), both edited by Pamela Sargent, Alpha 9 (1978), edited by Robert Silverberg and Brave New Worlds: Dystopian Stories (2011), edited by John Joseph Adams. It is included in the collection The Infinity Box (1975).

Nebula Award winning novelette.

The magical wheat-fields of Kansas hide the ruins of an old town with a terrible past. While doing research on an oral history project, Lorna stumbles on the town's secret.

The story originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, October 1986. It can also be found in the anthology Nebula Awards 22 (1988), edited by George Zebrowski and the collection Children of the Wind (1989).

Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in the anthology Orbit 9 (1971), edited by Damon Knight. The story is included in the collection The Infinity Box (1975) and is half of Tor Double #12: He Who Shapes/The Infinity Box (1989, with Roger Zelazny).

Suppose you could enter the mind of a beautiful woman; see what she sees, feel what she feels, and control her completely Suppose you could turn back the hands of your watch, and relive your life Suppose the stories you wrote kept coming true.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (The Infinity Box) - (1975)
• The Infinity Box - (1971)
• The Time Piece - (1975)
• The Red Canary - (1973)
• Man of Letters - (1975)
• April Fools' Day Forever - (1970)
• Where Have You Been, Billy Boy, Billy Boy? - (1971)
• The Fusion Bomb - (1972)
• The Village - (1973)
• The Funeral - (1972)

PROGRAMMED FOR DESTRUCTION

In a way, they were the same, the man and the machine. Both had been ordered to do one thing - kill.

The robot had been created to wreak revenge on the humans who had brutally conquered its planet.

The man was the product of years of training by an Earth that had set out to take over the Universe.

Now the two faced each other in the icy reaches of the galaxy. The robot, with its calculating machine of a brain, its impenetrable force shield, its deadly laser beam. The man, with the kind of nerve that refused to admit the odds against survival...

Nebula Award winning short story. It originally appeared in Orbit 3 (1968), edited by Damon Knight. The story can also be found in Nebula Award Stories Four (1969), edited by Poul Anderson, Bio-Futures (1976), edited by Pamela Sargent, The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume III (1981), edited by Arthur C. Clarke and George W. Proctor, The Road to Science Fiction 4: From Here to Forever (1982), edited by James Gunn, and The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF (1994), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. It is included in the collection The Downstairs Room and Other Speculative Fiction (1968).

Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in the collection Abyss (1971).

Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in the collection Listen, Listen (1981).

The more man learns, the more dangerous he becomes. The greater the civilization, the greater the chaos it eventually unleashes...
If you discovered the secret of immortality, to whom would you give it? To the scientists, the politicians, the military? To the Americans? The Russians? The Chinese?
If you weren't after power or money or fame but really wanted to increase human happiness, what would you do with your secret? Go underground? Run away? Pray that you might outlive civilization and be given the chance to start it all over again?
And if the authorities found you, what would they do?
Here is a chilling, provocative and unforgettable novel about the present and the future of mankind.

Before becoming one of today's most intriguing and innovative mystery writers, Kate Wilhelm was a leading writer of science fiction, acclaimed for classics like The Infinity Box and The Clewiston Test.

Now one of her most famous novels returns to print, the spellbinding story of an isolated post-holocaust community determined to preserve itself, through a perilous experiment in cloning. Sweeping, dramatic, rich with humanity, and rigorous in its science, Where Later the Sweet Birds Sang is widely regarded as a high point of both humanistic and "hard" SF, and won SF's Hugo Award and Locus Award on its first publication. It is as compelling today as it was then.

Table of Contents:

• 1 - The Book of Ylin - (1983) - short story
• 13 - Jenny with Wings - (1963) - short story
• 33 - The Downstairs Room - (1968) - short story
• 55 - State of Grace - (1977) - short story
• 69 - Isosceles - (1988) - short story
• 91 - The Death of Mrs. Stringfellow - (1980) - short story

Table of Contents:

• The Mile-Long Spaceship - (1957)
• Fear is a Cold Black - (1963)
• Jenny with Wings - (1963)
• A is for Automation - (1959)
• Gift from the Stars - (1958)
• No Light in the Window
• One for the Road - (1959)
• Andover and the Android - (1963)
• The Man Without a Planet - (1962)
• The Apostolic Travelers - (1963)
• The Last Days of the Captain - (1962)

Over the years, Constance Leidl and Charlie Meiklejohn have investigated a wide variety of murder and arson cases. This collection assembles for the first time the shorter cases of the detecting duo, including: "With Thimbles, with Forks, and Hope," their first case ever; the harrowing account of an arsonist out for revenge, "Torch Song," which has never been published before; and "All for One," also published first in this volume - a bittersweet tale of murderous family relations. Together with "Sister Alice" and "The Gorgon Field," these stories comprise a full house of fantastic fiction.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robin Scott Wilson
• With Thimbles, with Forks, and Hope - (1981) - novella
• Sister Angel - (1983) - novelette
• All for One - novella
• The Gorgon Field - (1985) - novella
• Torch Song - novella

WFA and Nebula Award nominated novella.

What is Ramón's hold on Carl Wyandot, one of the richest men in the country? Carl's daughter hires Constance and Charlie to find out why her father intends to give a hidden valley in Colorado to him. In the valley there is the mammoth formation called the Gorgon Field, red sandstone pillars that are unscalable, cover an area a mile and a half from front to back, and reach nearly two hundred feet in height. Why is Constance entranced by them? Why are others so afraid of them?

The Gorgon Field originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, August 1985. The story is included in the collections Children of the Wind (1989) and A Flush of Shadows (1995).

Hugo Award nominated novella.

It started with an insurance fraud investigation that took Constance and Charlie to a luxurious resort hotel in Florida where they found their suspect being stalked by an enigmatic woman. It ends with the couple aboard a fishing boat alone with a ruthless killer, and fighting for their lives.

The story originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, November 23, 1981. The story is included in the collections Listen, Listen (1981) and A Flush of Shadows (1995).

In the 1950s, Kate Wilhelm began publishing science fiction after she read a story in a magazine and said, "I can do better than that." She quickly proved that she could do better, selling "The Mile-Long Spaceship" to John W. Campbell at Astounding. "You have an easy, pleasing and readable style, one that would, moreover, be a marked change in science fiction," John W. Campbell wrote to her in 1957. Soon she was invited to attend a Milford writers conference in Pennsylvania and there she met Damon Knight, whom she eventually married.

Working with Knight as he edited his Orbit anthology series, Kate Wilhelm came into her own as a writer, publishing stories that grounded their extrapolations in strong naturalistic depictions of the here-and-now. In tales such as "Ladies and Gentlemen, This Is Your Crisis" and "Baby, You Were Great," she demonstrated her facility with speculation and science-fictional ideas, while tales like "The Village" and "The Funeral" spoke with great relevance to social and political matters. She received a Nebula Award in 1969 for "The Planners," one of her many well-crafted stories of scientific inquiry.

Kate Wilhelm once said she didn't set out to cross genre lines with her fiction, she just had a blind spot when it came to genre boundaries. Consequently, her stories often blend elements of mystery, crime, and the supernatural with the scientific rigor of science fiction, and readers never know what to expect when they start to read stories like "The Gorgon Field" or "The Day of the Sharks" or "The Look Alike." There's no telling where these characters will take you.

Many of Kate Wilhelm's classics tell the tale of a young woman drawn into a web of scientific intrigue, and here you'll find "The Winter Beach," "The Fullness of Time," and "The Bird Cage," prime examples of this storytelling mode.

The depth of characterization and the psychological insight in stories like "The Downstairs Room" and "The Infinity Box" firmly established her at the forefront of her generation. The San Francisco Chronicle dubbed her "One of the masters of psychological fiction in America."

Over the next five decades, Wilhelm went on to fulfill the promise -- many times over -- of her first wave of top-flight work. With forty-one stories across two volumes, these books amply show the breadth and range of her fiction... and the power of her storytelling, too.

With forty-one stories (reprinted from a wide variety of sources), a perceptive introduction by Jack Dann, and an informative afterword by editor John Pelan, these two volumes are troves of reading pleasure for everyone lucky enough to get their hands on them.

In the field for over six decades, Kate Wilhelm carved out a remarkable career highlighted not only by the quality of her own work, but by her tireless efforts to give back to the field and smooth the way for those who would follow. Equally well-known as an author of mysteries, she still found time to revisit the genre of speculative fiction. She also founded the Clarion Workshop with her husband Damon Knight and writer Robin Scott Wilson.

In the 1950s, Kate Wilhelm began publishing science fiction after she read a story in a magazine and said, "I can do better than that." She quickly proved that she could do better, selling "The Mile-Long Spaceship" to John W. Campbell at Astounding. "You have an easy, pleasing and readable style, one that would, moreover, be a marked change in science fiction," John W. Campbell wrote to her in 1957. Soon she was invited to attend a Milford writers conference in Pennsylvania and there she met Damon Knight, whom she eventually married.

Working with Knight as he edited his Orbit anthology series, Kate Wilhelm came into her own as a writer, publishing stories that grounded their extrapolations in strong naturalistic depictions of the here-and-now. In tales such as "Ladies and Gentlemen, This Is Your Crisis" and "Baby, You Were Great," she demonstrated her facility with speculation and science-fictional ideas, while tales like "The Village" and "The Funeral" spoke with great relevance to social and political matters. She received a Nebula Award in 1969 for "The Planners," one of her many well-crafted stories of scientific inquiry.

Kate Wilhelm once said she didn't set out to cross genre lines with her fiction, she just had a blind spot when it came to genre boundaries. Consequently, her stories often blend elements of mystery, crime, and the supernatural with the scientific rigor of science fiction, and readers never know what to expect when they start to read stories like "The Gorgon Field" or "The Day of the Sharks" or "The Look Alike." There's no telling where these characters will take you.

Many of Kate Wilhelm's classics tell the tale of a young woman drawn into a web of scientific intrigue, and here you'll find "The Winter Beach," "The Fullness of Time," and "The Bird Cage," prime examples of this storytelling mode.

The depth of characterization and the psychological insight in stories like "The Downstairs Room" and "The Infinity Box" firmly established her at the forefront of her generation. The San Francisco Chronicle dubbed her "One of the masters of psychological fiction in America."

Over the next five decades, Wilhelm went on to fulfill the promise -- many times over -- of her first wave of top-flight work. With forty-one stories across two volumes, these books amply show the breadth and range of her fiction... and the power of her storytelling, too.

With forty-one stories (reprinted from a wide variety of sources), a perceptive introduction by Jack Dann, and an informative afterword by editor John Pelan, these two volumes are troves of reading pleasure for everyone lucky enough to get their hands on them.

In the field for over six decades, Kate Wilhelm carved out a remarkable career highlighted not only by the quality of her own work, but by her tireless efforts to give back to the field and smooth the way for those who would follow. Equally well-known as an author of mysteries, she still found time to revisit the genre of speculative fiction. She also founded the Clarion Workshop with her husband Damon Knight and writer Robin Scott Wilson.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (Nebula Award Stories 9) - (1974) - essay by Kate Wilhelm
• The Death of Dr. Island - (1973) - novella by Gene Wolfe
• Shark - (1973) - short story by Edward Bryant
• With Morning Comes Mistfall - (1973) - short story by George R. R. Martin
• The Future of Science: Prometheus, Apollo, Athena - (1974) - essay by Ben Bova
• Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand - (1973) - novelette by Vonda N. McIntyre
• The Deathbird - (1973) - novelette by Harlan Ellison
• A Thing of Beauty - (1973) - short story by Norman Spinrad
• Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death - (1973) - short story by James Tiptree, Jr.
• 1973: The Year in Science Fiction - (1974) - essay by Damon Knight
• The Childhood of the Human Hero - (1973) - short story by Carol Emshwiller
• The Nebula Winners, 1965-1973 - (1974) - essay by uncredited
• The Authors (Nebula Award Stories 9) - (1974) - essay by uncredited

This short story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1996. It can also be found in the anthologies Year's Best SF 2 (1997), edited by David G. Hartwell, and The Best from Fantasy & Science Fiction: The Fiftieth Anniversary Anthology (1999), edited by Gordon van Gelder and Edward L. Ferman.

He Who Shapes:

Charles Render is a shaper, one of a small number of psychotherapists qualified, by his granite will and ultra-stability, to use the extraordinary device that enables him to to participate in, and control, his patients' dreams. But this is a dangerous therapy for the therapist and only his armour-plated integrity protects Render from too deep an involvement in the mental worlds of the damaged people he seeks to help. But then, Eileen Shallot, another therapist who is blind, asks him to help her 'see' by transferring from his mind to hers a world of colour and light. Render agrees but suddenly finds himself obsessed with Eileen and drawn into fantasies which, she controls.

The Infinity Box:

Suppose you could enter the mind of a beautiful woman; see what she sees, feel what she feels, and control her completely.