Search Worlds Without End

The presence of alien life on Neptune, defying all known laws of probability, sparks a series of unsuccessful attempts at contact until a veteran space explorer assembles a unique team of children to go where no adult has successfully gone--and lived.

This was where the game was played: the planet Meridian, a galactic plague spot that could have been a Paradise. These were the players: a tiny band of outlaws that hid on a seven-mile-high mountain, coming down only to raid the food factories or to establish communication with the queer, half-human Greens. These were the stakes: freedom, survival and life itself! The name of the game was revolution, a strange sort of struggle that was covered by TV like a sporting event--and masked a deeper, more complex game than any that had played before.

A man from a timeline where the US went fascist after FDR's murder sets out to change the past and becomes dictator of Red America.

Why should New Morning School, in the year 2004, suddenly attract so much attention? Surely, by this time the Intensive Therapy theory upon which the school has been built has proved to be successful in turning out well-adjusted graduates to help augment the government's growing powers. And since the founder and guiding spirit is in his eighties, the whole program is bound to die a natural death soon anyway.

But somewhere there's trouble, and it centers around a strange mutant named August. Just entering his teens, he seems to be coming into possession of ominous powers... in particular, an ability that allows him to fuse himself physically with other human beings. They, as a result, can see with his eyes and feel with his senses -- enabling them to understand, and come to love, each other.

But August's ability to facilitate human understanding and cooperation is not universally welcomed, and his potential as a superweapon makes him a threat...

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Fantastic, April 1970. The story can also be found in the anthology World's Best Science Fiction: 1971, edited by Terry Carr and Donald A. Wollheim. It is included in the collection Second Creation (2016).

Sylvia Mencken was a Mortal, the most populous human form, with its passions and centuries of stubborn pride.

Alec Richmond, her lover was a Superior, one of the orphans of earth living in the shadows, blessed with superpowers, cursed with madness.

And then there were the Others, who sought to enslave them - whose alien acts of terror against the planet had already begun.

If you think political campaigns are getting stranger and stranger, consider the Presidential campaign of 1988: When the United States has virtually collapsed after civil war and a foreign embargo; When DC lies in ruins and the White House is in California; And when Robert Colonby, Presidential candidate, promises to rebuild the nation with help from an awesome, godlike race of beings on Jupiter. An inventive, fast-paced novel about this startling campaign... a behind-the-scenes look at one of our possible futures.

Some people - the tough ones - survive among the ruins and rubble of the cities. Michael is a scrounger. It is a harsh existence, but at least he is a free man. Outside the city, he would, as likely as not, be a slave. Bill Stoner isn't tough at all. Without Michael's protection, Bill couldn't survive a week. But Bill Stoner is a man of vision and imagination; and with Michael at his side, he can lead America back to civilization.

As a mercenary soldier of fortune, Calvin Waller has grown used to danger. Danger is the air he breathes. But when he find himself thrown from the midst of an African battle into a primitive farm community of the future, he is naturally disoriented. Trained as he is, he quickly get his bearings and begins a new and different battle... only to be thrown again. He is being manipulated. Falling Toward Forever is the story of his search for The Manipulator, and for himself. A strange and wonderful search... for the Manipulator holds all the strings.

Jan Jeroux is leading a carefree and idyllic life in the serene, underpopulated pastoral earth of the year 2500. His idyll ends abruptly when he is abducted and forced to join the Time Service of the mysterious world government. In the service, he learns how history was manipulated and controlled to produce the beautiful world he enjoyed so much. Thinking he understands how to rectify the injustice and devastation inflicted on the world by the time managers, Jan decides to make things right. But he makes a tragic error...

Captain's Log, Stardate 6532.1

While investigating rumors of renewed activity by the Klingon Empire within the Galactic Core, the Enterprise made contact with a shuttlecraft from the USS Rickover, a starship presumed lost with all hands over 20 years ago. The lone occupant of that shuttlecraft - Thomas Clayton, once my roommate at Starfleet Academy, now the self-proclaimed chosen son and favored prophet of a deity he calls Ay-nab. I had planned on disregarding Clayton entirely - until control of our engines was seized by an as-yet-unexplained outside force... a force, Clayton insists, that is now taking us to meet his god.

VOYAGE TO HEARTLAND

Heartland... a mysterious planet populated by a small but terrifying race of demonic beings.

Heartland... where Captain Kirk falls in love with a beautiful, mysterious woman with a fatal secret.

Heartland... where Kirk, Spock, and the rest of the Enterprise crew will be challenged by an awesome disembodied intelligence, more powerful than any other force in the universe!

While on shore leave at Starbase 13, Captain Kirk and his officers meet the renowned senseo-artist Gilla Dupree, a pale and fragile woman desperately seeking her lost father, Jacob Kell. When Kirk learns that Kell was last seen on Heartland, a planet that was quarantined after one hundred colonists went mad, he decides to help Gilla retrieve her father, while removing him to enforce the quarantine. The crew of the Enterprise discovers that the native inhabitants of Heartland, the demonic-looking Danons, constructed a massive god-like super-computer called the Great Machine to help win an ancient war.

However, as this ancient race nears extinction, the Great Machine becomes desperate to find someone to take the place of the Danons. Most humanoids go insane when they encounter the machine - Jacob Kell was one of the very few who were strong enough to act as the Great Machine's instrument. Gilla, who is dying from a massive and untreatable tumor, refuses to abandon her father to this fate. She gives her last days to take his place so that he may live. Kirk attempts a rescue but barely escapes with his life. He is forced to recommend a continuation of the quarantine to Starfleet while a woman he loves dies on the planet below him.

Table of Contents:

• 5 - The Twilight River - novella by Gordon Eklund
• 16 - The Twilight River - interior artwork by Stephen Fabian
• 30 - The Twilight River [2] - interior artwork by Stephen Fabian
• 50 - The Twilight River [3] - interior artwork by Stephen Fabian
• 68 - The Twilight River [4] - interior artwork by Stephen Fabian
• 98 - The Twilight River [5] - interior artwork by Stephen Fabian
• 124 - The Twilight River [6] - interior artwork by Stephen Fabian
• 131 - Afterword (The Twilight River) - essay by F. Paul Wilson
• 135 - The Tery - [LaNague Federation] - novella by F. Paul Wilson
• 136 - The Tery - interior artwork by Stephen Fabian
• 164 - The Tery [2] - interior artwork by Stephen Fabian
• 184 - The Tery [3] - interior artwork by Stephen Fabian
• 210 - The Tery [4] - interior artwork by Stephen Fabian
• 246 - The Tery [5] - interior artwork by Stephen Fabian
• 265 - Afterword (The Tery) - essay by Gordon Eklund

A collaboration of two science fiction greats, Gregory Benford and Gordon Eklund, the original "If The Stars Are Gods" was quite well received when it appeared in the spring of 1974 in the hardcover Random House anthology Universe Four. It went on to win a Nebula Award in 1975. A few critics found the central protagonist, Bradley Reynolds, to be a bit over the top -- but then, who among us would invite Captain Ahab over for dinner, drinks and a video afterward?

In this expanded novel length version of If The Stars Are Gods, which appeared in 1976, the rest of the life of Bradley Reynolds fell into place -- meeting strange aliens, forging out into the realms of the solar system, always questing. This 2013 edition includes a new introduction by Gregory Benford and Gordon Eklund -- the story of how their two science fiction writing careers grew out of this work, If The Stars Are Gods.

Nebula Award winning novelette. It originally appeared in the Universe 4 (1974), edited by Terry Carr. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction of the Year #4 (1975), edited by Terry Carr, Nebula Award Stories Ten (1975), edited by James Gunn, The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume IV (1986), edited by Terry Carr and The Science Fiction Century (1997), edited by David G. Hartwell.

The story was later expanded to the full novel If the Stars are Gods (1977).

Tedric the Ironmaster wields the mightiest sword his world has ever seen - and swears to break the power of the black magician Sarpedion, or die in the attempt. In another universe... only Tedric's strength and daring stand between the dwindling power of the Terran Empire and total alien conquest.

Brought from his own distant world by the mysterious Scientists, working toward an end he cannot know, Tedric brings the war-wisdom of his own past into a universe of starships and alien powers.

Tedric the hero had become Tedric the pirate...

He looked at his strange companions: Philip Nolan, an aristocrat turned mutineer; Keller, a subman with canine ancestry; Ky-shan, a huge blue-furred alien; KT294578 Wilson, an extraordinary anarchist robot. A weird band of thieves.

But Tedric intended to use his crew for something more worthwhile than piracy. He had a plan to overthrow the tyrannical Carey family, the oppressors who controlled the Universe.

All the rights and wrongs of the situation were clear to Tedric...until Alyc Carey, beautiful, blind daughter of the megalomaniac Melor Carey, was taken prisoner. She seemed sympathetic to the revolutionary cause, and yet, Tedric was unsure of her...

Should he see her as a hostage... or a recruit?

Lord Tedric of the Marshes, ex-Corpsman, revered hero of the Empire and personal friend of the Emperor, is a traitor.

Fugitive from the Security Forces, Tedric and his blue-furred alien friend Ky-Shan intend to join up with the most ruthless and successful renegade in the Galaxy - the Bioman, Fra Villion.

Tedric's quest brings him in contact with a strange and fascinating band of people.

There's Milton Dass, a brilliant scientist who has invented the most staggering instrument of destruction the Universe has ever seen; Juvi, a prostitute seeking new excitement as a pirate; Yod, a black-planet boy hoping to revenge the death of his family; and, of course, Fra Villion himself, the Black Knight of the Iron Sphere.

Lord Tedric of the Marshes, ex-Corpsman and interplanetary warrior, faces a crucial mission: to crush the threat of the Destructive Forces by capturing their agent on the Bioman sphere, the ruthless Black Knight Fra Villion.

Tedric's crew are bound together by the strong loyalty of outcasts: Yod Cartwright, ex-pirate; Juvi, a prostitute turned expert pilor; Ky-shan the exiled Wykzl; Wilson, the renegade robot; and Pal Galmain, brave but banished Knight of the noble order of Vemplars.

Tedric mjust warn the Bio,en that their castle is a gatewhile for the annihilation gathering in the grey depths of space, but who will believe the word of a barbarian against the lightning whipsword of Fra Villion?