Search Worlds Without End

Home to generations of humans, the starship Argonos has wandered aimlessly throughout the galaxy for hundreds of years, desperately searching for other signs of life. Now, a steady, unidentified transmission lures them toward a nearby planet, where the grisly remains of a former colony await the crew. Haunted by what they have seen, the crew has no choice but to follow when another signal beckons the Argonos into deep space and into the dark heart of an alien mystery...

Published in the UK as Unto Leviathan

THE ART OF STAYING ALIVE

San Francisco is turning into a jungle - more and more people living in cars, mobs forever roaming the streets, life an increasingly precarious prospect.

Rheinhardt is a sculptor who does the best he can in this urban cess-pit...

* Until they draft his best friend to fight in South America

* Until his artists' colony turns into a home for spoiled no-talents

* Until his girlfriend begins asking him where he's going

* Until he feels he just can't take it any more.

But soon, he won't have to. For in the background is a mystery man - Justinian - a Vietnam veteran who stalks Reinhardt quietly, calmly, waiting for the right moment. Waiting to take him to the Subterranean Gallery.

Richard Paul Russo is known for his dark and sinister views of the future and the human spirit. In his first collection of short fiction, Russo presents a wide variety of tales--"More Than Night" and "In the Season of the Rains," tales of gritty alien encounters, and the ultimate road story, "Just Drive, She Said." In other stories, the hopelessness of the human condition is examined--on Earth in "Cities in Dust," in space in "The Open Boat," and in an alternate reality in "Prayers of a Rain God." Of the 14 tales, 11 are set on Earth--and Russo's Earth can be far more alien than other worlds.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Karen Joy Fowler
• Listen to My Heartbeat - (1988) - short story
• Just Drive, She Said - (1992) - short story
• In the Season of the Rains - (1987) - short story
• The Open Boat - (1991) - short story
• Lunar Triptych: Embracing the Night - (1989) - short story
• Celebrate the Bullet - (1991) - novelette
• Watching Lear Dream - (1999) - short story
• Telescope, Saxophone and the Pilot's Death - (1989) - short story
• Cities in Dust - (1990) - short story
• Liz and Diego - (1990) - novelette
• No Place Any More - (1990) - short story
• Prayers of a Rain God - (1987) - short story
• More Than Night - (1989) - novella
• View from Above - (1990) - short story

Cale Alexandros was five years old when the path of his life was irrevocably altered. As the scion of a wealthy and powerful family, he enjoyed a privileged existence--until his family's starship was attacked en route to Morningstar, the lone outpost of civilization on a savage planet known as Conrad's World. In an escape ship, Cale crash-landed in the wilds, and was picked from the wreckage by nomads.

For years, Cale is forced to endure life as a slave, sold and shuffled from one group of brutish thugs to another--until a trader recognizes a glimmer of promise in Cale's eyes, and frees him. Cale travels far and wide, but he never forgets what happened long ago, in the desert wastes... when, in a strange, ancient temple, he found a book with pages made of a strange metal, and writings he could not identify.

When he finally reaches Morningstar, he comes to realize that the book is a key to understanding a language never heard by mankind, an alien dialect. It also holds a secret that some people want to learn, a treasure that some want for themselves, and a revelation that some will do anything to control.

In the violent, deteriorating San Francisco of the future, two bodies--chained together in a death embrace--are pulled from the bay. Only ex-cop Tanner recognizes the mark of the Chain Killer, and now he must prepare to penetrate the lair of a madman--in the city's hell on earth.

Collected together for the first time in one volume-this is Richard Paul Russo's critically-acclaimed science fiction trilogy featuring police Lt. Frank Carlucci investigating high-tech crime and corruption in a near-future San Francisco.

Lt. Frank Carlucci is drawn into an investigation surrounding the disappearance of his daughter's friend. but as Carlucci digs deeper, the corruption and decay he finds is nothing compared to a final horror that could have devastating implications: a secret known only as Cancer Cell.