Search Worlds Without End

The stories in F. Brett Cox's debut collection move through multiple genres and many times and places, from the monsters of the 19th century to the future fields of war, from New England to the South to the American West, from the strange house at the top of the hill to the bottom of your childhood swimming pool. But whatever the time and place, and whether utterly fantastic or all too real, all of these remarkable fictions pose the fundamental question: what's next? The End of All Our Exploring features 27 stories, and it also includes Cox's unique historical notes.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Andy Duncan
• Legacy - (2003)
• The Amnesia Helmet - (2013)
• See That My Grave Is Kept Clean - (2014)
• The Light of the Ideal - (2000)
• Flannery on Stage - (2001)
• The Serpent and the Hatchet Gang
• Petition to Repatriate Geronimo's Skull - (2006)
• Consider the Services of the Departed - (2014)
• When John Moore Shot Carl Bell - (2001)
• Mary of the New Dispensation
• What We Did on Our Vacation: My Whole World Lies Waiting
• The Deep End - (2017)
• Nylon Seam - (2009)
• Up Above the Dead Line - (2000)
• It Came Out of the Sky - (2001)
• Suspension
• The Last Testament of Major Ludlum
• Road Dead - (2014)
• Madeline's Version - (2004)
• The Sexual Component of Alien Abduction - (2002)
• Maria Works at Ocean City Nails - (2014)
• Elimination of Restraint and Seclusion: The Road to Engagement - (2011)
• What They Did to My Father - (2001)
• What We Did on Our Vacation: She Hears Music Up Above
• They Got Louie - (2016)
• The End of All Our Exploring
• Where We Would End a War - (2014)
• Notes and Acknowledgements - essay by F. Brett Cox

Challenging convention with the SF nonconformist

Roger Zelazny combined poetic prose with fearless literary ambition to become one of the most influential science fiction writers of the 1960s. Yet many critics found his later novels underachieving and his turn to fantasy a disappointment. F. Brett Cox surveys the landscape of Zelazny's creative life and contradictions. Launched by the classic 1963 short story "A Rose for Ecclesiastes," Zelazny soon won the Hugo Award for Best Novel with …And Call Me Conrad and two years later won again for Lord of Light. Cox looks at the author's overnight success and follows Zelazny into a period of continued formal experimentation, the commercial triumph of the Amber sword and sorcery novels, and renewed acclaim for Hugo-winning novellas such as "Home Is the Hangman" and "24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai." Throughout, Cox analyzes aspects of Zelazny's art, from his preference for poetically alienated protagonists to the ways his plots reflected his determined individualism.

Clear-eyed and detailed, Roger Zelazny provides an up-to-date reconsideration of an often-misunderstood SF maverick.