Search Worlds Without End

This collection brings back into print stories covering Harness' repertoire from alternate history, SF about the legal profession, and lyrical and witty stories of science and the arts, including the short novel The Rose and sixteen other works of short fiction. It also contains introductions by David Hartwell and the editor, Priscilla Olson, an afterward by George Zebrowski, a bibliography, and cover art by James Stanley Daugherty.

An entry in the NESFA's Choice Series of neglected sf authors.

Table of Contents

• Introduction: An Ornament - (1998) - essay by Priscilla Olson
• Introduction: Charles Harness: New Realities - (1998) - essay by David G. Hartwell
• The Rose - (1953)
• Time Trap - (1948)
• Stalemate in Space - (1949)
• The New Reality - (1950)
• The Chessplayers - (1953)
• Child by Chronos - (1953)
• An Ornament to His Profession - (1966)
• The Alchemist - (1966)
• The Million Year Patent - (1967)
• Probable Cause - (1968)
• The Araqnid Window - (1974)
• Summer Solstice - (1984)
• Quarks at Appomattox - (1983)
• George Washington Slept Here - (1985)
• O Lyric Love - (1985)
• The Tetrahedron - (1994)
• Lethary Fair - (1998)
• Celebrating Charles L. Harness - (1998) - essay by George Zebrowski
• Bibliography - (1998) - essay by Priscilla Olson

Joseph first encounters Cybele when he is a 10-year-old skipping rocks, but he falls in love with her in high school, where she is his chemistry teacher. After he graduates, they have a whirlwind romance, but she won't marry him because she knows things about the future that she won't reveal. She encourages his affinity for chemistry, though, cementing his dedication to the science. Thereafter, miracles abound, both scientific and supernatural, and Cybele seems to look after Joseph even when she is no longer around him. With the help of her spirit, Joseph works for the police in solving the case of the Holy Grail and for the government during World War II. Harness' writing is delicate and seductive, effectively balancing chemistry and Joseph's life and love for Cybele. If the ending is abrupt, it works well as a transition to a new phase in the relationship with Cybele.

From the distant dipoles of the universe, two telepathic computers, Largo and Czandra, known as Control, rule over life on all civilized planets. And now, with Project Cancelar, Control has formulated a plan for achieving immortality... a plan which requires as fodder the collapsing of the universe and the destruction of all life. And there is nothing the humans can do.

But there is another force in the universe, hidden in the abyss of the Silent Quarter... plotting destruction of Control. A force that is about to be demolished! Before it expires, it launches from its depths a magic ring, an elixir, and a man and a woman in love - riding within the living spirit of a remarkable spaceship to do battle against the cumulative technology of the entire universe.

On an ecologically seared Earth, James Konteau is a veteran krono, a professional time traveler. His job is to ease the overpopulation crisis by establishing new colonies in Earth's prehistory, long before human beings evolved. But his job has lost all meaning, for Konteau is a lone and troubled man haunted by his own past.

Now, suddenly, his future is also in turmoil: a timequake has reportedly ripped through distant eons, destroying one of Konteau's colonies. Framed for the disaster, Konteau is hunted by authorities, defying all the powers of technology and politics to escape back through the misty ages on a complex mission of death, justice, love - and incredible destiny...

The powerful Peace Eternal corporation has a solution to Earth's staggering overpopulation problem: a government-supported program of clean, efficient mass murder.

Billionaire philanthropist Michael Dore has a better way - Lamplighter, a remarkable process that will enable safe colonization of Jupiter's moons. But Dore has been set up to be tried for treason before a kangaroo lunar court. And Quentin Thomas, a patent lawyer with astonishing telekinetic abilities, is to handle the defense.

Unfortunately, the Moon's corrupt Lord Chancellor and his bought jury have already sentenced the accused and his attorney to death - unless Jupiter catches fire... within twenty-four hours.

Out of body, out of time...

Though basically a skeptic, William Reynolds had known out-of-body experiences in the past. But never before had he floated past the boundaries of Baltimore... and across the borders of time. And now, with the fires of Civil War looming on the horizon, the astonished graduate student was hobnobbing with none other than the dark poet Edgar Allan Poe. But their meeting of minds was to have chilling consequences. For a desperate Confederacy planned to use them both to remold the world - and to change history... for the worse.

Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in the anthology Orbit 4 (1968), edited by Damon Knight. The story is also included in the collection An Ornament to His Profession (1998).

World-saver, or world-breaker?

The treaty that ended the civil war decreed that the men of science and the followers of the gods would split all of society between them. Yet Guild apprentice Pol was torn between the logic of science and the lure of faith, unaware that destiny had already chosen a very special role for him to play.

For Pol was about to encounter a woman of unique power, the mistress of a mysterious, forbidden castle, who would lead him down the pathways of prophecy to a strange and frightening new world...

Table of Contents:

• 11 - On Rings of Power - (1999) - essay by Priscilla Olson
• 13 - Charles Harness: Wielder of Light - (1999) - essay by George Zebrowski
• 19 - The Paradox Men - (1953) - novel (variant of Flight into Yesterday)
• 153 - The Ring of Ritornel - (1968) - novel
• 315 - Firebird - (1981) - novel
• 461 - Drunkard's Endgame - (1999) - novel

Hugo Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, June 1984. The story can also be found in the anthology Best SF of the Year #14 (1985), edited by Terry Carr. It is included in the collection An Ornament to His Profession (1998).

At high-pressure chemical plants in the United States and Germany, the race to process a new wonder chemical is on. The stakes are high - and the competition is reckless, desperate and fierce.

Trialine. Wonder Drug. If synthesized, its possibilities are endless. Fabulous. It will revolutionise the 21st century. And it will make somebody famous. And somebody very, very rich.

But the key to the process is held by somebody who doesn't know it. Somebody who will be transformed forever. Somebody who is destined to be...

A science fiction novel of revenge and retribution set against a background of galactic civilisations.

Contains:

• The Rose
• The Chessplayers
• The New Reality

The Plaintiff, Universal Patents, Inc., was heartless.

The judge, Rex "Spider" Speyer was merciless.

Ellen Welles' case seemed hopeless.

Unless her lawyer could locate the mad creator of FAUST - the robot-inventor who'd given Universal Patents its stranglehold on the world economy - she was sure to die for patent infringement, a capital crime in the twenty-first century.

Quentin Thomas, Ellen's lawyer, already knew that the judge was a psychopath, and he quickly learned just how dirty Universal could play...

Dawn of a new Doomsday

It was in the light of the swift star "God's-Eye" - said to have been thrown aloft by the Ancients before the Desolation - that Beatra was captured by raiders from under the Earth.

Armed with only a psi-kinetic sand-sword and a Dire Wolf's eyes, Jeremy Wolfhead followed, and found a strange city ruled by the descendants of an ancient government that had escaped the Desolation - a city that was preparing to emerge and bring to Earth a second, even more horrible, Doomsday!

The Paradox Men

Set after the Third Great War, North and South America are united into one country: Imperial America. A slave state run by a small noble elite who flaunt their wealth by using, and abusing, the one commodity that only the rich can have: human labour. But working underground, persecuted by the police, is an organization dedicated to the overthrow of government and the existing way of life and the establishment of freedom.

The Society of Thieves was the only organization that flouted authority in America Imperial: they robbed the rich to buy freedom for the slaves. They were well equipped and trained for their job and had friends and informers in high places ready to reveal where the wealth of the nobles was hidden. And Alar was the best Thief of them all - for he had senses not found in ordinary men, senses that accurately warned him when danger was near. But Alar had amnesia and did not know his true identity though sometimes he sensed that there was a purpose in his actions that was not entirely his own volition.

When Keiris, wife of the Imperial Chancellor saw him, she sensed that he was something special and helped him to elude pursuit even though it put her own life in danger. And in trips to the Moon and even the Sun itself, Alar begins to see what part he is destined to play in the struggle for men's freedom.

Dome Around America

What new menace was besieging mankind's last refuge?

The Earth had been stripped bare of the atmosphere and water, its surface left an airless and lifeless desert...except for America. A dome of energy had been erected around the U.S. in the nick of time and only within this vast transparent dome could men and women live in safety. Until the moment Barry Thane spotted a moving thing outside the dome!

Something was there where only Death reigned. Something that was spying on the dome, trying to break in and destroy Earth's last oasis! But what was it...and why?

Barry's single-handed struggle with the unknown, his own break-out into the outside world of airless terror, makes one of the most exciting novels that Jack Williamson, master of science fiction, has ever written.

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction -> Science Fact, February 1966. The story can also be found in the anthologies SF 12 (1968), edited by Judith Merril, A Science Fiction Argosy (1972) edited by Damon Knight, and Demons! (1987), edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois. It is included in the collection An Ornament to His Profession (1998).

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction - Science Fact, May 1966. The story is included in the collection An Ornament to His Profession (1998).

Altar the thief, a man of mystery and secret master of a gaudily decadent world.... a gargantuan spaceship designed to span civilisations... a desperate plunge into the heart of the sun... just the basic ingredients of the volcanic recipe that produces Charles L. Harness's shattering masterpiece.