Search Worlds Without End

What if our legends are older than we think? All the Stone Age has left behind are rocks and bones; all other materials have rotted away, leaving no trace. But what if "cave men" never existed, and the Stone Age was a time of great sophistication still preserved in our oldest stories?

In a brilliant and dangerous brain hacking experiment, Harv Leonel and Tara Mukherjee are about to discover entire lifetimes of human memory coded in our genes, and reveal ancient legends - from knights and trolls, to flood myths, to the birth of humanity itself - that are as real as they are deadly.

Before disaster erased the coastlines and river valleys of the Antediluvian age--before the Flood--men and women struggled and yearned and innovated in a world of savage contrasts into which Harv and Tara are thrust, unprepared. Will their science be enough to save them?

Forty light years from earth, the colonists on the world of Unua have somehow managed to keep civilization struggling on, despite twice daily earthquakes and technology lagging far behind that of the mother planet. But now an Unuan mining expedition has discovered an alien mineral they name centrokrist--a stone of incomparable beauty.

Yet when the Earth scientists at last arrive to investigate, they find a phenomenon eclipsing this discovery. For this double-sunned solar system is nestled right next to a black hole, and waiting for them on the verge of the black hole's event horizon is an alien artifact that can't possibly exist!

This short story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, April-May 2006. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 12 (2007), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer.

David Sanger, an ambitious young physicist, attends a party at which a pompous older scientist, who just happens to have thwarted the younger man's innovative ideas, is murdered. Suddenly it is not just David's career, but his life that is at stake. Are his ideas that important? Who's out to stop David from changing the world?

Sturgeon Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Science Fiction Age, July 1999. There are no other known publications available at this time.

This short story originally appeared in Jim Baen's Universe, October 2007 and was reprinted in Lightspeed, August 2012. It can also be found in the anthology The Best of Jim Baen's Universe II (2008) edited by Eric Flint and Mike Resnick.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This novella originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, June 2005. It can also be found in the anthologies Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2006 Edition, edited by Rich Horton, and Best Short Novels: 2006, edited by Jonathan Strahan.

Mycora: technogenic life. Fast-reproducing, fast-mutating, and endlessly voracious. In the year 2106, these microscopic machine/creatures have escaped their creators to populate the inner solar system with a wild, deadly ecology all their own, pushing the tattered remnants of humanity out into the cold and dark of the outer planets. Even huddled beneath the ice of Jupiter's moons, protected by a defensive system known as the Immunity, survivors face the constant risk of mycospores finding their way to the warmth and brightness inside the habitats, resulting in a calamitous "bloom."

But the human race still has a trick or two up its sleeves; in a ship specially designed to penetrate the deadly Mycosystem, seven astronauts are about to embark on mankind's boldest venture yet--the perilous journey home to infected Earth!

Yet it is in these remote conditions, against a virtually omnipotent foe, that we discover how human nature plays the greatest role in humanity's future.

The alien Waister armada came from the center of Orion, light years away. They scoured whole star systems free of human life and moved on to the next target. Millions died as humanity fought back, hundreds of thousands in the Flyswatter operation alone. But now survivor Marine Corporal Kenneth Jonson has a new insight into alien strategy. Would he dare act on it? He might - if he lives...

Waisters never forget an enemy...

When the vast armada of Waister starships had swept through human space, destroying entire star systems as they came, Malyene Andreivne alone possessed the initiative to save a desperate few in cryostasis. But that was 2,000 years ago...

Now she has been awakened from her epic slumber, and everything she once knew has long since turned to dust. What's more, the strange beings who wrenched her back from timelessness are the descendants of a union once considered unthinkable - half human, half Waister. And as Malye struggles to understand the unlikely inhabitants of her new world, they all face a crisis that none of them may survive - for the dreaded Waister ships are returning...

Set millennia later, in the same universe as the highly accliamed Aggressor Six.

Space: a tycoon's playground. From a space station full of women to a monastery on the Moon, from a Martian reality-TV contest to a solar shade large enough to cool the Earth, the dreams of a handful of trillionaires dictate the future of humanity. Outside the reach of Earthly law and with the vast resources of the inner solar system at their disposal, the "Four Horsemen" do exactly as they please.

The governments of Earth are not amused; an international team of elite military women, masquerading as space colonists, are set to infiltrate and neutralize the largest and most dangerous project in human history. But nothing is that simple when rich men control the sky, as everyone involved is about to discover.

Homicide detective Raimy Vaught is a losing contestant in the biggest reality show ever: the colonization of Mars. Brother Michael is a Benedictine monk who just wants to help the future happen. Andrei Bykhovski is an asteroid miner desperately escaping indentured servitude. Bridget Tobin is a hydroponic farmer studying the greenhouses of Luna.

But when a fellow Mars contestant drops dead at a Lunar monastery, these four souls will find themselves on a collision course with forces far beyond the control of trillionaires or nation states. As labor disputes erupt across cislunar space, the actions of individual people will determine whose future will prevail... and whose will perish.

Trillionaire Igbal Renz has constructed a starship capable of making the twenty-year journey to Alpha Centauri. So why is he stopping at barely one-tenth that distance, with a cargo of a hundred frozen scientists and diplomats?

Rumors abound that Renz Ventures, Inc., has made contact with... something. And yet, as deadly stealth ships prowl the space lanes and as the corporate space race threatens to devolve into outright warfare, the Four Horsemen of space industry are discovering firsthand that even in a limitless and lawless frontier, no one can ever be truly self-sufficient.

No writer stretches the boundaries of science fiction like Wil McCarthy does. Now this acclaimed author has crafted his most wildly ambitious and stunningly original novel yet, an unforgettable tale set in a wondrous future in which the secrets of matter have been unlocked and death itself is but a memory. A future also imperiled by a bitter rivalry between two brilliant scientists: one perhaps the greatest genius in the history of humankind, the other, its greatest monster...

In the eighth decade of the glorious reign of Her Majesty Tamra Lutui, the Queendom of Sol enjoys a peace and prosperity even gods might envy. In fact, two awesome technologies have given human beings all the powers--and caprices--of the gods they once worshiped. The first is wellstone, a form of programmable matter capable of emulating almost any substance: natural, artificial, even hypothetical. The second is collapsium, a deadly crystal, composed of miniature black holes, that allows the virtually instantaneous transmission of information and matter--including humans--throughout the solar system.

Bruno de Towaji, royal consort and the inventor of collapsium, dreams of building the arc de fin, an almost mythical device capable of probing the farthest reaches of spacetime. Marlon Sykes, de Towaji's rival in both love and science, is meanwhile hard at work on a vast telecommunications project whose first step consists of constructing a ring of collapsium around the sun. But when a ruthless saboteur attacks the Ring Collapsiter and sends it falling toward the sun, the two scientists must put aside personal animosity and combine their prodigious intellects to prevent the destruction of the solar system... and every living thing within it.

In his most daring work yet, Wil McCarthy blasts us into a mythical realm--by turns hilarious, magnificent, and deeply moving--where two archmasters of physics compete for love and honor against a backdrop of stellar catastrophe. The Collapsium is a bold work of the imagination.

For the children of immortal parents, growing up can be hard to do. A prince will forever be a prince--leaving no chance for Bascal Edward de Towaji Lutui to inherit his parents' throne. So what is an angry young blue blood to do? Punch a hole in the shadow he's been living in by rallying his equally disgruntled companions to make an improbable spaceship, busting out of the so-called summer camp in which their parents have stowed them and making a daring escape across the vastness of space. Ne'er-do-well Conrad Mursk is just along for the joyride--until he realizes this is no typical display of teenage angst. The children are rising up in an honest-to-gods revolution. And, boyo, things are going to get raw.

Brash and idealistic, they were rebels without a cause in a world governed by science, reason...and immortality. Banished for their troubles to the starship Newhope, they now face a bold future: to settle the worlds of Barnard's Star. Now King Bascal Edward de Towaji Lutui, former prince of the Queendom of Sol, together with Captain Xiomara 'Xmary' Li Weng and her lover, first mate Conrad Mursk, face a perilous voyage with thousands of their fellow exiles.

The journey will last a century, but with Queendom technology it's no problem to step into a fax machine and 'print' a fresh, youthful version of yourself. But what this crew of rebels will find is far from the paradise they seek. Before long, their optimistic young colony has started to show signs of strain. And worst of all, death itself has returned with a vengeance.

In the conclusion to this epic interstellar adventure by Nebula Award nominee Wil McCarthy, humanity stands at a crossroads as the heroes who fashioned a man-made heaven must rescue their descendants from eternal damnation....

TO CRUSH THE MOON

Once the Queendom of Sol was a glowing monument to humankind's loftiest dreams. Ageless and immortal, its citizens lived in peaceful splendor. But as Sol buckled under the swell of an immorbid population, space itself literally ran out....

Conrad Mursk has returned to Sol on the crippled starship Newhope. His crew are the frozen refugees of a failed colony known as Barnard's Star. A thousand years older, Mursk finds Sol on the brink of rebellion, while a fanatic necro cult is reviving death itself. Now Mursk and his lover, Captain Xiomara "Xmary" Li Weng, are sent on a final, desperate mission by King Bruno de Towaji–one of the greatest terraformers of the ages–to literally crush the moon. If they succeed, they'll save billions of lost souls. If they fail, they'll strand humanity between death–and something unimaginably worse...