Search Worlds Without End

This short stroy originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, February 1997. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 3 (1998), edited by David G. Hartwell.

George Sanford's only talent seems to be an odd capacity for guessing right the first time. His childhood friends grew up, advanced in school and in jobs. But George couldn't score well on tests, and there weren't any jobs in The City for people like George.

Aimless, a near derelict, George meets his old friend Ahmed, now of the The City's Rescue Squad, and is swept up in the excitement of the hunt for a missing girl. And it is George who finds her, with his strange talent. And thus begins his perilous odyssey-which will come to climax when he is captured by a near insane young genius bent on using George's powers for the destruction of The City.

...Pictures, that is, that one can test and measure. And these pictures positively, absolutely could not lie!

This short story appears in the collections:

• The Diploids and Other Flights of Fancy (1962), by Katherine MacLean
• Worst Contact (2016), edited by Hank Davis
• The Great SF Stories 13 1951 (1985), edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg

This short story originally appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction, August 1951 available free on Project Gutenberg.

Katherine Anne MacLean (born January 22, 1925) is an American science fiction author best known for her short fiction of the 1950s which examined the impact of technological advances on individuals and society.

Table of Contents:

• Games - (1953) - short story
• Contagion - (1950) - novelette
• The Snowball Effect - (1952) - short story
• The Natives - (1953) - short story
• The Man Who Staked the Stars - (1952) - novella

Someone tried to kill him once -- would he live to tell who it was?

Nebula Award winning novella. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, March 1971. The story can also be found in the anthologies Nebula Award Stories Seven (1972), edited by Lloyd Biggle, Jr., Analog 9 (1973), edited by Ben Bova, and The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume IV (1986), edited by Terry Carr. It is included in the collection The Trouble With You Earth People (1980) and is part of the fixup novel Missing Man (1975).

Table of Contents:

• The Trouble with You Earth People - interior artwork by Frank Kelly Freas (variant of The Trouble With You Earth People) [as by Kelly Freas]
• 1 - The Trouble with You Earth People - (1968) - novelette
• 23 - Unhuman Sacrifice - (1958) - novelette
• 53 - The Gambling Hell and the Sinful Girl - (1975) - short story
• 65 - Syndrome Johnny - (1951) - short story
• 79 - Trouble with Treaties - (1959) - novelette by Tom Condit and Katherine MacLean
• 105 - The Origin of the Species - (1953) - short story
• 113 - Collision Orbit - (1954) - short story
• 123 - The Fittest - (1951) - short story
• 135 - These Truths - (1958) - short story
• 153 - Contagion - (1950) - novelette
• 181 - Brain Wipe - (1973) - short story
• 189 - The Missing Man - [Rescue Squad] - (1971) - novella
• 233 - The Carnivore - (1953) - short story

King of the Fourth Planet

King of the Fourth Planet: John Rolf fled his own guilt when he abandoned the corruption of Earth for a life of meditation on the many levels of Mars' mountain...

Cosmic Checkmate

I'll beat you the second game was the Earthman's challenge to the planet Velda, whose culture was indeed based on a complicated super-chess of skill and concentration.

Contents:

• The Diploids
• Defense Mechanism
• The Pyramid in the Desert (variant of And Be Merry...)
• The Snowball Effect
• Incommunicado
• Feedback
• Games
• Pictures Don't Lie

This Hugo Award-nominated novelette originally appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, March 1958. The story can also be found in the anthologies Great Short Novels of Science Fiction (1970) edited by Robert Silverberg and The Arbor House Treasury of Great Science Fiction Short Novels (1980), edited by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg.