Search Worlds Without End

Every legend promises the same thing: at the time of the land's greatest need the heroes shall return. What they don't mention is that we are the greatest threat our green and pleasant land has ever known, or that our obsession with concrete and steel, with technology and advancement, is slowly killing the land. In the legends saving the land never involves the slaughter of its inhabitants. Legends lie.

In the last primeval woodland of London an ancient force stirs, issuing the call.

His voice echoes in the minds of the disaffected and disenfranchised, the doomed youth of the city: Rise up!

In a single night, six girls who have never met and bear no relation to each other are struck down by a mysterious sickness that leaves them in persistent vegetative state. Across the city an old woman who hasn't opened her eyes in years finally wakes. Her first words are: The Horned God is Awake. Soon the puzzling truth emerges. Each Sleeper's final words were the same dire warning.

One for one. The message was seared into the floor, along with all of the craziness a hundred year old obsession had amassed. With the children disappearing across the city, two men are about to learn the terrible truth behind those three words. They are all that stand between our world and the cleansing fire of the once and future king. The question our heroes must answer: how do you kill a god the world has forgotten about?

In the winter of 2005, after the horrifying natural disaster of the tsunami in Southeast Asia, Steve Savile and Alethea Kontis joined forces to raise money to help the distressed survivors and have created Elemental. They solicited SF and fantasy stories, all new and never published elsewhere, from many of the top writers in the genres today, and received immediate responses in the form of the excellent stories here in this book.

Elemental has an introduction by Arthur C.Clarke and more than twenty stories by Brian Aldiss, David Drake, Jacqueline Carey, Martha Wells, Larry Niven, Joe Haldeman, Eric Nylund, Sherrilyn Kenyon writing as Kinley MacGregor, and a Dune story by Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson, and many others. They created in Elemental one of the most important genre anthologies of the year, but more than that: in giving real value for the purchase price, everyone who sells this book can be proud, and everyone who buys it will be richly rewarded for supporting the tsunami relief effort.

Contents:

• 11 - Introduction: Once and Future Tsunamis (Elemental) - essay by Arthur C. Clarke
• 19 - Report from the Near Future: Crystallization - short fiction by David Gerrold
• 36 - And Tomorrow and - short story by Adam Roberts
• 50 - Abductio Ad Absurdum - short fiction by Esther M. Friesner
• 58 - In the Matter of Fallen Angels - short fiction by Jacqueline Carey
• 72 - Tiger in the Night - short fiction by Brian W. Aldiss [as by Brian Aldiss]
• 76 - The Strange Case of Jared Spoon, Who Went To Pieces for Love - short fiction by Stel Pavlou
• 88 - The Solipsist at Dinner - short story by Larry Niven
• 92 - The Wager - [Lords of Avalon] - short fiction by Sherrilyn Kenyon [as by Kinley MacGregor]
• 102 - Expedition, with Recipes - short story by Joe Haldeman
• 108 - Tough Love 3001 - short story by Juliet Marillier
• 119 - Chanting the Violet Dog Down: A Tale of Noreela - [Noreela Short Fiction] - short story by Tim Lebbon (variant of Chanting the Violet Dog Down)
• 137 - Butterflies Like Jewels - short fiction by Eric S. Nylund [as by Eric Nylund]
• 156 - Perfection - [Skalan Saga] - short fiction by Lynn Flewelling
• 169 - The Compound - short fiction by Michael Marshall Smith
• 184 - Sea Child: A Tale of Dune - [Dune] - short story by Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert
• 200 - Moebius Trip - short fiction by Janny Wurts
• 212 - The Run to Hardscrabble Station - short fiction by William C. Dietz
• 234 - The Last Mortal Man - short fiction by Syne Mitchell
• 248 - The Double-Edged Sword - novelette by Sharon Shinn
• 277 - Night of the Dolls - short story by Shane Dix and Sean Williams
• 286 - The Potter's Daughter - [Ile-Rien] - short story by Martha Wells
• 308 - The Day of Glory - [Hammer's Slammers] - novelette by David Drake
• 338 - Sea Air - short fiction by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
• 377 - Afterword: Why Elemental? (Elemental) - essay by Steven Savile

Steven Savile is an international sensation, selling over half a million copies of his novels worldwide and writing for cult favorite television shows including Doctor Who, Torchwood, and Stargate. Now, he is finally making his US debut with Glass Town, a brilliantly composed novel revolving around the magic and mystery lurking in London.

There's always been magic in our world
We just needed to know where to look for it

In 1924, two brothers both loved Eleanor Raines, a promising young actress from the East End of London. She disappeared during the filming of Alfred Hitchcock's debut, Number 13, which itself is now lost. It was the crime of the age, capturing the imagination of the city: the beautiful actress never seen again, and the gangster who disappeared the same day.

Generations have passed. Everyone involved is long dead. But even now their dark, twisted secret threatens to tear the city apart.

Joshua Raines is about to enter a world of macabre beauty, of glittering celluloid and the silver screen, of illusion and deception, of impossibly old gangsters and the fiendish creatures they command, and most frighteningly of all, of genuine magic.

He is about to enter Glass Town.

The generations-old obsession with Eleanor Raines's unsolved case is about to become his obsession, handed down father-to-son through his bloodline like some unwanted inheritance. But first he needs to bury his grandfather and absorb the implications of the confession in his hand, a letter from one of the brothers, Isaiah, claiming to have seen the missing actress. The woman in the red dress hadn't aged a day, no matter that it was 1994 and she'd been gone seventy years.

Long buried secrets cannot stay secrets forever. Hidden places cannot stay hidden forever.

The magic that destroyed one of the most brutal families in London's dark history is finally failing, and Joshua Raines is about to discover that everything he dared dream of, everything he has ever feared, is waiting for him in Glass Town.

The enemy within...

When the Tok'ra ask SG-1 to save a tortured creature from the clutches of Apophis, how can they refuse? But the Mujina is no ordinary being -- devoid of face or form, it draws its identity from those around it. All things to all people, it is a creature with terrible potential -- for both good and evil.

Their pursuit of the Mujina takes the team to a nightmarish world where human wickedness is at its worst -- and there, the creature finds its home. Captured by the ethnically pure Corvani, Colonel O'Neill's team must confront the planet's insane leader, the Raven King, as well as a more familiar and insidious enemy.

In this gripping adventure, award-winning author Steven Savile takes SG-1 on an unforgettable journey into the heart of darkness...

"Tortoise and Hare", a novella by Kevin J Anderson, tells the story of Jorie Taylor, who has lived her whole life on the generation ship Beacon. Fleeing an Earth tearing itself apart from its exhaustive demand for resources, the Beacon is finally approaching Sarbras, the planet circling Tau Ceti which they hope to make humanity's new home.

But Earth has recovered from its near-death experience, and is now under the control of a ruthless dictator whose sights are set on Tau Ceti as well. President Jurudu knows how to get what he wants - and he wants Sarbras. He sends the military ship Conquistador, which uses newly-developed FTL (faster-than-light) technology, to ensure that he gets it.

In the sequel novelette "Grasshopper and Ants" by Steven Savile, Jorie is now the eleventh captain of the generation ship Beacon, which has at last reached its destination, the colony planet Sarbras. But one by one, the colonists come down with a mysterious, undiagnosible illness. And the Conquistador's arrival is imminent.

Tau Ceti won the 2013 "Lifeboat to the Stars" Award as the best work of science fiction contributing to an understanding of the benefits, means, and difficulties of interstellar travel.

Feared and reviled, the reclusive necrarch vampires lurk in their lairs, engrossed in mad experiments and dreams of depraved glory. When one of these foul creatures invades an Empire town and slaughters its inhabitants, its knight protector, the ageing hero Reinhardt Metzger swears vengeance.

This monumental new dark fantasy trilogy delves into the horrific world of the immortal Vampire Counts. This is the first of a blood-drenched trilogy that tells the tale of the Vampire Counts. "Inheritance" chronicles the rise to power of the most infamous family of vampires in the Warhammer world - the von Carsteins. When the dark and sinister Vlad von Carstein arrives in Sylvania, a plague of evil is set loose and the land is transformed into a domain of the undead. Can anyone save the land of the living from this bloodthirsty family of vampires and their terrifying undead armies?

This second novel explores the horrific world of the immortal Vampire Counts. The immortal Vampire Counts have ravaged the Old World for many generations. Their undead scourge has been felt throughout history and Steven Savile brings the bloodshed to life in the second novel of this series which features the rise and fall of Konrad von Carstein. Mighty armies have been raised and swept away before the rising tide of death, swelling the ranks of the undead beyond count. The von Carstein bloodline of vampires are the most infamous and feared in the Warhammer world and their deadly adventures continue in Dominion.

With Vlad and Konrad defeated, now is the time for the most dangerous vampire count of them all to take centre stage. Strong, cunning and resourceful, Mannfred von Carstein assembles his undead army and prepares to strike at the heart of the Empire. The men of the Empire and their allies the dwarfs have one last chance to stop their undead foe - Hel Fenn.