Search Worlds Without End

Nebula Award nominated novellla. It originally appeared in the anthology The New Atlantis and Other Novellas of Science Fiction (1975), edited by Robert Silverberg. It can also ge found in the collections Star Songs of an Old Primate (1978) and Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (1990).

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated short story.

Exogamy, the desire to mate with the new and different has been a primary force in human evolution - but when the object of that desire is not merely different, but alien...

And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1972. The story can also be found in the anthologies Aliens! (1980), edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois, Alien Sex (1990), edited by Ellen Datlow, Invaders! (1993) edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois, Nebula Awards Showcase 2012, edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel, and The Big Book of Science Fiction (2016), edited by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer. It is also included in the collections Ten Thousand Light-Years From Home (1973) and Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (1990).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Short stories by award-winning science fiction writer, James Triptree, Jr. Stories include adventures in outer space and the world of the future. All but one of the stories, "Excursion Fare", have previously appeared in earlier short story collections by James Tiptree, Jr.

Table of contents:

• Introduction by Michael Bishop
• With Delicate Mad Hands
• Beam Us Home
• Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death
• The Man Who Walked Home
• Your Faces, O my Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!
• The Peacefulness of Vivyan
• Excursion Fare
• I'll Be Waiting For You When the Swimming Pool is Empty.

Table of Contents:

• Second Going - (1987)
• Our Resident Djinn - (1986)
• Morality Meat - (1985)
• All This and Heaven Too - (1985)
• Yanqui Doodle - (1987)
• Come Live with Me - (1988)
• Last Night and Every Night - (1970)
• Backward, Turn Backward - (1988)
• The Earth Doth Like a Snake Renew - (1988)
• In Midst of Life - (1987)

These 18 darkly complex short stories and novellas touch upon human nature and perception, metaphysics and epistemology, and gender and sexuality, foreshadowing a world in which biological tendencies bring about the downfall of humankind. The Nebula Award-winning short story "Love Is the Plan, the Plan Is Death," the Hugo Award-winning novella "The Girl Who Was Plugged In," and the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novella "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" are included.

Table of Contents

• Introduction - essay by John Clute
• The Last Flight of Dr. Ain - (1969)
• The Screwfly Solution - (1977)
• And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side - (1972)
• The Girl Who Was Plugged In - (1973)
• The Man Who Walked Home - (1972)
• And I Have Come Upon This Place by Lost Ways - (1972)
• The Women Men Don't See - (1973)
• Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light! - (1976)
• Houston, Houston, Do You Read? - (1976)
• With Delicate Mad Hands - (1981)
• A Momentary Taste of Being - (1975)
• We Who Stole the Dream - (1978)
• Her Smoke Rose Up Forever - (1974)
• Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death - (1973)
• On the Last Afternoon - (1972)
• She Waits for All Men Born - (1976)
• Slow Music - (1980)
• And So On, and So On - (1971)

Hugo- and Nebula-winning Novella

In Tiptree's most famous and most reprinted story, a US spacecraft with an all-male crew is thrown forward in time to an Earth where all men have died from a plague.

This story was collected in Star Songs of an Old Primate (1978) and Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (1990), and anthologized in Aurora: Beyond Equality (1976), The 1977 Annual World's Best SF (1977), Nebula Winners Twelve (1978), The Arbor House Treasury of Great Science Fiction Short Novels (1980), The Hugo Winners, Volume 4 (1985), The Best of the Nebulas (1989), and as one half of Tor Double #11 (1989).

Listen to a radio play of this story at the Sci-Fi Radio archive (#17).

Nebula Award winning and Hugo Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in the anthology The Alien Condition (1973), edited by Stephen Goldin. The story can aslo be found in the antologies Nebula Award Stories Nine (1974), edited by Kate Wilhelm and The Best of the Nebulas (1989), edited by Ben Bova. It is included in the collections Warm Worlds and Otherwise (1975), Byte Beautiful: Eight Science Fiction Stories (1985) and Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (1990).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

James Tiptree, Jr. was the pseudonym of Alice B. Sheldon (1915-1987), in whose honor the Tiptree Awards are given annually. She wrote some of the best short SF ever, winning two Hugos and three Nebulas. This book brings together stories previously uncollected -- including an early one published under her own name in The New Yorker -- and many of her colorful non-fiction pieces, mainly autobiographical, published under the Tiptree name (1970-1987). What shines through in this book is the magnetic and charming personality of the author, one of the most influential SF personalites of her era.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Jeffrey D. Smith
• Happiness Is a Warm Spaceship - (1969) - novelette by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Please Don't Play with the Time Machine, or, I Screwed 15,924 Back Issues of Astounding for the F.B.I. - (1998) - shortstory by James Tiptree, Jr.
• A Day Like Any Other - (1973) - shortstory by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Press Until the Bleeding Stops - (1975) - shortstory by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Go from Me, I Am One of Those Who Pall (A Parody of My Style) - (1996) - shortfiction by James Tiptree, Jr.
• The Trouble Is Not in Your Set - shortstory by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Trey of Hearts - (2000) - shortstory by James Tiptree, Jr.
• The Color of Neanderthal Eyes - (1988) - novella by James Tiptree, Jr.
• If You Can't Laugh at It, What Good is It? - (1971) - interview of James Tiptree, Jr. by Jeffrey D. Smith
• In the Canadian Rockies - (1971) - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• I Saw Him - (1971) - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Spitting Teeth, Our Hero- - (1971) - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Do You Like It Twice? - (1972) - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• The Voice from the Baggie - (1972) - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Maya Máloob - (1972) - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Looking Inside Squirmy Authors - (1975) - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Comment on "The Last Flight of Doctor Ain" - (1974) - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Afterword to "The Milk of Paradise" - (1972) - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Afterword to "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever" - (1974) - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Introduction to "The Night-blooming Saurian" - (1986) - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• The Laying On of Hands - [The 20-Mile Zone] - (1973) - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Going Gently Down, or, In Every Young Person There Is an Old Person Screaming to Get Out - (1974) - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• The Spooks Next Door - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Harvesting the Sea - (1974) - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• More Travels, or, Heaven Is Northwest of You - (1977) - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• With Tiptree Through the Great Sex Muddle - (1975) - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Quintana Roo: No Travelog This Trip - (1977) - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Review: The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin - (1975) - review by James Tiptree, Jr.
• How to Have an Absolutely Hilarious Heart Attack, or, So You Want to Get Sick in the Third World - (1976) - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• The First Domino - (1978) - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Everything But the Signature is Me - (1978) - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• The Lucky Ones - (1946) - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Something Breaking Down - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Dzo'oc U Ma'an U Kinil -- Incident on the Cancun Road, Yucatan - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Not a New Zealand Letter - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Biographical Sketch for Contemporary Authors - (1983) - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Contemporary Authors Interview - (1983) - interview of James Tiptree, Jr. by Jean W. Ross
• S.O.S. Found in an SF Bottle - (1975) - poem by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Note on "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" - (1986) - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• How Do You Know You're Reading Philip K. Dick? - (1987) - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Review: Kayo: The Authentic and Annotated Autobiographical Novel from Outer Space by James McConkey - (1987) - review by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Zero at the Bone - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• A Woman Writing Science Fiction - (1988) - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Chronology of Publications - essay by Jeffrey D. Smith

Ten tantalizing tales of man, woman and child - and their cosmic connections...

Contents:

• Angel Fix (1974)
• Beaver Tears (1976)
• Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light! (1976)
• The Screwfly Solution (1977)
• Time-Sharing Angel (1977)
• We Who Stole the Dream (1978)
• Slow Music (1980)
• A Source of Innocent Merriment (1980)
• Out of the Everywhere (1981)
• With Delicate Mad Hands (1981)

Hugo Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1972. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction of the Year #2 (1973), edited by Terry Carr, Alpha 6 (1976), edited by Robert Silverberg and The Arbor House Treasury of Science Fiction Masterpieces (1983), edited by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg. It is included in the collection Ten Thousand Light-Years From Home (1973).

Read this story for free online at the SciFiction archive.

This novella originally appeared in the anthology Interfaces (1980), edited by Ursula K. Le Guin and Virginia Kidd, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, October 2015. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction of the Year #10 (1981), edited by Terry Carr, Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year: Tenth Annual Collection (1981), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Furthest Horizon: SF Adventures to the Far Future (2000), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collections Out of the Everywhere and Other Extraordinary Visions (1981) and Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (1990).

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Your Haploid Heart - (1969)
• And So On, and So On - (1971)
• Her Smoke Rose Up Forever - (1974)
• A Momentary Taste of Being - (1975)
• Houston, Houston, Do You Read? - (1976)
• The Psychologist Who Wouldn't Do Awful Things to Rats - (1976)
• She Waits for All Men Born - (1976)

The Quintana Roo is a real and very strange place. It is the long, wild easternmost shore of the Yucatan Peninsula, officially but not psychologically part of Mexico. A diary of daily life on its jungly beaches could sometimes be taken for a log of life on an alien planet, " writes James Tiptree, Jr., in the preface to this new collection of three talismanic tales of the supernatural. During the late 1970s, Tiptree -- one of the greatest American authors of short imaginative fiction -- lived for months on the eerie windswept shore of the Yucatan, and the true protagonist of this book is neither the Tiptree narrator nor the manifestations of ancient Maya civilization, but rather the Quintana Roo itself as a living, pulsating entity that envelops the reader within a uniquely alien ambience. Following Tiptree's introduction are these unforgettable nouvelles of weird fantasy: "What Came Ashore at Lirios, " "The Boy Who Waterskied to Forever, " and "Beyond the Dead Reef.

Table of Contents:

• A Note About the Mayas of the Quintana Roo - essay
• What Came Ashore at Lirios - (1981) - novelette
• The Boy Who Waterskied to Forever - (1982) - shortstory
• Beyond the Dead Reef - (1983) - shortstory

Hugo Award winning and Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology New Dimensions III (1973), edited by Robert Silverberg. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Hugo Winners, Volume 3: (1970-75) (1977), edited by Isaac Asimov, Visions of Wonder (1996) edited by David G. Hartwell and Milton T. Wolf, and The Ultimate Cyberpunk (2002), edited by Pat Cadigan. It can also be found in the collections Warm Worlds and Otherwise (1975) and Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (1990) and the Tor Double #7: Screwtop/The Girl Who Was Plugged In (1989, with Vonda N. McIntyre).

Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Galaxy Magazine, March 1969, and was reprinted in Lightspeed Magazine, July 2017. The story can also be found in the athologies:

• SF: Authors' Choice 4 (1974), edited by Harry Harrison
• Galaxy: Thirty Years of Innovative Science Fiction (1980), edited by Frederik Pohl, Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander
• Yesterday's Tomorrows (1982), edited by Frederik Pohl
• The Road to Science Fiction 4: From Here to Forever (1982), edited by James Gunn
• Women of Futures Past (2016), edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
• The Future Is Female!: 25 Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women, from Pulp Pioneers to Ursula K. Le Guin (2018), edited by Lisa Yaszek

It is included in the collections Warm Worlds and Otherwise (1975) and Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (1990).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

The first Chrononaut moved step by step from the far future toward a present whose past was in the future, and whose future was his past.

This short story originally appeared in Amazing Science Fiction, May 1972 and was reprinted in Clarkesworld, Issue 128, May 2017. It has been reprinted many times and can be found in the anthologies:

• The 1973 Annual World's Best SF (1973), edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha
• Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year: Second Annual Collection (1973), edited by Lester del Rey
• Amazing Stories: 60 Years of the Best Science Fiction (1985), edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg
• Timegates (1997), Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois
• Tales in Time (1997), edited by Peter Crowther
• Explorers: SF Adventures to Far Horizons (2001), edited by Gardner Dozois
• Galileo's Children: Tales of Science vs. Superstition (2005), edited by Gardner Dozois
• The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF (2010), edited by Mike Asley

The story is included in the collections

• Ten Thousand Light-Years From Home (1973)
• Byte Beautiful: Eight Science Fiction Stories (1985)
• Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (1990)

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

This Nebula-winning and Hugo-nominated novelette was collected in Out of the Everywhere and Other Extraordinary Visions (1981) and Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (1990) and anthologized in The 1978 Annual World's Best SF (1978), Nebula Winners Thirteen (1980), Armageddons (1999) and Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology (2015).

Read this story online for free at the Sci Fiction archive.

Pioneering science fiction writer Alice Sheldon, who found fame using the pseudonym James Tiptree, Jr., among others, left behind a remarkable body of short fiction, much of it uncollected or out of print. Now The Voice That Murmurs in the Darkness, co-edited by Jeffrey D. Smith and two-time Booker Prize nominee Karen Joy Fowler, brings new light to some of Tiptree's best and overlooked stories.

The stories represented span Tiptree's career, and were primarily selected from a list made by Sheldon which she called "the cream of Tiptree," none of which were included in Her Smoke Rose Up Forever. With a title drawn from Sheldon's description of Tiptree as "the voice that murmurs in the darkness," among the wonders featured here are...

In "Excursion Fare," Dag and Philippa are about to be lost at sea in the wreckage of their balloon Sky-Walker, their grand adventure a failure, when a hospice ship called Charon rescues them, and they find themselves on a cruise exclusively for the dying--which may be carrying far stranger passengers. A surreal evening ensues

in "The Man Doors Said Hello To," when a tall man enters a bar, carrying miniature girls as tenants in his pockets, and takes the narrator with him on a strange rescue mission through secrets hiding in the corners and ledges of the city.

At nineteen, Jolyone Schram cries out in "Time-Sharing Angel," despairing when she glimpses a vision of overpopulation and resulting planetary devastation, only to be heard by an interstellar angel who produces a shocking, simple fix that affects children across Earth and changes the future.

And, in "Yanqui Doodle," a soldier undergoes a harrowing detox treatment from specialized drugs given to soothe the conscience during combat--a process that might itself be as painful as the memories of atrocities committed under their influence--and grows ever more unstable.

The Voice That Murmurs in the Darkness encompasses thirteen exceptional stories and one essay ("How to Have an Absolutely Hilarious Heart Attack"), covering the years 1968 to 1987, and includes an exclusive introduction from Karen Joy Fowler. Throughout this landmark new collection is Tiptree's remarkable prose, shot through with invention and big ideas, exploring classic themes of identity, politics, what it is to be human, and the miraculous oddity of life--from what lies inside us out to the very edges of the universe.

Contents:

• 7 - Introduction (The Voice That Murmurs in the Darkness) - (2023) - essay by Karen Joy Fowler
• 11 - Excursion Fare - (1981) - novelette
• 59 - The Snows Are Melted, the Snows Are Gone - (1969) - short story
• 73 - The Psychologist Who Wouldn't Do Awful Things to Rats - (1976) - novelette
• 101 - Fault - (1968) - short story
• 109 - All the Kinds of Yes - (1972) - novelette
• 131 - The Man Doors Said Hello to - (1970) - short story
• 139 - Beam Us Home - (1969) - short story
• 155 - The Only Neat Thing to Do - [Rift] - (1985) - novella
• 215 - Time-Sharing Angel - (1977) - short story
• 229 - How to Have an Absolutely Hilarious Heart Attack - (2023) - essay
• 239 - What Came Ashore at Lirios - [Quintana Roo] - (1981) - novelette (variant of Lirios: A Tale of the Quintana Roo)
• 269 - Yanqui Doodle - (1987) - novelette
• 309 - Out of the Everywhere - (1981) - novelette
• 351 - In Midst of Life - (1987) - short story

This novelette originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1973. It was reprinted in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1979, and again on Sci Fiction, August 21, 2002. It can also be found in the anthologies:

• The Best Science Fiction of the Year #3 (1974), edited by Terry Carr
• Best SF: 1974 (1975), edited by Harry Harrison and Brian W. Aldiss
• The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: 22nd Series (1977), edited by Edward L. Ferman
• The New Women of Wonder (1978), edited by Pamela Sargent
• The Arbor House Treasury of Modern Science Fiction (1980), edited by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg
• The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction: A 30 Year Retrospective (1980), edited by Edward L. Ferman
• Future Earths: Under South American Skies (1993), edited by Mike Resnick and Gardner Dozois
• The Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction, 1960-1990 (1993), edited by Ursula K. Le Guin and Brian Attebery
• Women of Wonder: The Classic Years: SF by Women from the 1940s to the 1970s (1995), edited by Pamela Sargent
• The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction: 60th Anniversary Anthology (2009), edited by Gordon van Gelder

The story is included in the collections Warm Worlds and Otherwise (1975) and Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (1990).

Read this story online for free at the SciFiction archive.

Hugo Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1977. The story is included in the collection Out of the Everywhere and Other Extraordinary Visions (1981).

A complex science fiction story of a secret military research project involving the investigative powers of the mind and their possible strategic applications and a distant planet which is being threatened by a monumental interstellar entity.

Humans who have shown indications of telepathic ability make mental contact with the Tyrenni, strange alien beings resembling winged squids who dwell in the upper atmosphere of their tempestuous world. But the Tyrenni are threatened by a huge being and forced into the decision to take over the bodies of their human contacts...

Published before Tiptree's identity had become known, this collection contains Silverberg's famous (infamous?) introduction in which he concluded that Tiptree had to be a man because the writing was "ineluctably masculine". Silverberg gracefully recanted once Tiptree's identity was revealed.

Table of Contents:

• Who Is Tiptree, What Is He? - (1974) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• All the Kinds of Yes - (1972)
• The Milk of Paradise - (1972)
• And I Have Come Upon This Place by Lost Ways - (1972)
• The Last Flight of Dr. Ain - (1969)
• Amberjack - (1972)
• Through a Lass Darkly - (1972)
• The Girl Who Was Plugged In - (1973)
• The Night-blooming Saurian - (1970)
• The Women Men Don't See - (1973)
• Fault - (1968)
• Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death - (1973)
• On the Last Afternoon - (1972)

A collection of 15 masterpieces by one of the brightest stars in the science fiction firmament, tales of wit, wonder and adventure - with a touch of something strange...

Contents:

• Introduction - (1976) - essay by Gardner Dozois
• Introduction - (1973) - essay by Harry Harrison
• And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side - (1972) - shortstory
• The Snows Are Melted, the Snows Are Gone - (1969) - shortstory
• The Peacefulness of Vivyan - (1971) - shortstory
• Mama Come Home - (1975) - novelette (variant of The Mother Ship 1968)
• Help - (1973) - novelette (variant of Pupa Knows Best 1968)
• Painwise - (1972) - novelette
• Faithful to Thee, Terra, in Our Fashion - (1973) - novelette (variant of Parimutuel Planet 1969)
• The Man Doors Said Hello To - (1970) - shortstory
• The Man Who Walked Home - (1972) - shortstory
• Forever to a Hudson Bay Blanket - (1972) - shortstory
• I'll Be Waiting for You When the Swimming Pool is Empty - (1971) - shortstory
• I'm Too Big but I Love to Play - (1970) - novelette
• Birth of a Salesman - (1968) - shortstory
• Mother in the Sky With Diamonds - (1971) - novelette
• Beam Us Home - (1969) - shortstory

And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side - Exogamy, the desire to mate with the new and different has been a primary force in human evolution - but when the object of that desire is not merely different, but alien...

The Man Who Walked Home - The first Chrononaut moved step by step from the far future toward a present whose past was in the future, and whose future was his past.

I'm Too Big But I Love To Play - Genuine communication between human and alien implies that one must transform himself into an analog of the other. And when that transformation is complete...

This short story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January 1983. It can also be found in the anthologies:

• The Year's Best Science Fiction: First Annual Collection (1984), edited by Gardner Dozois
• The Year's Best Fantasy Stories: 10 (1984), edited by Arthur W. Saha
• Masterpieces of Fantasy and Wonder (1989), edited by David G. Hartwell
• The Oxford Book of Fantasy Stories (1994), edited by Tom Shippey
• A Century of Fantasy 1980-1989: The Greatest Stories of the Decade (1997), edited by Robert Silverberg

The story can also be found in the collection Tales of the Quintana Roo (1986).

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, September 28, 1981. The story can also be found in the anthology Fantasy Annual V (1982) edited by Terry Carr and the collection Tales of the Quintana Roo (1986).

Hugo Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1982. The story is included in the collection Tales of the Quintana Roo (1986).

They have gathered now on Damien and are about to witness the last rising of a manmade nova. They are 16 humans in a distant world about to be enveloped by an eruption of violence--horror and murder oddly complemented by a bizarre unforgiving love. But justice is not all that's about to be found. Judgment is coming and the 16 unsuspecting ones are on the threshold of the murdered star.

Locus Award winning and Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1985. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection (1986), edited by Gardner Dozois and Best SF of the Year #15 (1986), edited by Terry Carr. It is included in the collection The Starry Rift (1986).

Table of Contents:

• In the Great Central Library of Deneb University - (1986)
• The Only Neat Thing to Do - (1985)
• Good Night, Sweethearts - (1986)
• Collision - (1986)

Screwtop:

In an alien prison, friends are the only chance you have to survive!

The Girl Who Was Plugged In:

The story takes place in the future, where almost everything is controlled by corporate interests, who control consumers through the celebrities they set up, and product placement. The protagonist, seventeen-year-old Philadelphia Burke is enlisted to become one of these celebrities. A suicide attempt lands her in a hospital where she comes to the attention of corporate scouts and is chosen to become a "Remote". A series of modifications and electronic implants allow her to use a sophisticated computer to control another body by remote control; a physically perfect fifteen-year-old girl. It is controlled through a satellite link by P. Burke's brain, which is still physically located in her original body.

Houston, Houston, Do You Read?:

The Astronauts had the "right stuff" to deal... with almost anything....

A US spacecraft with an all male crew is thrown forward in time to an Earth where all men have died from a plague.

Souls:

The Vikings Thought the sacking would be easy - but the Abbess was more than she seemed!

The Color of Neanderthal Eyes:

A space explorer finds a race of aquatic creatures that have no concept of war or fighting. He falls in love with one of their females. All is wonderful, until another species on the world begins attacking the peaceful creatures. The explorer has to teach them how to fight and how to wage a war, violating all his first-contact rules.

And Strange At Ecbatan the Trees:

A melancholic and allegorically inclined parable about a coming cataclysm that threatens a rigorously programmed (accomplished via genetic modification) and hierarchically rigid society.