Search Worlds Without End

This novella originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, April-May 2016, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, April 2018. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2017, edited by Rich Horton.

This short story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, March-April 2017. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection (2018), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Sturgeon Award-nominated Novelette

This story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, June 2014. It was podcast by StarShipSofa, No 346, July 16, 2014, and reprinted in Forever Magazine, Issue 32, September 2017.

Listen to this story for free at StarShipSofa.

This novelette originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, July 2016. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume 2 (2017), edited by Neil Clakre.

Sturgeon Award-winning Short Story

This story was first published in Clarkesworld, Issue 153, June 2019, and has been anthologized in The Year's Best Science Fiction Vol. 1: The Saga Anthology of Science Fiction 2020, edited by Jonathan Strahan.

Read or listen to this story for free at Clarkesworld Magazine.

In a world of neverending war, smart cybernetic prosthetics argue with each about what’s best for their host, a human soldier who has been continually repaired and sent back out to fight.

This novelette originally appeared in Clarkesworld, Issue 145, October 2018. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Military & Adventure SF: Volume 5 (2019), edited by David Afsharirad.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

This novella was first published in Clarkesworld Magazine, May 2023.

Read the full story for free at the publisher's website here.

Winner of the Theodore Sturgeon Award for Best Short Science Fiction and Asimov’s Readers’ Award for Best Novella

This is a far-future mystery story taking place on a wintry planet colonized by a few hundred descendents of the Earth diaspora, who share the planet by treaty with a race of humanoid-robot symbionts who live under the sea. When the aliens bring three human bodies to the colony administrator, he must figure out who they are (no one is missing) and how and why they were killed – but as he begins to investigate, he is targeted by the killers, who are hiding a very big secret.

This novella was first published in Asimov's Science Fiction in July/August 2019.

Read this story for free at Asimov's.

This novelette originally appeared in Clarkesworld, #132, September 2017. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Twelve (2018), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 3 (2018), edited by Neil Clarke, The Year's Best Military & Adventure SF: Volume 4 (2018), edited by David Afsharirad, and The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2018, edited by Rich Horton.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld #177, June 2022. It is a sequel to the author's amusing (and Hugo Award) winning The Secret Life of Bots (Clarkesworld #132, September 2017).

Read the full story for free at clarkesworldmagazine.com.

Fergus Ferguson has been called a lot of names: thief, con artist, repo man. He prefers the term finder.

His latest job should be simple. Find the spacecraft Venetia's Sword and steal it back from Arum Gilger, ex-nobleman turned power-hungry trade boss. He'll slip in, decode the ship's compromised AI security, and get out of town, Sword in hand.

Fergus locates both Gilger and the ship in the farthest corner of human-inhabited space, a backwater deep space colony called Cernee. But Fergus' arrival at the colony is anything but simple. A cable car explosion launches Cernee into civil war, and Fergus must ally with Gilger's enemies to navigate a field of space mines and a small army of hostile mercenaries. What was supposed to be a routine job evolves into negotiating a power struggle between factions. Even worse, Fergus has become increasingly--and inconveniently--invested in the lives of the locals.

It doesn't help that a dangerous alien species Fergus thought mythical prove unsettlingly real, and their ominous triangle ships keep following him around.

Foolhardy. Eccentric. Reckless. Whatever he's called, Fergus will need all the help he can get to take back the Sword and maybe save Cernee from destruction in the process.

As a professional finder, Fergus Ferguson is hired to locate missing objects and steal them back. But it is rarely so simple, especially after his latest job in Cernee. He's been recovering from that experience in the company of friends, the Shipmakers of Pluto, experts at crafting top-of-the-line AI spaceships.

The Shipmakers have convinced Fergus to finally deal with unfinished business he's been avoiding for half his life: Earth. Fergus hasn't been back to his homeworld since he was fifteen, when he stole his cousin's motorcycle and ran away. It was his first theft, and nothing he's stolen since has been anywhere near so easy, or weighed so heavily on his conscience. Many years and many jobs later, Fergus reluctantly agrees that now is the time to return the motorcycle and face his family.

Unfortunately, someone has gotten to the motorcycle before him. And before he can figure out where it went and why the storage unit that held it is now filled with priceless, stolen art, the Shipyard is attacked. His friends are missing, presumably kidnapped.

Accompanied by an untrustworthy detective who suspects Fergus is the art thief and the sole friend who escaped the attack, Fergus must follow the tenuous clues to locate and save his friends. The trail leads them to Enceladus, where Fergus plans to go undercover to the research stations that lie beneath the moon's thick ice sheet deep in a dark, oppressive ocean.

But all movement and personnel are watched, and the limited ways through the thick ice of the moon's surface are dangerous and highly monitored. Even if Fergus can manage to find proof that his friends are there and alive, getting out again is going to be a lot more complicated than he bargained for.

Fergus is back on Earth at last, trying to figure out how to live a normal life. However, it seems the universe has other plans for him. When his cousin sends him off to help out a friend, Fergus accidently stumbles across a piece of an ancient alien artifact that some very powerful people seem to think means the entire solar system is in danger. And since he found it, they're certain it's also his problem to deal with.

With the help of his newfound sister, friends both old and new, and some enemies, too, Fergus needs to find the rest of the artifact and destroy the pieces before anyone can reassemble the original and open a multi-dimensional door between Earth and a vast, implacable, alien swarm of devourers. Problem is, the pieces could be anywhere on Earth, and he's not the only one out searching.

Fergus Ferguson, professional finder, always knew his semi-voluntary exile wouldn't last, but he isn't expecting a friend to betray him. One of the galaxy's most dangerous space pirates, Bas Belos, wants him, and what Belos wants, he gets. Belos needs help finding out what happened to his twin sister, who mysteriously disappeared at the edges of space years ago, and he makes Fergus an offer he can't refuse.

Mysterious disappearances and impossible answers are Fergus' specialties. After he reluctantly joins Belos and his crew aboard the pirate ship Sidewider, he discovers that Belos is being tracked by the Alliance. Seeking to stay one step ahead of the Alliance, Fergus and Belos find themselves marooned in the middle of the Gap between spiral arms of our galaxy, dangerously near hostile alien territory, and with an Alliance ship in hot pursuit.

That's just the beginning of the complications for Fergus' newest - and possibly last - job. The puzzle is much bigger than just Belos's lost sister, and the question of his future, retirement or not, depends on his ability to negotiate a path between aliens, criminals, and the most powerful military force he's ever encountered. The future of entire planets hangs in the balance, and it remains to be seen if it's too big for one determined man and his cranky cat.