Search Worlds Without End

Human connection is the Gravity Box that keeps us spinning through the past, future, and fantasy worlds in this thought-provoking short-story collection. Each story takes you on a journey down strange roads to unexpected places. The territory seems familiar, but the scenery has changed making it possible to consider our own lives and loves with a new perspective.

"A collection of three novellas by Mark W. Tiedemann, whose stories and novels explore the human side of the near future with compassion and emotional depth." --David Lee Anderson

Diva tells of the burden of celebrity, and artists making ethical choices in a culture that can't accept change as the natural progression of art...

Raitch, Later deals with the consequences of a young woman's search for the truth and her limited options in a fractured caste system...

Extensions finds two brothers experiencing the pains of growing up, when plans for their future have been decided for them by genetics and society's needs...

Three stories about "...the abuse of privilege at the highest levels." --Mark W. Tiedemann.

Contents:

• Diva - (2005) - novelette
• Extensions - (1999) - novella
• Raitch, Later - (2014) - short fiction

Hall runs the most prestigious production company for the benefit of the Subscription Class, whose members expect only the best, only the most exclusive, and who are guaranteed it by a barrier of security that keeps the unwashed masses very firmly Outside. When he is contacted by an aging diva who wants him to produce her farewell show, Hall sees this as the crowning achievement of his career--until he learns of her conditions and needs.

Suddenly he is faced with violating the very rules that make Subscription Class Society what it is, in order to maintain the elaborate fiction of its promise of only the best. In a society where reputation is everything, stepping outside even in a good cause is a tremendous risk. But Hall finds himself more and more disenchanted with the whole charade, and is prepared to take more than a few modest chances to do something spectacular....

Extensions is a futuristic science fiction novella that also offers an interesting perspective on human behavior.

One year after the Great Sack, Protector General Ril Cowel took what remained of the fleet of Camrus and set out after the empire responsible for hammering his home into oblivion, the Empire of B'Nan. Cowel chased the mythic emperor for fifteen years. At last, fate seemed to hand him his chance, and in a swift strike Cowel damaged the imperial fleet and killed B'Nan. The terror now over, he intended to dismantle the empire, to take it apart so that it could no longer destroy worlds like his own.

But the more Ril Cowel tries, the harder it seems to be rid of the vast machinery B'Nan had constructed over a thousand years or more. For the emperor was reputed to have lived the entire time his empire grew. Cowel never gave credence to such stories...until he becomes emperor himself.

From Mark W. Tiedemann, the bestselling author of the Isaac Asimov's Robot Mysteries Mirage and Chimera, comes a thrilling new mystery!

America in 2050 is a very different place. In the wake of a triumphant isolationist movement and a massive depression, state's rights supersede federal authority on all levels, and in the subsequent balkanization of economy, class, and politics, getting anything done in the "national interest" is a tortuous, nearly impossible task.

For Grant Voczek and Reva Cassonare, working for different, normally uncooperative agencies, overcoming these barriers takes on a personal edge when a Treasury agent is found murdered in St. Louis. They must work together to find the killers -- and the reason behind the killing. What they discover leads them through a maze of political and corporate collusion involving currency fraud, graft, and the systematic harvesting of people who cannot defend themselves because they do not legally exist. For Grant and Reva, failure would not be simply unacceptable -- failure would be a felony of conscience.

Set in the future when Earth has colonized the moon, Mars, and its orbitals, this science fiction adventure follows the adventures of security officer Mace Preston, who learns that his wife, Helen, has been killed in a construction accident on Mars. Suspicious of the circumstances surrounding her death, Mace embarks on a journey to uncover the truth what he discovers instead is a zealous web of interplanetary terrorists and that he is falling in love with Nemily, a Cerebro-Augmented person sponsored by Helen for emigration to the colony Aea. With Nemily's ability to plug directly into computer systems, she may hold the clue to Helen's death, as well as a string of unexplained accidents across the galaxy—if only she knew how to access and process the information. Mace tries to help her, but time is running out for both of them as they grow closer to solving the truth about Helen's "accident."

Fargo owes nothing to the Pan Humana. He turned his back on them long ago, when he was stripped of his identity, his class, his position, and all the other ties to human civilization enjoyed by its billions upon billions of citizens. Fargo joined the ranks of the Freeriders. To themselves, Freeriders are interstellar gypsies, the disinvested and therefore the truly free. To most of the rest of society, to the Invested, they are parasites, freeloaders, bums.

But now Fargo finds himself caught up in events that are dragging him back into the folds of human culture and forcing him to choose sides in a struggle to determine the future of humanity in the galaxy.

The aliens have come to make treaties, to interact with a paranoid humanity, to bridge the gaps that separate them. They do not understand the resistance they encounter and enlist aid where they can. Among those they pick, Fargo is their most unlikely choice. He is also their most dangerous choice. To the humans opposed to embracing the new future offered, Fargo is representative of everything they reject, a threat to everything they hold important and fear to lose. He is an outsider, unwanted, unwelcome, in many ways a barbarian, yet indispensable to both sides. For himself, Fargo has his own reasons for going all the way to Sol, to Earth, into the heart of power. Fargo has touched an alien mind.

When Cira Kalinge signed on with the Armada, she thought her staid, provincial family disowning her was the worst thing that could happen. Then the Secession happened and she found herself on a carrier heading for the Distal colonies to carry out a suppression of other humans, humans who had apparently chosen to cast their fortunes with nonhumans in defiance of the Pan Humana edicts severing all contact with the seti races. And when she ended up the sole survivor of the entire fighter contingent of her task force, grounded on Finders during the worst days of the chaos of open rebellion, living precariously for the day the Armada returned to reclaim Finders, the last thing she expected was to be betrayed by the very service for which she had given up everything else.

For Alexan Cambion, volunteering for combat duty seemed the ideal way to justify his father's faith in him, fighting to preserve the Pan Humana. But when he returns to his homeworld--Finders--shot down and captured in the first open engagement of the Secession, he learns to his dismay that every action he has taken since leaving Finders for Armada service has been exactly the opposite of what his father intended, and the welcome he expects becomes a nightmare.

Sean Merrick did not start his career as a double agent, but as the Secession began he found his sympathies siding more and more with the secessionists. As the battle of Finders rages and he travels the boundary between the Distals and the Pan, he learns how impossible it is to stay aloof and uncommitted.

In the end, all of them must decide between loyalty and morality, family and integrity, duty and truth.

Decades after the Secession, humanity is still split. The isolationist Pan Humana and the expansionist Commonwealth Republic live on either side of their mutual boundary, the Secant. Crossing the Secant is illegal, no matter which side you start from.

Trade Tamyn Glass is on a well-paying and mostly legal run when she is contacted by Benajim Cyanus--a man she doesn't know, piloting a ship that isn't his, pursued by people who intend him harm. He carries a plea from an old friend that Tamyn can't ignore. Sean Merrick, richest of the early founders of the Commonwealth, is dying, and his last wish is to be buried on Earth. That means crossing the Secant and breaking the law.

But that's only the start of Tamyn's problems. Merrick is trying to live beyond his natural lifespan: he has loaded his persona into his ship, the Solo, and turned it over to Benajim--a man who has no memory of his past and owes his present to Sean Merrick. One man has placed them all in a moral, ethical, and legal dilemma that threatens everything they know, and there's no time to consider. They have to decide, and decide now. Their choice will have profound consequences. For everyone.

A new threat has arrived from the future-but this time it's not after Sarah Connor and her son, John! Still, the fate of humanity rests in their hands, and they find themselves in a race to stop a cyborg killing machine from murdering a man who doesn't even realize the important part he may play in the time before Judgment Day arrives!

Senator Clar Eliton of Earth and Ambassador Galiel Humadros of Aurora hope to alter the strained and explosive relationships between Earth and the Spacer and Settler Worlds. But as the Spacers arrive on Earth to begin the conference that will reconcile decades of mistrust, assassins strike down Eliton and Humadros and their staffs.

In the chaotic aftermath, Derec Avery - and Ariel Burgess - join forces, to penetrate an insidious conspiracy that sprawls across Earth, Spacer, and Settler worlds and threatens to bring them all to the brink of war.

Coren Lanra is the head of security for DyNan Manual Industries. A former Special Service agent, he's never cared for bureaucracy, piracy, or deception. And he hates mysteries.

Lanra's troubles begin with the death of Nyom Looms, daughter of DyNan president Rega Looms, during an ill-fated mission to smuggle illegal immigrants from Earth to the colony Nova Levis - all were apparently murdered, but why?

The only clue might be contained within the positronic brain of a robot that had accompanied the victims, but it has been deactivated, and Lanra is denied access to its memories. With the help of roboticist Derec Avery and Auroran ambassador Ariel Burgess, Lanra searches for the identity of a killer, before more lives are lost.

The Third Law of Robotics states that a robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws...

In Mirage and Chimera, Mark W. Tiedemann explored the fear and hatred toward robots - and their offworld owners - held by the people of Earth, and the animosity toward Terrans expressed by all Spacers. Now, all the plot threads of Tiedemann's epic story come together in this exciting conclusion to the Isaac Asimov's Robot Mysteries cycle.

After the diplomatic failures of the Spacer mission on Earth - which began with the assassinations of key diplomats and politicians, and culminated with the uncovering of a vast plot to create cyborgs from terminally-handicapped human infants - Ambassador Ariel Burgess and roboticist Derec Avery are recalled to their home planet, Aurora. Unfortunately, their situation only worsens when they arrive, as they become suspects in yet another murder - one that, based on the evidence, could only have been committed by a non-human.

On a world with a 20-to-1 robot-to-human population, is it possible a robot could have violated the Three Laws governing its behavior - and if so, why? Or is something far more sinister at work?