Search Worlds Without End

Fifteen all-new stories by science fiction's top talents, collected by bestselling author George R. R. Martin and multiple-award winning editor Gardner Dozois

Burroughs's A Princess of Mars. Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. Heinlein's Red Planet. These and so many more inspired generations of readers with a sense that science fiction's greatest wonders did not necessarily lie far in the future or light-years across the galaxy but were to be found right now on a nearby world tantalizingly similar to our own--a red planet that burned like an ember in our night sky... and in our imaginations.

This new anthology of fifteen all-original science fiction stories, edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, celebrates the Golden Age of Science Fiction, an era filled with tales of interplanetary colonization and derring-do. Before the advent of powerful telescopes and space probes, our solar system could be imagined as teeming with strange life-forms and ancient civilizations--by no means always friendly to the dominant species of Earth. And of all the planets orbiting that G-class star we call the Sun, none was so steeped in an aura of romantic decadence, thrilling mystery, and gung-ho adventure as Mars.

Join such seminal contributors as Michael Moorcock, Mike Resnick, Joe R. Lansdale, S. M. Stirling, Mary Rosenblum, Ian McDonald, Liz Williams, James S. A. Corey, and others in this brilliant retro anthology that turns its back on the cold, all-but-airless Mars of the Mariner probes and instead embraces an older, more welcoming, more exotic Mars: a planet of ancient canals cutting through red deserts studded with the ruined cities of dying races.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: Red Planet Blues - (2013) - essay by George R. R. Martin
• Martian Blood - (2013) - novelette by Allen Steele
• The Ugly Duckling - (2013) - novelette by Matthew Hughes
• The Wreck of the Mars Adventure - (2013) - novelette by David D. Levine
• Swords of Zar-Tu-Kan - (2013) - novelette by S. M. Stirling
• Shoals - (2013) - novelette by Mary Rosenblum
• In the Tombs of the Martian Kings - (2013) - novelette by Mike Resnick
• Out of Scarlight - (2013) - short story by Liz Williams
• The Dead Sea-Bottom Scrolls - (2013) - short story by Howard Waldrop
• A Man Without Honor - (2013) - novelette by James S. A. Corey
• Written in Dust - (2013) - novelette by Melinda M. Snodgrass
• The Lost Canal - (2013) - novelette by Michael Moorcock
• The Sunstone - (2013) - novelette by Phyllis Eisenstein
• King of the Cheap Romance - (2013) - novelette by Joe R. Lansdale
• Mariner - (2013) - novelette by Chris Roberson
• The Queen of the Night's Aria - (2013) - novelette by Ian McDonald