Search Worlds Without End

Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Fantastic, November 1973. The story is included in the collection Timetipping (1980).

Six hundred thousand years after Imre Bergamasc's abdication, the Host rules the supposedly peaceful galaxy. But revolution is fomenting-and Imre's unexpected return may be all it takes to light the final fuse.

Over the past three decades, the most adventurous practitioners of the literary arts of science fiction, fantasy, and horror have been transforming those genres into something all but unrecognizable. In Conjunctions' game-changing New Wave Fabulists issue, guest editor Peter Straub has put together an anthology of innovative literary reinventions of traditional "pulp" forms. Contributors range from Jonathan Lethem to Neil Gaiman, from John Crowley to Kelly Link, from Elizabeth Hand to China Miéville. Gary K. Wolfe and John Clute contribute essays on the ongoing evolution of genre, while the brilliant cartoonist Gahan Wilson has created the cover and original frontispieces for each story.

Table of Contents:

• Guest Editorial Note - essay by Peter Straub
• The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines - novella by John Crowley
• Lull - novelette by Kelly Link
• Entertaining Angels Unawares - shortstory by M. John Harrison
• Little Red's Tango - novelette by Peter Straub
• The Wisdom of the Skin - shortstory by James Morrow
• Shift - shortstory by Nalo Hopkinson
• The Dystopianist, Thinking of His Rival, Is Interrupted by a Knock on the Door - shortstory by Jonathan Lethem
• Guardian (excerpt) - (2002) - shortstory by Joe Haldeman
• Familiar - shortstory by China Miéville
• The Big Rock Candy Mountain - shortstory by Andy Duncan
• Knight (excerpt) - novelette by Gene Wolfe
• The Bearing of Light - shortstory by Patrick O'Leary
• Simon's House of Lipstick - shortstory by Jonathan Carroll
• The Invisible Empire - shortstory by John Kessel
• The Further Adventures of the Invisible Man - shortstory by Karen Joy Fowler
• Abduction - shortstory by Paul Park
• The Least Trumps - novella by Elizabeth Hand
• October in the Chair - shortstory by Neil Gaiman
• Malebolge, Or the Ordnance of Genre - essay by Gary K. Wolfe
• Beyond the Pale - essay by John Clute

Postfantasy fiction that defies definition is at the center of a groundbreaking issue edited by Bradford Morrow and Brian Evenson in the Spring 2009 edition of Conjunctions. Imagine an everyday world in which meat is grown in vats by men called collies and butchered by BattleBots while adults play Frisbee with robots. Imagine a world in which secret societies meet in private to have "soft evenings" during which they travel "psychotic highways." Imagine what might follow the opening lines of "Brain Jelly" by Stephen Wright: "Apostrophe came from a country where all the cheese was blue. The cows there ate berries the whole day long. You should see their tongues." Along with other fictions gathered in this issue, these stories begin with the premise that the unfamiliar or liminal really constitutes solid, though undeniably strange, ground on which to walk. Contributors include such veterans as Jonathan Lethem, Elizabeth Hand, Theodore Enslin, George Saunders, Peter Straub, James Morrow, China Miéville, Robert Coover, Kelly Link, Jeff VanderMeer, M. John Harrison and Ben Marcus, as well as emerging writers such as Jon Enfield, Karen Russell, Micaela Morrissette and Stephen Marche.

Table of Contents

• Brain Jelly - short fiction by Stephen Wright
• Hungerford Bridge - short story by Elizabeth Hand
• Secret Breathing Techniques - short fiction by Ben Marcus
• The Personasts: My Journeys Through Soft Evenings and Famous Secrets - short fiction by Stephen Marche
• Poiuyt! - short fiction by J. W. McCormack
• Uranus - short fiction by Joyce Carol Oates
• From The City & The City - short fiction by China Miéville
• BioticaKF - short fiction by Jon Enfield
• Feral - novelette by Julia Elliott
• Ourselves, Multiplied - short fiction by Jedediah Berry
• The Stolen Church - short story by Jonathan Carroll
• A Design History of the Icebergs and Their Applications - short fiction by Scott Geiger
• Dowsing for Shadows - short fiction by Karen Russell
• La Tête - short story by Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud
• Bigfoot and the Bodhisattva - novelette by James Morrow
• The Spirit of a Lark - short fiction by Theodore Enslin
• The Golden Rule, or, I Am Trying to Do the Right Thing - short fiction by Edie Meidav
• Disappearance and - short fiction by Stephen O'Connor
• Predecessor - short story by Jeff VanderMeer
• Flat Daddy - short fiction by Shelley Jackson
• The Next Country - short fiction by Michael J. Lee
• Dr. Eric - short fiction by Rob Walsh
• The Familiars - short story by Micaela Morrissette
• A Man of Vision - short fiction by Patrick Crerand
• The Logic of the World - short fiction by Robert Kelly

Two planets, Janus Prime and Menda, orbit a Red Giant on the edge of the galaxy. The planets lie diametrically opposite each other on either side of the huge sun -- but where Menda is rich and fertile in the light of the sun, Janus Prime's moon leaves the sun in a constant state of eclipse.

Humans are colonizing the area, and a rival group sets up on Janus Prime via a mysterious transmit system left behind by the planets' former inhabitants. But what is its true purpose?

When the Doctor and Sam arrive they must piece together a centuries-old puzzle. How can Janus Prime's moon weigh billions of tons more than it should? What is the secret purpose of the hyperspatial link? They discover a terrible weapon is hidden in the glowing sands of the planet, one that if it falls into the hands of the warring humans could destroy the galaxy.

When Japanese nature show host Daisuke Matsumori finds himself on an alien world, he hopes to rekindle his passion for his work. Traveling through a newly-discovered wormhole in the Papuan highlands, he joins biologist Anne Houlihan on Junction, a patchwork planet of competing alien ecosystems.

When their exploratory party crashes in the alien wilderness, Daisuke and Anne try to lead bickering soldiers and civilians back to civilization alive. As they trek across one unearthly biome after another and members of the party continue to die, however, Daisuke wonders whether human politics might be more deadly than alien biology. One of his companions might be a murderer.

A year ago, Anne Houlihan uncovered a wormhole to Junction, a patchwork planet of competing alien biomes. Now, she and Daisuke are going back to investigate "The Howling Mountain," the possible location of a wormhole into space. Her mission headed by an eccentric millionaire, Anne believes she will have a chance to learn more about the origin of Junction and its varied ecosystems. The mission has purposes beyond what she knows, however, and so does the planet. As the expedition tears its way across the alien landscape, Anne must fight to protect its lifeforms, herself, and the Earth.

Now acknowledged as one of the most important classics of twentieth-century gothic literarture, S.P. Somtow's tale of a twelve-year-old rock star vampire, his Jungian analyst, and the Wagnerian conductor who is his nemesis turned the entire genre upside down in the 1980s and is considered the ancestor of the "splatterpunk" movement. Vampire Junction has been voted one of the top forty horror books of all time. Timmy Valentine: "He'll steal your heart - and have it for breakfast!" 21st anniversary edition of this unforgettable classic of high-intensity horror.