Search Worlds Without End

This is an omnibus edition of Vinge's Across Realtime series.

Table of Contents

• The Peace War (1984) - novel
• "The Ungoverned" (1985) - novelette
• Marooned in Realtime (1986) - novel

Winner of the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award

Set between Vinge's novels The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime, this novella is a direct exploration of the concept of privately-funded decentralized defense in the absence of a State, as described by the anarcho-capitalist Gustave de Molinari in "The Production of Security".

This story originally appeared in Far Frontiers, Volume III, Fall 1985 edited by Jim Baen and Jerry Pournelle, and was collected in True Names ... and Other Dangers (1987), Across Realtime (1991), and The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (2001). It was also anthologized in Give Me Liberty (aka Freedom!) (2003), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Mark Tier.

Read this story for free at the Baen website.

The Peace War is quintessential hard-science adventure. The Peace Authority conquered the world with a weapon that never should have been a weapon--the "bobble," a spherical force-field impenetrable by any force known to mankind. Encasing governmental installations and military bases in bobbles, the Authority becomes virtually omnipotent. But they've never caught Paul Hoehler, the maverick who invented the technology, and who has been working quietly for decades to develop a way to defeat the Authority.

With the help of an underground network of determined, independent scientists and a teenager who may be the apprentice genius he's needed for so long, he will shake the world, in the fast-paced hard-science thriller that garnered Vinge the first of his four Hugo nominations for best novel.

Nobody knows why there are only three hundred humans left alive on the Earth fifty million years from now. Opinion is fiercely divided on whether to settle in and plant the seed of mankind anew, or to continue using high-energy stasis fields, or "bobbles," in venturing into the future.

When somebody is murdered, it's obvious someone has a secret he or she is willing to kill to preserve.The murder intensifies the rift between the two factions, threatening the survival of the human race. It's up to 21st century detective Wil Brierson, the only cop left in the world, to find the culprit, a diabolical fiend whose lust for power could cause the utter extinction of man.

Filled with excitement and adventure, Vinge's tense SF puzzler will satisfy readers with its sense of wonder and engaging characters, one of whom is a murderer with a unique modus operandi.