Search Worlds Without End

Someday. Tomorrow. When Earth fails man and man leaves Earth behind, the awesomeness is waiting Out There. Empty beyond all imagining, vast beyond all reckoning, as deep as Time and twice as cold, The Dark between the stars. Here collected for the first time are the most incredible and terrifying voyages of the acclaimed master of SF adventure. Voyages to the center of a universe dark with terror. And Beyond. Collection of 9 stories: "The Sharing of Flesh," nominated, 1968 Nebula award; winner, 1969 Hugo award, best novelette; "Fortune Hunter;" "Eutopia;" "The Pugilist;" "Night Piece;" "The Voortrekkers;" "Gibralter Falls," a Time Patrol story; "Windmill," and "Call Me Joe," which was voted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword - essay
• The Sharing of Flesh - (1968) - novelette
• Fortune Hunter - (1972) - shortstory
• Eutopia - (1967) - novelette
• The Pugilist - (1973) - novelette
• Night Piece - (1961) - shortstory
• The Voortrekkers - (1974) - novelette
• Gibraltar Falls - (1975) - shortstory
• Windmill - (1973) - novelette
• Call Me Joe - (1957) - novelette

The world beyond tomorrow... the unopened future which lies at a point far distant from the early, fumbling attempts at space flight of our times.

It is the future of mankind among the stars -- but also a future of intrigue and treachery!

This is the story of a Galactic civilisation which has split against itself and on whose shambles a ruthless warlord of the stars has built a barbaric empire. Persistently striving to topple his autocratic power is the Mutant League, a band of mentally powerful supernormals who style themselves the "inheritors of wisdom and power".

Enter into this fantastic future in company with the man and the girl who dare to battle against the might of the New Empire -- and who hold a guarded, vital secret. Travel with them in their urgent, hunted and hounded flight across the far-flung void of interstellar space and among the myriad worlds of peril of the starways.

"I believe there is another man inside every man, a stranger..." writes Wilfred Leland James in the early pages of the riveting confession that makes up "1922," the first in this pitch-black quartet of mesmerizing tales from Stephen King. For James, that stranger is awakened when his wife, Arlette, proposes selling off the family homestead and moving to Omaha, setting in motion a gruesome train of murder and madness.

In "Big Driver," a cozy-mystery writer named Tess encounters the stranger along a back road in Massachusetts when she takes a shortcut home after a book-club engagement. Violated and left for dead, Tess plots a revenge that will bring her face-to-face with another stranger: the one inside herself.

"Fair Extension," the shortest of these tales, is perhaps the nastiest and certainly the funniest. Making a deal with the devil not only saves Dave Streeter from a fatal cancer but provides rich recompense for a lifetime of resentment.

When her husband of more than twenty years is away on one of his business trips, Darcy Anderson looks for batteries in the garage. Her toe knocks up against a box under a worktable and she discovers the stranger inside her husband. It's a horrifying discovery, rendered with bristling intensity, and it definitively ends a good marriage.

Like Different Seasons and Four Past Midnight, which generated such enduring films as The Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me, Full Dark, No Stars proves Stephen King a master of the long story form.

For 2,000 years, the starship Astron has search the galaxy for alien life - without success. Now, just as the ship is falling apart, the only direction left to explore is across the Dark, a 100-generation journey through empty space.The ship's captain - immortal, obessed - refuses to abandon the quest. He will cross the Dark, or destroy the ship trying.

Only Sparrow, a young crewman uncertain of his own past, can stand against the captain, and against the lure and challenge of the dark beyond the stars....

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1969) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Shark Ship - (1958) - novelette by C. M. Kornbluth (variant of Reap the Dark Tide)
• Polity and Custom of the Camiroi - (1967) - shortstory by R. A. Lafferty
• Coming-of-Age Day - (1965) - shortstory by A. K. Jorgensson
• Heresies of the Huge God - (1966) - shortstory by Brian W. Aldiss
• The Streets of Ashkelon - (1962) - shortstory by Harry Harrison
• The Totally Rich - (1963) - novelette by John Brunner
• Impostor - (1953) - shortstory by Philip K. Dick
• Road to Nightfall - (1958) - novelette by Robert Silverberg
• The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World - (1968) - novelette by Harlan Ellison
• Psychosmosis - (1966) - shortstory by David I. Masson
• The Cage of Sand - (1962) - novelette by J. G. Ballard
• A Deskful of Girls - (1958) - novelette by Fritz Leiber
• On the Wall of the Lodge - (1962) - novelette by James Blish and Virginia Kidd
• Masks - (1968) - shortstory by Damon Knight
• Keepers of the House - (1956) - shortstory by Lester del Rey
• Journey's End - (1957) - shortstory by Poul Anderson

Table of Contents:

• The Name of Our Field - [Asimov's Editorials] - (1978) - essay by Isaac Asimov
• The Name of Our Field - interior artwork by Frank Kelly Freas
• The Last Full Measure - (1978) - shortstory by George Alec Effinger
• The Last Full Measure - interior artwork by Vincent Di Fate
• The Voyage of the Bagel - [SF Puzzles] - (1978) - shortstory by Martin Gardner
• Pièce de Résistance - (1978) - shortstory by J. F. Bone [as by Jesse Bone ]
• Pièce de Résistance - (1978) - interior artwork by Freff
• Polly Plus - (1978) - shortstory by Randall Garrett
• Polly Plus - (1978) - interior artwork by Vincent Di Fate
• Wolf Tracks - (1978) - poem by Donald Gaither
• Wolf Tracks - (1978) - interior artwork by Roy G. Krenkel
• Guilt - (1978) - novelette by James E. Gunn
• Guilt - (1978) - interior artwork by Alex Schomburg
• A Choice of Weapons - (1978) - shortstory by Michael Tennenbaum
• A Choice of Weapons - (1978) - interior artwork by Alex Schomburg
• Star Train - (1978) - shortstory by Drew Mendelson
• Star Train - interior artwork by Rick Sternbach
• The Man Who Took the Fifth - (1978) - shortstory by Michael Schimmel
• The Man Who Took the Fifth - interior artwork by Phil Foglio [as by Philip Foglio ]
• Born Again - (1978) - shortstory by Sharon N. Farber
• Born Again - (1978) - interior artwork by Freff
• A Child of Penzance - (1978) - novelette by Tony Sarowitz
• A Child of Penzance - (1978) - interior artwork by Vincent Di Fate
• Lipidleggin' - [LaNague Federation] - (1978) - shortstory by F. Paul Wilson
• Lipidleggin' - (1978) - interior artwork by Freff
• Singularity - (1978) - novella by Mildred Downey Broxon
• Singularity (I) - interior artwork by Jack Gaughan
• Singularity (II) - interior artwork by Jack Gaughan

"Do-overs" are possible.

The crystalline network allows reality to be reset to past moments in time...

After a routine reset on her homeworld, Elle Hartmut instead awakens on a spaceship. Her body is different, she has new magical abilities, and she's told that the fate of known civilization is in her hands.

An alien Darkness is corrupting entire worlds.
Elle and a team of magically enhanced companions embark on an interstellar quest to seal the Master Archive--the only hope of restoring the infected planets.

Ancient relics may hold the key to salvation.
With only vague clues to guide them, Elle and her new friends must gather legendary artifacts to protect the Archive. But if they can't unravel the ancient secrets in time, their worlds and loved ones will be lost in shadow forever.

The real invasion is about to begin.

An alien fleet is coming. Elle and her friends are the Hegemony's best chance for fighting back, but they'll need to head straight into enemy territory in order to identify the Darkness' origin.

The Hegemony is out of time... and the war may already be lost before it even starts. The only chance for salvation is the mysterious shard of the Master Crystal, supposedly capable of initiating a universal-scale reset. Except, no one knows what a reset of that magnitude might entail, or if it's possible.

Despite the risks, no step is too extreme in the frantic fight for survival. Elle and her friends must stop the insidious alien menace before every world is consumed.

The final fight will change their perception forever.

Everything Elle Hartmut and her friends thought they knew about the alien menace--and the nature of their universe--is wrong.

With mounting evidence that the aliens behind the Darkness reside on a hyperdimensional plane above spacetime, Elle and the Dark Sentinels will need a new approach to win. However, preventing the impending alien invasion will test their team in ways they never imagined.

The ancient artifacts wielded by the Dark Sentinels may hold the key to victory. If they can understand and master their true abilities, they may still be able to save the Hegemony and their loved ones before the invasion's final stage consumes them all.

Twenty years after the elemental conflict that nearly tore apart the cosmos in The Saga of Seven Suns, a new threat emerges from the darkness. The human race must set aside its own inner conflicts to rebuild their alliance with the Ildiran Empire for the survival of the galaxy.

In Kevin J. Anderson's The Dark Between the Stars, galactic empires clash, elemental beings devastate whole planetary systems, and factions of humanity are pitted against each other. Heroes rise and enemies make their last stands in the climax of an epic tale seven years in the making.