Search Worlds Without End

Ten funky science fiction stories by the widely acclaimed author of The Steampunk Trilogy and Ribofunk. Here is cutting-edge science fiction by a writer called one of the funniest, most original, and most offbeat today. The book includes "alternate world" stories with a light, whimsical touch, in the vein of Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Table of Contents:

• Master Blaster and Whammer Jammer Meet the Groove Thang - (1990)
• Fractal Paisleys - (1992)
• Do You Believe in Magic? - (1989)
• Lennon Spex - (1992)
• Mama Told Me Not to Come - (1993)
• The Double Felix - (1994)
• Earth Shoes - (1997)
• Flying the Flannel - (1996)
• Queen of the Pixies, King of the Imps - (1997)
• The Cobain Sweater - (1997)

The story begins when David Albaugh is awakened by a phone call from his best friend, who's been dead for nine years, telling him they're late for a science-fiction convention panel.

David's alternate realities only start there.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology 2113: Stories Inspired by the Music of Rush (2016), edited by John McFetridge and Kevin J. Anderson. It can also be found in the anthology The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017, edtied by Charles Yu and John Joseph Adams.

Read or listen to the full story for free at Escape Pod.

AD 2118. Humanity has colonised the Moon, Mars, Ceres and Europa. Captain Ellisa Shann commands Khidr, a search and rescue ship with a crew of twenty-five, tasked to assist the vast commercial freighters that supply the different solar system colonies.

Shann has no legs and has taken to life in zero-g partly as a result. She is a talented tactician who has a tendency to take too much on her own shoulders. Now, while on a regular six-month patrol through the solar system, Khidr picks up a distress call from the freighter Hercules...

AD 2118. Humanity has colonised the Moon, Mars, Ceres and Europa. The partnership of corporations and governments has energized the space programme for one hundred years.

That partnership is shattered when a terrorist attack destroys the world's biggest solar array in Atacama, Chile, altering the global economic balance.

On Mars, at Phobos Station, Doctor Emerson Drake arrives, responding to an emergency call to assist a shuttle of wounded miners, but when those miners turn out to be insurgents, Drake realises he is trapped and fighting to survive.

In deep space, Captain Ellisa Shann has passed her limits. Now, the last survivors of the Khidr have to choose whether to try to get home on the captured ship, Gallowglass, or stay to observe the strange gravity anomaly that swallowed up the remains of their vessel.

On Earth, in an undisclosed location, Natalie Holder finally has an opportunity to break free from her confinement, where she has been experimented on, multiple times. Her consciousness is transmitted to Phobos Station, just as insurgents take over the facility.

Holder and Drake form an alliance but are separated. Drake is captured and taken to the insurgent leader -- Rocher -- a clone of the stowaway who caused the munity on Captain Shann's Khidr.

In the aftermath of Phobos Station's destruction, sinister forces fight to control humanity's fragile first steps in colonizing other worlds. There are competing agendas at work. Some seek to overthrow the Corporations and Governments, others just want to see everything burn.

In the midst of it all, Captain Ellisa Shann and her crew are fighting to survive and to unlock the secrets of a mysterious and ancient alien ship.

Kira Navárez dreamed of life on new worlds.

Now she's awakened a nightmare.

During a routine survey mission on an uncolonized planet, Kira finds an alien relic. At first she's delighted, but elation turns to terror when the ancient dust around her begins to move.

As war erupts among the stars, Kira is launched into a galaxy-spanning odyssey of discovery and transformation. First contact isn't at all what she imagined, and events push her to the very limits of what it means to be human.

While Kira faces her own horrors, Earth and its colonies stand upon the brink of annihilation. Now, Kira might be humanity's greatest and final hope...

July 25th, 2234: The crew of the Adamura discovers the anomaly.

On the seemingly uninhabited planet Talos VII: a circular pit, 50 kilometers wide.

Its curve not of nature, but design.

Now, a small team must land and journey on foot across the surface to learn who built the hole and why.

But they all carry the burdens of lives carved out on disparate colonies in the cruel cold of space.

For some the mission is the dream of the lifetime, for others a risk not worth taking, and for one it is a desperate attempt to find meaning in an uncaring universe.

Each step they take toward the mysterious abyss is more punishing than the last.

And the ghosts of their past follow.

Saved from death at the hands of the Emperor Ddwng, would-be lovers Colene and Darius and their companions - Provos, a woman who remembers only the future, and Sequiro, a telepathic horse - stumble into yet another dangerous reality where despots rule with a cruel and heavy hand. Held captive, the friends must combine their unusual talents in a daring escape that leads them on adventure after adventure with the most intriguing characters - some threatening, some friendly - ever to grace the page. Among them, Angus, the adorable flying giant; Nona, the lovely and magical "ninth of the ninth;" Slick, the gangster with a death sentence; and the megaplayers, mysterious musicians of old whose giant instruments still dot the landscape.

"The good thing is, no one will ever die again. The bad thing is, everyone will want to."

A physicist receives a mysterious paper. The ideas in it are far, far ahead of current thinking and quite, quite terrifying. In a city of "fast ones," shadow players, and jinni, two sisters contemplate a revolution. And on the edges of reality a thief, helped by a sardonic ship, is trying to break into a Schrödinger box for his patron. In the box is his freedom. Or not.

Jean de Flambeur is back. And he's running out of time.

In Hannu Rajaniemi's sparkling follow-up to the critically acclaimed international sensation The Quantum Thief, he returns to his awe-inspiring vision of the universe...and we discover what the future held for Earth.