Search Worlds Without End

What if you could not only travel any location in the world, but to any possible world?

We can all imagine such "other worlds"--be they worlds just slightly different than our own or worlds full of magic and wonder--but it is only in fiction that we can travel to them. From The Wizard of Oz to The Dark Tower, from Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass to C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, there is a rich tradition of this kind of fiction, but never before have the best parallel world stories and portal fantasies been collected in a single volume--until now.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword (Other Worlds Than These) - essay by Lev Grossman
• Introduction (Other Worlds Than These) - essay by John Joseph Adams
• Moon Six - (1997) - novelette by Stephen Baxter
• A Brief Guide to Other Histories - (2008) - shortstory by Paul J. McAuley
• Crystal Halloway and the Forgotten Passage - (2011) - shortstory by Seanan McGuire
• An Empty House With Many Doors - (2011) - shortstory by Michael Swanwick
• Twenty-Two Centimeters - (2004) - shortstory by Gregory Benford
• Ana's Tag - (2008) - shortstory by William Alexander
• Nothing Personal - (2007) - novella by Pat Cadigan
• The Rose Wall - (1981) - shortstory by Joyce Carol Oates
• The Thirteen Texts of Arthyria - (2010) - novelette by John R. Fultz
• Ruminations in an Alien Tongue - (2012) - shortstory by Vandana Singh
• Ten Sigmas - (2004) - shortstory by Paul Melko
• Magic for Beginners - (2005) - novella by Kelly Link
• [A Ghost Samba] - (2008) - shortstory by Ian McDonald
• The Cristóbal Effect - (2012) - shortstory by Simon McCaffery
• Beyond Porch and Portal - (2009) - novelette by E. Catherine Tobler
• Signal to Noise - (2006) - novelette by Alastair Reynolds
• Porridge on Islac - (2003) - shortstory by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Mrs. Todd's Shortcut - (1984) - novelette by Stephen King
• The Ontological Factor - (2011) - shortstory by David Barr Kirtley
• Dear Annabehls - [Dear Annabehls Universe] - (2009) - shortstory by Mercurio D. Rivera
• The Goat Variations - (2009) - shortstory by Jeff VanderMeer
• The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr - (1976) - shortstory by George R. R. Martin
• Of Swords and Horses - (2006) - shortstory by Carrie Vaughn
• Impossible Dreams - (2006) - shortstory by Tim Pratt
• Like Minds - (2003) - novelette by Robert Reed
• The City of Blind Delight - (2008) - shortstory by Catherynne M. Valente
• Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain - (2010) - shortstory by Yoon Ha Lee
• Angles - (2002) - novelette by Orson Scott Card
• The Magician and the Maid and Other Stories - (2010) - shortstory by Christie Yant
• Trips - (1974) - novelette by Robert Silverberg
• For Further Reading (Other Worlds Than These) - essay by Ross E. Lockhart

Note: The electronic version of this title contains over thirty additional, illuminating eBook-exclusive illustrations by the author.

At a time when speculative fiction seems less and less far-fetched, Margaret Atwood lends her distinctive voice and singular point of view to the genre in a series of essays that brilliantly illuminates the essential truths about the modern world. This is an exploration of her relationship with the literary form we have come to know as "science fiction,” a relationship that has been lifelong, stretching from her days as a child reader in the 1940s, through her time as a graduate student at Harvard, where she worked on the Victorian ancestor of the form, and continuing as a writer and reviewer.

This book brings together her three heretofore unpublished Ellmann Lectures from 2010: "Flying Rabbits," which begins with Atwood's early rabbit superhero creations, and goes on to speculate about masks, capes, weakling alter egos, and Things with Wings; "Burning Bushes," which follows her into Victorian otherlands and beyond; and "Dire Cartographies," which investigates Utopias and Dystopias. In Other Worlds also includes some of Atwood's key reviews and thoughts about the form. Among those writers discussed are Marge Piercy, Rider Haggard, Ursula Le Guin, Ishiguro, Bryher, Huxley, and Jonathan Swift. She elucidates the differences (as she sees them) between "science fiction" proper, and "speculative fiction," as well as between "sword and sorcery/fantasy" and "slipstream fiction." For all readers who have loved The Handmaid's Tale, Oryx and Crake, and The Year of the Flood, In Other Worlds is a must.

Thirteen Science Fiction Tales from a Master Storyteller

From fighting giant bugs to defeating an interstellar empire without firing a shot; from scientific idiot savants toying with the universe to how the robots will really win the robot apocalypse, these thirteen flavorful tales are guaranteed to entertain, amuse, awe, and maybe even enlighten.

Includes the first appearance in print of the Icerigger novellete "Chilling" and a new novelette, "Valentin Sharffen and the Code of Doom."

Table of Contents:

• ix - Introduction (The Flavors of Other Worlds) - (2018) - essay
• 1 - Unvasion - (2004) - short story
• 11 - The Man Who Knew Too Much - (2006) - short story
• 20 - Perception - [Humanx Commonwealth - 6] - (2006) - short story
• 33 - Chilling - [Humanx Commonwealth - 7] - (2006) - novelette
• 57 - Consigned - (2007) - short story
• 67 - Cold Fire - (2008) - short story
• 81 - Pardon Our Conquest - [Humanx Commonwealth] - (2009) - short story
• 92 - That Creeping Sensation - (2011) - short story
• 102 - Rural Singularity - (2013) - short story
• 112 - Seasoning - (2014) - short story
• 120 - Our Specialty Is Xenogeology - (2017) - short story
• 133 - Ten and Ten - (2018) - short story
• 142 - Valentin Sharffen and the Code of Doom - short story

Table of Contents:

• 1 - The Gods Themselves - (1972) - novel
• 171 - The C-Chute - (1951) - novelette
• 187 - The Dead Past - (1956) - novelette
• 229 - Hostess - (1951) - novelette
• 259 - "In a Good Cause--"? - (1951) - novelette
• 277 - The Key - [Wendell Urth] - (1966) - novelette
• 299 - Lest We Remember - (1982) - novelette
• 321 - The Martian Way - (1952) - novelette
• 355 - Nightfall - (1941) - novelette
• 379 - Profession - (1957) - novella
• 419 - Sucker Bait - (1954) - novella
• 467 - The Ugly Little Boy - (1958) - novelette (variant of Lastborn)
• 497 - Youth - (1952) - novelette
• 519 - The End of Eternity - (1955) - novel

An engaging tour through the work and life of one of America's great science fiction writers

Nebula and Hugo Award-winning author Joe Haldeman burst onto the literary scene with the hugely popular novel The Forever War, but his career also took off on the strength of his short fiction. This brilliant collection brings together examples of his science fiction as well as his writing on Vietnam--and reveals the inexorable connections between the two.

The works included in Vietnam and Other Alien Worlds are united by its title essay, in which Haldeman explains how his past informs his envisioned futures. One of these futures is a grouping of four stories from the Confederación universe, which includes his novels All My Sins Remembered and There Is No Darkness. An anthropological expedition goes awry as a research team's subjects become murderous, and trade negotiations fall apart, comically lost in translation. The collection closes with one of Haldeman's most affective works about Vietnam--the moving narrative poem "DX."

Vietnam and Other Alien Worlds proves to be an anthology as versatile and multifaceted as the author who wrote it.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay
• Passages - (1990) - novelette
• A !Tangled Web - (1981) - novelette
• Seasons - (1985) - novella
• The Mazel Tov Revolution - (1974) - shortstory
• Vietnam and Other Alien Worlds - (1992) - essay
• Not Being There - essay
• Confessions of a Space Junkie - (1992) - essay
• War Stories - essay
• Photographs and Memories - essay
• Saul's Death - (1983) - poem
• Homecoming - (1990) - poem
• Time Lapse - (1989) - poem
• DX - (1987) - poem

Table of Contents:

• 9 - Introduction (Other Times, Other Worlds) - essay by Martin H. Greenberg
• 15 - The Mechanical Answer
• 35 - Dance of a New World
• 51 - Ring Around the Redhead
• 75 - A Child Is Crying
• 91 - Flaw
• 101 - But Not to Dream
• 113 - The Miniature
• 127 - Spectator Sport
• 135 - Half-Past Eternity
• 193 - The Big Contest
• 203 - Susceptibility
• 215 - Common Denominator
• 227 - Game for Blondes
• 239 - Labor Supply
• 249 - The Legend of Joe Lee
• 263 - The Annex
• 279 - Afterword (Other Times, Other Worlds) - essay by John D. MacDonald
• 283 - Bibliography (Other Times, Other Worlds) - essay by June Moffatt and Len Moffatt

Contents:

• ix - Introduction (Rod Serling's Other Worlds) - essay by Richard Matheson
• 1 - Robert A. Heinlein - essay by Jack C. Haldeman, II
• 3 - They - (1941) - shortstory by Robert A. Heinlein
• 21 - Ben Bova - essay by Jack C. Haldeman, II
• 23 - Fifteen Miles - [Kinsman] - (1967) - shortstory by Ben Bova
• 37 - Gordon R. Dickaon - essay by Jack C. Haldeman, II
• 39 - Dolphin's Way - (1964) - shortstory by Gordon R. Dickson
• 61 - Carl Jacobi - essay by Jack C. Haldeman, II
• 63 - The Royal Opera House - (1972) - shortstory by Carl Jacobi
• 75 - Theodore Sturgeon - essay by Jack C. Haldeman, II
• 77 - Special Aptitude - (1951) - shortstory by Theodore Sturgeon
• 97 - William F. Nolan - essay by Jack C. Haldeman, II
• 99 - The Underdweller - (1957) - shortstory by William F. Nolan (variant of Small World)
• 113 - Isaac Asimov - essay by Jack C. Haldeman, II
• 115 - I'm in Marsport Without Hilda - (1957) - shortstory by Isaac Asimov
• 131 - Dennis Etchison - essay by Jack C. Haldeman, II
• 133 - A Nice, Shady Place - (1963) - shortstory by Dennis Etchison
• 149 - Clifford D. Simak - essay by Jack C. Haldeman, II
• 151 - Construction Shack - (1973) - shortstory by Clifford D. Simak
• 167 - Ray Bradbury - essay by Jack C. Haldeman, II
• 169 - A Little Journey - (1951) - shortstory by Ray Bradbury
• 179 - Gardner R. Dozois - essay by Jack C. Haldeman, II
• 181 - The Visible Man - (1975) - novelette by Gardner Dozois
• 215 - Thomas F. Monteleone - essay by Jack C. Haldeman, II
• 217 - Mister Magister - shortstory by Thomas F. Monteleone
• 223 - Joe Haldeman & Robert Thurston - essay by Jack C. Haldeman, II
• 225 - What Johnny Did on His Summer Vacation - shortstory by Joe Haldeman and Robert Thurston
• 237 - Fritz Leiber - essay by Jack C. Haldeman, II
• 239 - Little Old Miss Macbeth - (1958) - shortstory by Fritz Leiber

This novelette originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, July-August 2017, and was reprinted in Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 102, November 2018.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed Magazine.

Learning from Other Worlds provides both a portrait of the development of science fiction criticism as an intellectual field and a definitive look at the state of science fiction studies today. Its title refers to the essence of "cognitive estrangement" in relation to science fiction and utopian fiction--the assertion that by imagining strange worlds we learn to see our own world in a new perspective. Acknowledging an indebtedness to the groundbreaking work of Darko Suvin and his belief that the double movement of estrangement and cognition reflects deep structures of human storytelling, the contributors assert that learning-from-otherness is as natural and inevitable a process as the instinct for imitation and representation that Aristotle described in his Poetics.

In exploring the relationship between imaginative invention and that of allegory or fable, the essays in Learning from Other Worlds comment on the field's most abiding concerns and employ a variety of critical approaches--from intellectual history and genre studies to biographical criticism, feminist cultural studies, and political textual analysis. Among the topics discussed are the works of John Wyndham, Kim Stanley Robinson, Stanislau Lem, H.G. Wells, and Ursula Le Guin, as well as the media's reactions to the 1997 cloning of Dolly the Sheep. Darko Suvin's characteristically outspoken and penetrating afterword responds to the essays in the volume and offers intimations of a further stage in his long and distinguished career.

This useful compendium and companion offers a coherent view of science fiction studies as it has evolved while paying tribute to the debt it owes Suvin, one of its first champions. As such, it will appeal to critics and students of science fiction, utopia, and fantasy writing.

Contents:

• 1 - Introduction (Learning from Other Worlds) - (1999) - essay by Patrick Parrinder
• 19 - Before the Novum: The Prehistory of Science Fiction Criticism - (1999) - essay by Edward James
• 36 - Revisiting Suvin's Poetics of Science Fiction - (1999) - essay by Patrick Parrinder
• 51 - 'Look into the Dark': On Dystopia and the Novum - (1999) - essay by Tom Moylan
• 72 - Science Fiction and Utopia: A Historico-Philosophical Overview - (1999) - essay by Carl Freedman
• 98 - Society after the Revolution: The Blueprints for the Forthcoming Socialist Society published by the Leaders of the Second International - (1999) - essay by Marc Angenot
• 119 - From the Images of Science to Science Fiction - (1999) - essay by Gérard Klein
• 127 - Estranged Invaders: The War of the Worlds - (1999) - essay by Peter Fitting
• 146 - 'A part of the... family [?]': John Wyndham's The Midwich Cuckoos as Estranged Autobiography - (1999) - essay by David Ketterer
• 178 - Labyrinth, Double and Mask in the Science Fiction of Stanislaw Lem - (1999) - essay by Rafail Nudelman
• 193 - 'We're at the Start of a New Ball Game and That's Why We're All Real Nervous': Or, Cloning - Technological Cognition Reflects Estrangement from Women - (1999) - essay by Marleen S. Barr
• 208 - 'If I find one good city I will spare the man': Realism and Utopia in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy - (1999) - essay by Fredric Jameson
• 233 - Afterword: With Sober, Estranged Eyes - (1999) - essay by Darko Suvin
• 272 - Checklist of Printed Items that Concern Science Fiction (with Utopian Fiction or Utopianism, and a few Bordering Items) - (1999) - essay by Darko Suvin

Contains:

Nebula- and World Fantasy Award-nominated Novella "A Dozen Tough Jobs"
Hugo-, Asimov's-, and Locus-nominated Novelette "Fin de Cyclé"
Sidewise- and Locus-nominated Novella "You Could Go Home Again"

Other Worlds, Better Lives features longer stories written Howard Waldrop between 1989 and 2003 and displays his mastery of the novella form.

Among the stories here is "You Could Go Home Again", in which Thomas Wolfe, having survived the brain disease that killed him in our world, returns from the 1940 Tokyo Olympics, aboard an airship where fellow voyager Fats Waller provides musical interludes, to a U.S. governed by technocrats.

"Fin de Cyclé" is the story of how a movie made by Georges Méliès, assisted by Alfred Jarry, Marcel Proust, and Pablo Picasso, rouses the French public to demand justice in the case of Captain Alfred Dreyfus and helps to free him from Devil s Island.

Various young characters from late 1950s and early 1960s TV programs and science fiction movies confront the Cuban missile crisis in "The Other Real World", while Richard Wagner abandons his operatic ambitions to become one of the forefathers of the Peoples Federated States of Europe in "A Better World's in Birth!"

"Flatfeet!" combines reflections on Osvald Spengler's classic The Decline of the West and American artist Thomas Cole's series of paintings entitled "The Course of Empire" with a number of historical parallels and Keystone Kops-style antics in what the author calls in his afterword "one of the most jam-packed stories I ever wrote".

In "Major Spacer in the 21st Century!" Waldrop manages to cover the history of much of twentieth century communications technology in realistic detail.

The longest story in the collection is "A Dozen Tough Jobs"; here, Waldrop takes the mythological figure of Hercules and sets him down in early twentieth-century Mississippi along with an African-American sidekick appropriately named I.O. Lace. Readers unfamiliar with Greek mythology can read this novella straight as a tale of race relations, rural poverty, and class distinctions centered on the convict Houlka Lee; those who know the old myths will delight in the meticulously worked-out parallels between Waldrop's story and the fabled Twelve Labours of Hercules.

- Pamela Sargent, SciFi Weekly

Table of Contents:

• Size Matters - essay
• A Dozen Tough Jobs - (1989) - novella
• Afterword (A Dozen Tough Jobs) - essay
• Fin de Cyclé - (1990) - novelette
• Afterword (Fin de Cyclé) - essay
• You Could Go Home Again - (1993) - novella
• Afterword (You Could Go Home Again) - essay
• Flatfeet! - (1996) - shortstory
• Afterword (Flatfeet!) - essay
• Major Spacer in the 21st Century! - (2001) - novelette
• Afterword (Major Spacer in the 21st Century!) - essay
• The Other Real World - (2001) - novelette
• Afterword (The Other Real World) - essay
• A Better World's in Birth! - (2003) - novelette
• Afterword (A Better World's in Birth!) - essay

What did our ancestors dream of when they gazed up at the stars and looked beyond the present? Wildly imaginative but grounded in reasoned scientific speculation, A Journey in Other Worlds races far ahead of the nineteenth century to imagine what life would be like in the year 2000. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Earth is effectively a corporate technocracy, with big businesses using incredible advances in science to improve life on the planet as a whole. Seeking other planets habitable for the growing human population, the spaceship Callisto, powered by an antigravitational force known as apergy, embarks on a momentous tour of the solar system. Jupiter proves to be a wilderness paradise, full of threatening beasts and landscapes of inspired beauty, where the explorers must fight for their lives. Dangers less tangible but equally deadly await the Callisto crew on Saturn, which yields profound secrets about their fate and the ultimate destiny of mankind.

Thoughtful, adventurous, and replete with a dazzling array of futuristic devices, A Journey in Other Worlds is a classic, unforgettable story of utopias and humankind's restless exploration of the stars.

Table of Contents:

• 9 - Introduction (Other Worlds 1) - essay by Roy Torgeson
• 18 - Fire from the Wine-Dark Sea - short story by S. P. Somtow [as by Somtow Sucharitkul]
• 40 - The Birdchaser - short story by James E. Thompson
• 46 - The Pavilion Where All Times Meet - novelette by Jayge Carr
• 69 - The Bully and the Beast - novella by Orson Scott Card
• 142 - Hideout - novelette by Steve Rasnic Tem
• 153 - The Last Performance of Kobo Daishi - novelette by Alan Ryan
• 178 - Miss Notworthy and the Aliens - short story by Sharon Webb
• 187 - Water Kwatz, or More Bible Suckers - short story by Ronald Anthony Cross
• 207 - The Dragon That Lived in the Sea - short story by Elizabeth A. Lynn
• 215 - The Painters Are Coming Today - short story by Steve Rasnic Tem
• 221 - Perfect Balance - short story by Steve Perry
• 235 - The Character Assassin - short story by Paul Cook [as by Paul H. Cook]
• 250 - How Harald Came Home (excerpt from "The Last Viking") - [The Last Viking] - short fiction by Poul Anderson
• 265 - Of Kings in Miklagardh (excerpt from "The Last Viking") - [The Last Viking] - short fiction by Poul Anderson

Visit ten imaginary worlds created by modern masers of fantasy.

Table of Contents:

• 7 - Introduction (Other Worlds 2) - essay by Roy Torgeson
• 13 - The Man Who Lived in Kaleidoscope Glass - novelette by James Tucker
• 38 - The Places of Aache - [Dilvish] - short story by Roger Zelazny
• 51 - Since Tommy Came - short story by Spencer Chilton Manrodt
• 54 - One Night of the Year - [Cyrion] - novelette by Tanith Lee
• 89 - A Frenzied Beat of Wings - short story by C. Bruce Hunter
• 99 - The Sparrow and the Wizard - short story by J. P. Boyd [as by John P. Boyd]
• 109 - A World Beyond Our Dreams - short story by Bill Pronzini
• 115 - A Form That Fetters - short story by Keith Allen Daniels
• 128 - Don't Look Back - short story by Pat Murphy
• 144 - There Beneath the Silky-Trees and Whelmed in Deeper Gulphs Than Me - [Jack Limekiller] - novella by Avram Davidson
• 246 - Of Thora Thorbergsdottir (Excerpt from "The Last Viking") - [The Last Viking] - short fiction by Poul Anderson
• 265 - How They Fought at the River Niss (Excerpt from "The Last Viking") - [The Last Viking] - short fiction by Poul Anderson

One star-chained evening in a Manhattan bathroom, Carl Schirmer spontaneously combusts! His body transforms into light, mysteriously snatched from his banal life by an alien intelligence 130 billion years in the future. There, all spacetime is collapsing into a cosmic black hole, the Big Crunch -- and a bold, cosmic destiny awaits Carl. Rebuilt from the remnants of his light by extraterrestrials for a cryptic purpose, he awakens in time's last world, the strangest of all -- the Werld.

At the edge of infinity, Carl discovers the Foke, nomadic humans who travel among the floating islands of the Werld. The Foke teach him how to live -- and love -- at the end of time, and he loses his heart to his plucky guide, the beautiful Evoë. Their life together in this blissful kingdom that knows no aging or disease brings them to rapture -- until Evoë falls prey to the zotl, a spidery intelligence who hunt the Foke and eat the chemical by-products of their pain. In order to save his beloved from a gruesome death, Carl must return to Earth -- 130 billion years earlier -- where he is shocked to discover that the Earth he's come back to is not the one he left.

Can he meet the harsh demands of his task before the zotl find him and begin ravishing the Earth?

It's 1960, and the Axis powers dominate the world. Life goes on, because, as we see in "Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction," history is driven both by big events and by small temptations...

Following the appearance of her first two novels, The King's Peace and The King's Name, Jo Walton won the 2002 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Two years later she won the World Fantasy Award for Tooth and Claw. Her Small Change trilogy, comprising Farthing, Ha'penny, and Half A Crown, is set in a world in which Britain struck an early truce with Hitler in 1941; "Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction" is set in the America of that world.

This story is included in the collection Starlings (2018).

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.