Search Worlds Without End

Here is the whisper in the night, the dog whose loyalty outlasted death, the creak upstairs, that half-remembered ghost story that won't let you sleep, the sound that raises gooseflesh, the wish you'd checked the lock on the door before dark fell. Here are tales of suspense and the supernatural that will chill, amuse, and exhilarate. Features a new introduction by the late author's daughter, Lizza Aiken.

Best known for The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Joan Aiken (1924-2004) wrote over a hundred books and won the Guardian and Edgar Allan Poe awards. After her first husband's death, she supported her family by copyediting at Argosy magazine and an advertising agency before turning to fiction. She went on to write for Vogue, Good Housekeeping, Vanity Fair, Argosy, Women's Own, and many others. Visit her online at joanaiken.com.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction by Kelly Link
• "The Power of Storytelling: Joan Aiken's Strange Stories" by Lizza Aiken
• Cold Flame
• The Dark Streets of Kimball's Green
• Furry Night
• Hope
• Humblepuppy
• The Lame King
• The Last Specimen
• A Leg Full of Rubies
• Listening
• Lob's Girl
• The Man Who Had Seen the Rope Trick
• The Mysterious Barricades
• Old Fillikin
• The People in the Castle
• A Portable Elephant
• A Room Full of Leaves
• She Was Afraid of Upstairs
• Some Music for the Wicked Countess
• Sonata for Harp and Bicycle
• Watkyn, Comma

Eddie is a wounded war veteran, an old man who has lived, in his mind, an uninspired life. His job is fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, a tragic accident kills him as he tries to save a little girl from a falling cart. He awakes in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a destination. It's a place where your life is explained to you by five people, some of whom you knew, others who may have been strangers.

One by one, from childhood to soldier to old age, Eddie's five people revisit their connections to him on earth, illuminating the mysteries of his "meaningless" life, and revealing the haunting secret behind the eternal question: "Why was I here?"

Lixia and the members of her human crew are determined not to disturb the life on the planet circling the Star Sigma Draconis which they have begun exploring. But the factions on the mother ship hovering above the planet may create an unintended chaos for both the life on the planet and the humans exploring it. As the anger increases on the ship, the ground crew becomes more and more affected by the conflict and begins to rely on their instincts to keep the project moving forward. Unexpected danger plagues the mission as Lixia is determined to expand her knowledge.

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novelette.

In "The People of Sand and Slag" Paolo Bacigalupi weaves a tale about the lives of three technologically modified guards, their barren, heavily mined landscape, and a chance encounter with a creature rare for their time period -- a dog. What starts off as a hunt for an enemy ends up as a story of empathy, and what it means to be human.

The story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, February 2004. It has been antologized in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Second Annual Collection (2005), edited by Gardner Dozois, Science Fiction: The Best of 2004, edited by Karen Haber and Jonathan Strahan, and Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse, edited by John Joseph Adams. It is also included in the collection Pump Six and Other Stories (2008).

Read the full story for free at the author's website, or listen to a podcast of this story at Drabblecast.

When a French expedition in Antarctica reveals ruins of a 900,000 year old civilization, scientists from all over the world flock to the site to help explore and understand. The entire planet watches via global satellite tv, mesmerized, as they uncover a chamber in which a man and a woman have been in suspended animation since, as the French title suggests, 'the night of time'. The woman, Eléa, is awakened. Thru a translating machine she tells the story of her world, herself and her husband Paikan and how war destroyed her civilization. She also hints at an incredibly advanced knowledge her still-dormant companion possesses, knowledge that could give energy and food to all humans at no cost. But the superpowers of the world are not ready to let Eléa's secrets spread, and show that, 900,000 years and an apocalypse later, humankind has not grown up and is ready to make the same mistakes again.

The author's second novel begins amid the snowy streets of Stockholm in 1973, when two weary American draft dodgers give shelter to an infant they find sleeping inside a telephone booth. It ends more than a half-century later with the dismantling of an outpost on a forlorn island off the coast of Antarctica, a structure built to confine the man the child has become.

The lani are discovered on a distant planet in the far future; they look human, save that they have tails. A lani with her tail removed is indistinguishable from human. The law says, however, that the key is interfertility; anything that humans can breed with is human, and anything they can't breed with is just an animal. The lani, therefore, are animals, and the story follows the adventures of the young veterinarian hired to tend a lani herd as he gradually discovers the history and true nature of the species.

This short story originally appeared in Unstuck 3 (2014), and was reprinted in Lightspteed, October 2015.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

War hero, jet-setter, gourmet - Godwin Harpinshield was all of those and more; his life was a game played among the Beautiful People whose fame, wealth and power set them above the law, and beyond the laws of nature. Because of a simple bargain that all the Beautiful People made, Godwin's every desire was his for the asking. Seduced by luxury, Godwin never doubted his fortune, never wondered about his mysterious patrons.

Then the game turned ugly.

Suddenly, the ante was raised and the game was real. The stakes were his future, his sanity and, possibly, his very soul. All Godwin Harpinshield had to discover was: What were the rules of the game? And who - or what - were the other players?

Deep in the English countryside, Kenneth Storey and his older brother have discovered the land of Arboria - a kingdom of adventure waiting for them through a gate in the garden wall.

As the world outside plunges deeper into global conflict, the Arborians wage their own war against the Barbarians - an ancient foe seemingly as old as the forest itself. But for Kenneth, Arboria is more than a world of make-believe and the Barbarians more than a figment of his imagination. For Kenneth, Arboria is more important than the real world... and perhaps, in some ways, he may be right.

The back-streets of Pakistan are no place for an Australian girl to be roving unaccompanied, let alone when she is wanted by both mafia and monsters alike. Desperate and afraid, Jasmine entrusts her survival to a community of creatures - the mysterious chuwa - whose intentions might be less than honourable. Marked by monsters, hunted through the labyrinth lanes of Lahore's Old City, Jasmine must face the ultimate sacrifice if she is to make it out alive.

In a far-flung future, planoforming ships knit together a galaxy ruled from Earth by the ruthless benevolence of the mysterious Lords of the Instrumentality, who presided over a utopia without death, danger--or freedom. The Underpeople, humanlike beings created from animals to do the work of utopia, had no rights, and could be disposed of at the whim of a human. But they had become more humanlike than their creators, and their leader, the cat woman C'Mell, had a plan for gaining their freedom--which made her much too dangerous a person to be permitted to live.

Elsewhere in the galaxy, the planet Norstrilia had power of its own, for it was the only source of stroon, the drug which arrested aging and made humans immortal. Its inhabitants were wealthy beyond comprehension, and one of them, a boy named Rod McBan, with the help of his computer, had manipulated the galactic economy until he completely owned the planet Earth--which made him much too dangerous a person to be permitted to live. But when Rod came to Earth and joined forces with C'Mell and the Underpeople, the petrified utopia of the Instrumentality began to crack and fall apart as freedom was reborn in the galaxy....

Table of Contents:

• vii - Introduction (We the Underpeople) - (2002) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• 1 - The Dead Lady of Clown Town - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1964) - novella
• 81 - Under Old Earth - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1966) - novelette
• 125 - Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1961) - novelette
• 149 - Alpha Ralpha Boulevard - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1961) - novelette
• 179 - The Ballad of Lost C'mell - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1962) - novelette
• 201 - Norstrilia - [Rod McBan] - (1975) - novel

A sweeping saga of the centuries to come, from the new dark age that followed a global war, to the new civilization that arose from the ashes to colonize the stars. At first, the colonists use ships with gigantic sails, cruising on the waves of starlight, their captains having to become something part human and part machine; then later moving by planoforming ships which travel faster than light, but must defend themselves against the malevolent, mind-devouring creatures lurking in the dark between the stars.

Then came the reign of the all-powerful Lords of the Instrumentality, who ruled Earth and its colony worlds with ruthless benevolence, suffocating the human spirit for millennia--until the time of the Rediscovery of Man, when the strange, lost concept of freedom was reborn....

An extraordinary vision of a future unique in science fiction, praised by readers, critics, and major writers in the field.

Table of Contents:

• A Planet Named Shayol - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1961) - novelette
• Angerhelm - (1959) - short story
• Down to a Sunless Sea - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1975) - novelette by Genevieve Linebarger and Cordwainer Smith [as]
• Drunkboat - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1963) - novelette
• From Gustible's Planet - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1962) - short story
• Golden the Ship Was--Oh! Oh! Oh! - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1959) - short story by Genevieve Linebarger and Cordwainer Smith (variant of Golden the Ship Was -- Oh! Oh! Oh!) [as]
• Himself in Anachron - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1993) - short story by Genevieve Linebarger and Cordwainer Smith
• Mark Elf - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1957) - short story
• Nancy - (1959) - short story
• No, No, Not Rogov! - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1959) - short story
• On the Gem Planet - [Casher O'Neill] - (1963) - novelette
• On the Sand Planet - [Casher O'Neill] - (1965) - novelette
• On the Storm Planet - [Casher O'Neill] - (1965) - novella
• Scanners Live in Vain - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1950) - novelette
• The Burning of the Brain - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1958) - short story
• The Colonel Came Back from the Nothing-at-All - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1979) - short story
• The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1964) - short story
• The Fife of Bodidharma - (1959) - short story
• The Game of Rat and Dragon - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1955) - short story
• The Good Friends - (1963) - short story
• The Lady Who Sailed the Soul - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1960) - novelette by Genevieve Linebarger and Cordwainer Smith [as]
• The Queen of the Afternoon - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1978) - novelette
• Think Blue, Count Two - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1963) - novelette
• Three to a Given Star - [Casher O'Neill] - (1965) - novelette
• Introduction (When the People Fell) - (2007) - essay by Frederik Pohl
• War No. 81-Q - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1928) - short story
• War No. 81-Q (rewritten version) - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1993) - short story
• Western Science Is So Wonderful - (1958) - short story
• When the People Fell - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1959) - short story

It's the middle of the twenty-first century, and the next Ice Age has suddenly sent global warming into reverse. Saul is one of the Ice People, the threatened peoples of the northern hemisphere, who, watching their world freeze over, try to move south towards the equator...

"The Tomorrow People," was penned by well known author, Judith Merril, who spins a chilling sci-fi tale. Something on Mars was killing people! An ill-fated expedition to the Red Planet vanished without so much as a trace. On another expedition, only one man came back alive. That man was Johnny Wendt, and he was the only man to ever set foot on Mars and return to tell about it. His knowledge could prove to be decisive in the desperate East-West race for outer space superiority. Unfortunately, Johnny Wendt didn't know just exactly what it was that made Mars a death trap...and he didn't know that he'd brought it back with him!

"... The stuff that this man place in my hand just now is ice, which we could make only under process. If it is true that is is heaped about the poles, it can mean but one thing--that you and I are very, very old. OLD!"

As the strange man spoke these words to his beautiful companion, Professor Mason listened with interest, and amazement. The professor's entire life has been spent in tearing down dreams and theories, and forcing all things to the level of solid mathematics. But the sudden appearance of this magnificent couple in his study in Hazeltin Observatory was uncanny. Unearthly as they seemed there has to be a logical answer to the riddle of their arrival.

Professor Mason learns that the man is Alvas the Sansar, and that his people lived on the earth in the days when the polar wastes were a paradise. Alvas tells the Professor of the appearance of the Blood Red Cometl of the ethereal world hidden in the comet, of the girl of the stars and the great astronomer, Zin of Zar; and of the incredibly journey into another universe.

PEOPLE OF THE COMET is science fiction--with the sparkle of fantasy shining through the web of adventure, mystery and science.

Table of Contents:

• ix - Introduction (The Far-Out People) - essay by Robert Hoskins
• 11 - The Destiny of Milton Gomrath - short story by Alexei Panshin
• 14 - North Wind - short story by Chad Oliver
• 36 - The Price of Simeryl - novelette by Kris Neville
• 77 - Cop-Out - short story by Barry N. Malzberg
• 86 - Papa's Planet - short story by William F. Nolan
• 90 - Angel, Dark Angel - short story by Roger Zelazny
• 102 - The Problem Makers - novelette by Robert Hoskins
• 142 - Savior Sole - short story by Michael Fayette
• 151 - The Sellers of the Dream - novelette by John Jakes
• 188 - Exile to Hell - short story by Isaac Asimov

This is not your cookie-cutter horror collection. Stephen Graham Jones has taken nightmarish visions from his fevered imagination and crafted them into pieces of literary genius. If the absolute fear doesn't sweep you away, his lyrical and haunting prose will. As Joe R. Lansdale states in the introduction, "You need this book. If you like anything close to horror, and also like your stories to have elements other than just standing in the darkness with a bloody knife, you have the right book. Enjoy."

Does holding your breath for two minutes during the scariest part of a horror movie invite the terror in? Just ask the kids who go to the local theater in "Thirteen." In "Doc's Story," even the most beloved family tales have teeth - that's what happens when you're born into a werewolf pack. And a father doesn't have to think twice when he's given one chance to make the ultimate sacrifice in "Snow Monsters."

In these fifteen stories, Jones coaxes our greatest fears from the shadowy corners of our minds, and we can't turn away.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (After the People Lights Have Gone Off) - essay by Joe R. Lansdale
• Thirteen - (2013) - short story
• Brushdogs - (2014) - short story
• Welcome to the Reptile House - (2012) - short story
• This Is Love - (2012) - short story
• The Spindly Man - (2014) - short story
• The Black Sleeve of Destiny - (2011) - short story
• The Spider Box - short story
• Snow Monsters - short story
• Doc's Story - short story
• The Dead Are Not - (2014) - short story
• Xebico - short story
• Second Chances - short story
• After the People Lights Have Gone Off - novella
• Uncle - (2012) - short story
• Solve for X - short story
• Story Notes (After the People Lights Have Gone Off) - essay

In an alternate 2020 timeline, Al Gore won the 2000 election and declared a War on Climate Change rather than a War on Terror. For twenty years, Democrats have controlled all three branches of government, enacting carbon-cutting schemes that never made it to a vote in our world. Green infrastructure projects have transformed U.S. cities into lush paradises (for the wealthy, white neighborhoods, at least), and the Bureau of Carbon Regulation levies carbon taxes on every financial transaction.

English teacher by day, Maddie Ryan spends her nights and weekends as the rhythm guitarist of Bunny Bloodlust, a queer punk band living in a warehouse-turned-venue called "The Lab" in Houston's Eighth Ward. When Maddie learns that the Eighth Ward is to be sacrificed for a new electromagnetic hyperway out to the wealthy, white suburbs, she joins "Save the Eighth," a Black-led organizing movement fighting for the neighborhood. At first, she's only focused on keeping her band together and getting closer to Red, their reckless and enigmatic lead guitarist. But working with Save the Eighth forces Maddie to reckon with the harm she has already done to the neighborhood--both as a resident of the gentrifying Lab and as a white teacher in a predominantly Black school.

When police respond to Save the Eighth protests with violence, the Lab becomes the epicenter of "The Free People's Village"--an occupation that promises to be the birthplace of an anti-capitalist revolution. As the movement spreads across the U.S., Maddie dreams of a queer, liberated future with Red. But the Village is beset on all sides--by infighting, police brutality, corporate-owned media, and rising ecofascism. Maddie's found family is increasingly at risk from state violence, and she must decide if she's willing to sacrifice everything in pursuit of justice.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories (2011), edited by Kelly Link and Gavin. J Grant. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2012, edited by Rich Horton. The story is included in the collection Get in Trouble: Stories (2015).

The bestselling author of Richard & Judy Book Club hit The Cold Season returns with a chilling mystery - where superstition and myth bleed into real life with tragic consequences

Pretty Lizzie Higgs is gone, burned to death on her own hearth - but was she really a changeling, as her husband insists? Albie Mirralls met his cousin only once, in 1851, within the grand glass arches of the Crystal Palace, but unable to countenance the rumours that surround her murder, he leaves his young wife in London and travels to Halfoak, a village steeped in superstition.

Albie begins to look into Lizzie's death, but in this place where the old tales hold sway and the 'Hidden People' supposedly roam, answers are slippery and further tragedy is just a step away...

Table of Contents:

• The Trouble with You Earth People - interior artwork by Frank Kelly Freas (variant of The Trouble With You Earth People) [as by Kelly Freas]
• 1 - The Trouble with You Earth People - (1968) - novelette
• 23 - Unhuman Sacrifice - (1958) - novelette
• 53 - The Gambling Hell and the Sinful Girl - (1975) - short story
• 65 - Syndrome Johnny - (1951) - short story
• 79 - Trouble with Treaties - (1959) - novelette by Tom Condit and Katherine MacLean
• 105 - The Origin of the Species - (1953) - short story
• 113 - Collision Orbit - (1954) - short story
• 123 - The Fittest - (1951) - short story
• 135 - These Truths - (1958) - short story
• 153 - Contagion - (1950) - novelette
• 181 - Brain Wipe - (1973) - short story
• 189 - The Missing Man - [Rescue Squad] - (1971) - novella
• 233 - The Carnivore - (1953) - short story

Welcome to the People's Republic of Everything?of course, you've been here for a long time already. Make yourself at home alongside a hitman who always tells the truth, no matter how reality has to twist itself to suit; electric matchstick girls who have teamed up with Friedrich Engels; a telepathic boy and his father's homemade nuclear bomb; a very bad date that births an unforgettable meme; and a dog who simply won't stop howling on social media.

The People's Republic of Everything features a decade's worth of crimes, fantasies, original fiction, and the author's preferred text of the acclaimed short novel Under My Roof.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction by Jeffrey Ford
• Walking with a Ghost
• Arbeitskraft
• The People's Republic of Everywhere and Everything
• Tom Silex, Spirit-Smasher
• The Great Armored Train
• The Phylactery
• Slice of Life
• North Shore Friday
• The Glottal Stop
• The Spook School
• A Howling Dog
• Lab Rat
• Dreamer of the Day
• We Never Sleep
• Under My Roof

West Hall, Vermont, has always been a town of strange disappearances and old legends. The most mysterious is that of Sara Harrison Shea, who, in 1908, was found dead in the field behind her house just months after the tragic death of her daughter.

Now, in present day, nineteen-year-old Ruthie lives in Sara's farmhouse with her mother, Alice, and her younger sister. Alice has always insisted that they live off the grid, a decision that has weighty consequences when Ruthie wakes up one morning to find that Alice has vanished. In her search for clues, she is startled to find a copy of Sara Harrison Shea's diary hidden beneath the floorboards of her mother's bedroom. As Ruthie gets sucked into the historical mystery, she discovers that she's not the only person looking for someone that they've lost. But she may be the only one who can stop history from repeating itself.

IS THIS THE WORLD YOU WANT? Are you among the chosen ones--the elite class that rules all humanity? Then you were not born by accident to rule and lead. Your new society carefully plans for each new superior individual through the use of carefully regulated genetics. This genetic system is controlled by one administrator, never by the parents!

Are you the son of a world-famous statesman who lived more than two hundred years ago? Are you the daughter of a sensitive poet who died one hundred years before you were born? Then you were created in the Baths of Malneen-- where all things are possible, because donors abound making miracles take place...

A flight to a lost world of Antarctica. Garin Featherstone has been sent to explore a mysterious blue haze that was spotted in the polar region. There he discovers a lost civilization and a strange environment of vivid green lands, crimson tree trunks, and golden rivers. He must save Thrala of the light against the lizard men.

This is Andre Norton's first professional published story from 1947. Even the Grand Dame of science fiction had to have her first sale. And she shows her strengths in her first fantastic adventure story.

This short story originally appeared in If, September 1952. It has been collected and anthologized several times.

It was the basis for episode 137 (1964) of The Twilight Zone.

First there was Della, the woman who wanted . . . love? She did not - could not - know, for where love should have been was emptiness. Then came the Poet, who wanted only to please, but did not know how. His every effort was rejected - but he could not stop trying. Rogers was the completion, the part above all other parts that made the whole. And then there was Archer - and the thing in his brain . . .

originally published under the pseudonym K. M. O'Donnell

Hugo Award nominated short story. It orginally appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, February 1983. The story can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction of the Year #13 (1984). It is included in the collections Midas World (1983) and Platinum Pohl: The Collected Best Stories (2005).

In the beginning, there was nothing but endless flatness. Then came the Carpet...

That's the old story everyone knows and loves. But now the Carpet is home to many different tribes and peoples and there's a new story in the making. The story of Fray, sweeping a trail of destruction across the Carpet. The story of power-hungry mouls - and of two Munrung brothers, who set out on an amazing adventure.

It's a story that will come to a terrible end - if someone doesn't do something about it. If everyone doesn't do something about it...

Co-written by Terry Pratchett, aged seventeen, and master storyteller, Terry Pratchett, aged forty-three.

***Note: the 1992 edition is a substantially rewritten version of the 1971 original.***

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Realms of Fantasy, August 1999 and can also be found in the collection Thirteen Ways to Water and Other Stories (2004).

Epanded from the version published in Ace Double M-103 (1964).

The road to hell is paved with good inventions....

Emiliano Nowell was a world-class genetic engineer. He was also a wealthy and idealistic man with the time and money necessary to follow his dreams. In secret laboratories far from Earth he used his powers to create 100 genetically perfect children...an enlightened cadre Nowell hoped would lead humanity out of that maze of war, famine, torture, and death called history.

But the Golden People proved to be more intelligent than even he believed possible. Among other frighteningly advanced talents, they had the power to mentally influence normal humans. Now, one of them has become the group's secret leader. His goal is not to help humanity?but to replace it.

Trapped in a London laboratory during a worker uprising in 1924, scientist and ex-artilleryman Jeremy Tuft awakens 150 years later — on the eve of a new Dark Age! Though dismayed by the realization that his own era's faith in the inevitability of progress was a shibboleth, Tuft decides that pre-modern life is simpler, more peaceful. That is, until half-savage northern English and Welsh tribes invade London... at which point he sets about reinventing twentieth century weapons of mass destruction.

Shanks' proto-Idiocracy satire on William Morris-esque utopias was first published in 1920.

Sheckley's seventh story collection, including

• "The People Trap" (F&SF 1968/6)
• "The Victim from Space" (Galaxy 1957/4)
• "Shall We Have a Little Talk?" (Galaxy 1965/10)
• "Restricted Area" (Amazing 1953/6&7)
• "The Odor of Thought" (Star Science Fiction Stories No.2, edited by Frederik Pohl, 1953)
• "The Necessary Thing" (Galaxy 1955/6)
• "Redfern's Labyrinth"
• "Proof of the Pudding" (Galaxy 1952/8)
• "The Laxian Key" (Galaxy 1954/11)
• "The Last Weapon" (Star Science Fiction Stories No.1, edited by Frederik Pohl, 1953)
• "Fishing Season" (Thrilling Wonder Stories 1953/8)
• "Dreamworld"
• "Diplomatic Immunity" (Galaxy 1953/8)
• "Ghost V" (Galaxy 1954/10)

Norman Spinrad, a National Book Award finalist for his short fiction collection The Star-Spangled Future, has now written The People's Police, a sharp commentary on politics with a contemporary, speculative twist. Martin Luther Martin is a hard-working New Orleans cop, who has come up from the gangland of Alligator Swamp through hard work. When he has to serve his own eviction notice, he decides he's had enough and agrees to spearhead a police strike.

Brothel owner and entrepreneur J. B. Lafitte also finds himself in a tight spot when his whorehouse in the Garden District goes into foreclosure. Those same Fat Cats responsible for the real estate collapse after Katrina didn't differentiate between social strata or vocation.

MaryLou Boudreau, aka Mama Legba, is a television star and voodoo queen--with a difference. The loa really do ride and speak through her.

These three, disparate people are pulled together by a single moment in the television studio when Martin, hoping for publicity and support from the people against the banks, corporate fat cats, and corrupt politicians. But no one expects Papa Legba himself to answer, and his question changes everything.

"What do you offer?"

They called it Underearth. It was a kind of Hell in reverse--a world of cold, darkness and dread existing unsuspected beneath Earth's surface, peopled by weird half-human creatures who had once been men and women.

Aldridge found the fantastic entrance to it in his desperate search for Carol, the beautiful, mysterious girl he loved. All he knew was that she had vanished into the Otherworld and that he had to find her.

He did find her--but she was strangely changed into an almost mindless automaton. The he learned one more thing: either he or she could escape to the normal world they had known, but not both. And only he could make the choice. . . .

In 1950, a young doctor called Norton Perina signs on with the anthropologist Paul Tallent for an expedition to the remote Micronesian island of Ivu'ivu in search of a rumored lost tribe. They succeed, finding not only that tribe but also a group of forest dwellers they dub "The Dreamers," who turn out to be fantastically long-lived but progressively more senile. Perina suspects the source of their longevity is a hard-to-find turtle; unable to resist the possibility of eternal life, he kills one and smuggles some meat back to the States. He scientifically proves his thesis, earning worldwide fame and the Nobel Prize, but he soon discovers that its miraculous property comes at a terrible price. As things quickly spiral out of his control, his own demons take hold, with devastating personal consequences.

A story of Terror and Suspense about an engaged British couple that turn an Irish castle into a hotel and have their lives turned upside down. This book will keep you spell-bound until the "bitter" End....

People Minus X

But were they really human...? That was the question everyone was asking. It was an astonishing scientific achievement, one that mankind had passionately wanted for centuries--a process that restored life and wholeness to victims of disaster. This amazing new process was based partly on scientific records, partly on memories of those who knew the deceased.

Unfortunately, this new discovery had a small, fatal flaw. The restored people were the exact physical duplicates of their former selves. However, they seemed to lack an indefinable human quality--perhaps it was a soul or divine spark. Yet, they were physically and intellectually superior not only to their original incarnations but to their human creators as well! As time went by, the artificial people gravitated toward one another--they married, reproduced. Even their children were recognizable in an uncanny way as being apart from "normal" people.

As the number of new people grew, the rest of Earth's population drew away from them, and soon sprang fear and hatred between these two camps of humanity, with an ugly showdown seemingly inevitable...

Lest We Forget Thee, Earth

A hundred thousand years ago, there had been a planet called Earth. It had been a proud world ruling a thousand vassal stars, but its stellar empire had turned upon and annihilated their conquerors, and wiped the name of Earth from the maps of space.

But Earthmen still survived... a strange race of worldless men and women, by tradition advisers to rulers, but never themselves ruling. Wanderers through myriad planets, their origin was a half-forgotten legend.

That was the situation when a strange quirk of fate sent Earthman Hallam Navarre on an interstellar wild goose chase. He had to bring back a strictly mythical treasure to his alien ruler, or die.

The Golden People

Planeteers, go home!

The planet was called Golden in honor of the planeteer whose ship had crashed there years before. It was an Earth-type world, with humanoid natives, and other creatures that were--something less.

Or maybe more, for almost all of the planet was covered by an invisible Field which blanked radar, damped the power of the Earthmen's stunners, immobilized their robots and caused watches to run backward. No machine or weapon more complicated than the lever or knife could work inside the Field.

Which meant that the Space Force had to revert to the primitive to explore the world of Golden. And obviously, someone or something hidden in the vast reaches of the planet had planned it that way...

Exile From Xanadu

Regan's last waking memory was of the clamor of alarm bells--a sound that lasted a bare second before it dissolved and was lost in a holocaust of roaring noise and flame. He never did recall the reflex action that flung his screaming body towards the survival capsule.

When he awoke at last, there was nothing but blackness, yet the pain was gone. His body was compressed and comforted in an all-embracing nest of yielding softness that was like a vast mother-womb, so close did it enfold him. He moved slightly, and at once a voice said, "Can you hear me?" In a panic Regan tried to open his eyes, but could not. With dread, he lay very still, waiting. For the voice was not human...

The People Trap

Collection containing:

• The People Trap - (1968) - short story
• The Victim from Space - (1957) - short story
• Shall We Have a Little Talk? - (1965) - novelette
• Restricted Area - (1953) - short story
• The Odor of Thought - (1953) - short story
• The Necessary Thing - (1955) - short story
• Redfern's Labyrinth - (1968) - short story
• Proof of the Pudding - (1952) - short story
• The Laxian Key - (1954) - short story
• The Last Weapon - (1953) - short story
• Fishing Season - (1953) - short story
• Dreamworld - (1968) - short story
• Diplomatic Immunity - (1953) - novelette
• Ghost V - (1954) - short story

Mindswap

In the future, interstellar travel to alien worlds will be too expensive for most ordinary people. It certainly is for Marvin, a college student who wants to take a really good vacation. And so he signs up for what he can afford, a mindswap, in which your consciousness is swapped into the body of an alien lifeform. But Marvin is unlucky, and finds himself in the body of an interstellar criminal, a body that he has to vacate fast. But that criminal consciousness has stolen Marvin's earthly body, and Marvin has to find a body on the black market.

Travel from world to world with Marvin, each one crazier than the last, as he keeps finding far from ideal bodies in awful situations, just to stay alive.

This short story originally appeared in The Missouri Review, Winter 1984. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Second Annual Collection (1985), edited by Gardner Dozois.

This "lost race" novel begins as an exciting African adventure. Leonard Outram is a British adventurer who is in Africa seeking his fortune. He becomes part of the rescue of a Portuguese woman from a large slave camp. Leonard, his companion Otter, and the girl set off and find the people of the mist. They then impersonate gods and priests with the hope of getting the people's hoard of jewels.

When the people of the underground city of Ember follow Lina and Doon to the surface, little prepares them for what they will encounter. Leaving behind the darkness that has been their home for generations, they discover a world of colour, warmth and light. The people of the small village of Sparks seem willing to help them... at first... but life on the surface has it's dark side too.

Before long the villagers of Sparks become more reluctant to share their precious resources with the strange, new underground people. Lina and Doon watch in horror as the differences between the two groups grow into resentment, anger and hate. Somehow they must help overcome the distrust and bring the people of Ember and Sparks together.

When Tom Billings set out to rescue Bowen Tyler from the lost continent of Caprona, he equipped himself with all the weaponry the modern world afforded, and a light hydroplane would allow him to scale the perilous wall surrounded the island: Modern Technology and American courage in a battle to the death against dinosaurs, cave-tigers and savage submen -- in Caspak, the land of THE PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT. I'll never forget my first impressions of Caspak as I circled in, high over the surrounding cliffs. From the plane I looked down through a mist upon the blurred landscape beneath me...

I could see the surface of the water literally black with creatures of some sort... the general impression was of a vast army of amphibious monsters. The land was almost equally alive with crawling, leaping, running, flying things. It was one of the latter which nearly did it for me.... The first intimation I had of it was the sudden blotting out of the sunlight from above, and as I glanced quickly up, I saw a most terrific creature swooping down upon me. It must have been fully eighty feet long... with an equal spread of wings... It was coming straight down toward the muzzle of the machine-gun and I let it have it right in the breast; but still it came for me.....

This Novel is contained in the collection The Land Time Forgot.

"Explode the buoys? But that will destroy the Earth!"

"Oh dear, so it will. Pass on my apologies to the humans, won't you?"

Earth has been invaded. Twice. Thousands of years ago by a race searching for a new power source. More recently by the galactic marauders known as the Cat-People, who intend to continue the work done by the earlier visitors, with devastating results.

The recently regenerated Doctor, along with companions Ben and Polly, teams up with a group of amateur ghost-hunters and a mysterious white witch on a journey that takes them from twentieth-century Cumbria to the Arabian deserts of folklore and Australia 40,000 years in the past. Can the Doctor stop the invaders and disarm the bombs left buried beneath the planet's surface -- or have the ancient Aborigines of Australia sung the seeds of their own destruction?

The spirit of troubadour Prince John, the brother of Crown Princess Órlaith, has fallen captive to the power of the Yellow Raja and his servant, the Pallid Mask. Prince John's motley band of friends and followers--headed by Captain Pip of Townsville and Deor Godulfson--must lead a quest through realms of shadow and dreams to rescue Prince John from a threat far worse than death.

Meanwhile, across the sea, Japanese Empress Reiko and Órlaith, heir to the High Kingdom of Montival, muster their kingdoms for war, making common cause with the reborn Kingdom of Hawaii. But more than weapons or even the dark magic of the sorcerers of Pyongyang threaten them; Órlaith's lover, Alan Thurston, might be more than he appears.

From the tropical waters off Hilo and Pearl Harbor, to the jungles and lost cities of the Ceram Sea, a game will be played where the fate of the world is at stake.

The friendship between human Jack Holloway and the small, golden-furred creatures of the planet Zarathustra has a profound impact on both Holloway and the Fuzzies.

Also published as The Deviates.

In a world where but one man in a hundred, and eight women in a hundred, could produce children, only one science counted: Genetics. And the most respected, feared, and hated man in the world was the Chief of the Genetics Bureau, Robert Wellton. It was under his direction that gene charts were made of every citizen, and where those who dared to take the test discovered their fate. A few were Normals, who could be parents; the majority were Deviate-carriers, whose progeny would be monsters -- Uglies, as the Deviates were called.

Wellton alone knew the truth. The Genetics Program was failing, for fewer Normals were discovered every year. More and more citizens were falling back on their legal right not to be tested, not daring to learn that they might be Deviate-carriers. The whole world hungered for children, but each man and woman wanted to be the parents of the children they reared; and the fortunate few were hated by the vast majority.

But Wellton's father, who had been Genetics Chief before him, had discovered that not all Deviates were Uglies -- Nature's failures. Some were successes, improved human beings. These were telepathic and long-lived; their average intelligence level was that of the most intelligent Normals. They were what humanity needed.

Humanity could not accept them. Bitter and hate-filled, they would not believe that a Deviate could be anything but a monster; and the legal forces of the entire world were committed to the extermination of all Uglier on sight. Thus, Adam Wellton's giant plan was devised. And when he was assassinated, Robert Wellton carried it on. The plan called for the creation of a secret people -- the Children.

Born of Normal mothers, they were all Wellton's sons and daughters, bearing his improved genes. Telepathic as he was, Wellton was in mental contact with the Children from the moment of their birth, comforting and guiding them, sending them away from civilization to a hidden colony in the Canadian wilds. Here, under the direction of Wellton's first son, Barron, they built their own world. Here they waited for the mysterious being they knew only as the Father, who had promised to come to them some day and lead them to their destiny. For Wellton had never seen any of the Children -- nor had any of them seen him.

Then disaster struck, while the second generation of Children was growing up. A powerful committee, headed by a bitter man who suspected the existence of concealed Deviates, started an investigation. Wellton knew that Rossi and his associates would discover the secret, sooner or later. And there would be only one result: the Children would be hunted down and wiped out.

Thus starts a moving novel of fear and hope in a world where the only hope for humanity lay in that which all men feared.

Hugo Award nominated novella in Le Guin's Hainish Cycle. Originally published in Asimov's April 1995. Later collected in Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995).

Ghostly and ghastly were the Malay foes against whom the little French phantom-fighter went into action

The Jules de Grandin series is not numbered but this is the twenty fifth published story of such.

This novelette is included in the collection The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin volume 2 "The Devil's Rosary".

It first appeared in the February, 1929 Issue of Weird Tales, available on Internet Archives.

After stopping Tharek Pell and saving the Druth Parliament, Dayne Heldrin and Jerinne Fendall find themselves on the margins of the Tarian Order: lauded as heroes in public but scorned and ignored in private, their future in the Order hazy. Dayne is given an assignment that isolates him from the Order, and Jerinne is hazed and bullied at the bottom of the initiate rankings.

But it's a grand holiday week in the city of Maradaine, celebrating over two centuries of freedom and the foundation of the reunified modern nation, and with that come parades, revelry... and protests and demonstrations. A dissident group called The Open Hand--and their mysterious, charismatic leader, Bishop Ret Issendel--seeks to disrupt the Parliament elections with their message of secession and dissolution.

Despite orders to stay out of the public eye, Dayne and Jerinne are drawn into the intrigue of the Open Hand and kept apart by dark powerful conspiracies that brew around them. Dayne and Jerinne must fight for their own principles, and protect the will of the people as the election is thrown into chaos.

What do werewolves, vampires, and the Little Mermaid have in common? They are all shapechangers. In The Beastly Bride, acclaimed editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling bring together original stories and poems from a stellar lineup of authors including Peter S. Beagle, Ellen Kushner, Jane Yolen, Lucius Shepard, and Tanith Lee, as well as many new, diverse voices. Terri Windling provides a scholarly, yet accessible introduction, and Charles Vess's decorations open each story. From Finland to India, the Pacific Northwest to the Hamptons, shapechangers are part of our magical landscape and The Beastly Bride is sure to be one of the most acclaimed anthologies of the year.

Table of Contents:

• "Island Lake" by E. Catherine Tobler
• "The Puma's Daughter" by Tanith Lee
• "Map of Seventeen" by Christopher Barzak
• "The Selkie Speaks" by Delia Sherman
• "Bear's Bride" by Johanna Sinisalo
• "The Abominable Child's Tale" by Carol Emshwiller
• "The Hikikomori" by Hiromi Goto
• "The Comeuppance of Creegus Maxin" by Gregory Frost
• "Ganesha" by Jeffrey Ford
• "The Elephant's Bride" by Jane Yolen
• "The Children of Cadmus" by Ellen Kushner
• "The White Doe Mourns Her Childhood" by Jeanine Hall Gailey
• "The White Doe's Love Song" by Jeanine Hall Gailey
• "The White Doe Decides" by Jeanine Hall Gailey
• "Coyote and Valorosa" by Terra L. Gearheart
• "One Thin Dime" by Stewart Moore
• "The Monkey Bride" by Midori Snyder
• "Pishaach" by Shweta Narayan
• "The Salamander Fire" by Marly Youmans
• "The Margay's Children" by Richard Bowes
• "Thumbleriggery and Fledglings" by Steve Berman
• "The Flock" by Lucius Shepard
• "The Children of the Shark God" by Peter Beagle
• "Rosina" by Nan Fry

THEY CAME FROM INNER SPACE

They woke up in the wreckage of their ship and through the dim light they heard a great crawling twittering sound. Soon began the strangest adventure of their lives as they journeyed deep into the caverns beneath the crater-pocked surface. The world of the Moon People!

A strange tale of space exploration and moon anthropology.

Of all the islands in the western sea, Xandu, land of the clear sky and dark green forests, was the most beautiful. There lived young Klantor, who love Lampra and fought to save her from the island's war-mongering elders, and then to save them all from destruction in the explosions of the volcanic mountains.

A BURNING PYRE
The smell of roasting meat alerts police to squatters in an abandoned London factory. But when they arrive, the place is empty... except for a gruesome pile of scorched human heads.

AN ANCIENT RITUAL
DS Jamila Patel and DC Jerry Pardoe have solved bizarre crimes before, but nothing as spooky as this. Arcane markings on the factory wall lead them to a terrifying cult in thrall to a Neolithic god. A god who demands the ultimate sacrifice from his followers.

A CULT OF CANNIBALS
Now Londoners are being abducted off the city streets, to be mutilated, roasted and eaten. Can Patel and Pardoe save the next victim from this hideous fate? Or will they themselves become a human sacrifice?

A voyage of discovery into the life of a remote aboriginal community in the Siberian Arctic, where the reindeer has been a part of daily life since Palaeolithic times.

The Reindeer People is the first in a series of reissues of Megan Lindholm's (Robin Hobb) classic backlist titles. It is set in the harsh wilderness of a prehistoric North America, and tells the story of a tribe of nomads and hunters as they try to survive, battling against enemy tribes, marauding packs of wolves and the very land itself.

Living on the outskirts of the tribe Tillu was happy spending her time tending her strange, slow dreamy child Kerlew and comunning with the spirits to heal the sick and bring blessing on new births.

However Carp, the Shaman, an ugly wizened old man whose magic smelled foul to Tillu desired both mother and child. Tillu knew Carp's magic would steal her son and her soul. Death waited in the snows of the Tundra, but Tillu knew which she would prefer...

Gritty and realistic, it's reminiscent of Jean Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear but written in the compelling style of the author who produced the bestselling Assassin's Apprentice.

Follows the adventures of two children and a super race of cats as they rescue a group of plant people.

Cadet Data is among a handful of first-year cadets selected to observe a super-Jovian planet ignition -- the collision of two huge gas-giant planets resulting in the formation of a new star. They will watch this occurrence from a safe distance aboard the "Republic."

But a distress call from an alien space station draws their starship off course to an asteroid belt near the colliding planets. The rescue team soon finds itself under siege by deadly attackers, and Data and his group are separated from the main team. With time running out, Data must defeat the invaders and rescue the aliens before the collision destroys the space station and the "Republic."

Terra + Ythri + Avalon = Universal War!

THE TERRAN EMPIRE: Behemoth, reaching ever further across the star systems, seeking to suck the entire universe into it gigantic maw. In is favor it must be said that the Empire offers peach and prosperity to its subjects.

THE YTHRIAN DOMAIN: Medium-size empire with room to grow... except where its borders meet those of the Terran Empire! Peopled by the Ythri, birdlike beings with a culture and intellect that is easily a match for the Terran way of life.

AVALON: Colony planet of Ythri but inhabited by human and Ythri alike, Avalon is the Domain's secret weapon - or is it? For Avalon has formed a culture all its own, which it will defend against all comers. And Avalon seems quite capable of defying the combined might of two of the most powerful empires in the universe!

Part historical adventure, part vampire thriller -- the fourth dark and dazzling novel in Jasper Kent's 'Danilov Quintet'.

Turkmenistan 1881: Beneath the citadel of Geok Tepe sits a prisoner. He hasn't moved from his chair for two years, hasn't felt the sun on his face in more than fifty, but he is thankful for that. The city is besieged by Russian troops and soon falls. But one Russian officer has his own reason to be here. Colonel Otrepyev marches into the underground gaol. But for the prisoner it does not mean freedom, simply a new gaoler; an old friend, now an enemy. They return to Russia to meet an older enemy still.

In Saint Petersburg, the great vampire Zmyeevich waits as he has always waited. He knows he will never wield power over Tsar Aleksandr II, but the tsarevich will be a different matter. When Otrepyev delivers the prisoner into his hands, Zmyeevich will have everything he needs. Then all that need happen is for the tsar to die.

But it is not only the Otrepyev and his captive who have returned from Geok Tepe. Another soldier has followed them, one who cares nothing for the fate of the tsar, nor for Zmyeevich, nor for Otrepyev. He has only one thing on his mind revenge. And it's not just Zmyeevich who seeks the death of the tsar.

Aleksandr's faltering steps towards liberty have only made the people hungry for more, and for some the final liberty will come only with the death of the dictator. They have tried and failed before, but the tsar's luck must desert him one day. Soon he will fall victim to a group that has vowed to bring the Romanov dynasty to a violent end -- a group that calls itself The People's Will.

Fiera's victories angered the Censor into deploying the force needed to retake his lost worlds. Marcus Landry is now trapped on an occupied world, trying to fight back against the Censorate. Can he win without hurting the innocent civilians trapped in the crossfire, including his wife and child?

Throughout this vast and intricate mythology, says Publishers Weekly, "one marvels anew at the depth, breadth, and persistence of J.R.R. Tolkien's labor. No one sympathetic to his aims, the invention of a secondary universe, will want to miss this chance to be present at the creation." In this capstone to that creation, we find the chronology of Middle-earth's later Ages, the Hobbit genealogies, and the Western language or Common Speech. These early essays show that Tolkien's fertile imagination was at work on Middle-earth's Second and Third Ages long before he explored them in the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings . Here too are valuable writings from Tolkien's last years: " The New Shadow," in Gondor of the Fourth Age, and" Tal-elmar," the tale of the coming of the Nsmen-rean ships.

The Underpeople were mutated from animal stock to serve mankind. They lived Deepdown in the forgotten corridors and caverns of Old Earth, servants to the men who bred them in their own image.

But even the Underpeople dream - and often have strange powers. And now they have a strange ally in the richest man who ever lived: the man who owned the whole planet.

The Planet Buyer and The Underpeople were combined into the novel Norstrilia.

The Science Department has kidnapped Ria Faradey, a powerful, infinite-distance telepath. For the Scientists and their Machines, it's a quantum leap forward in genetics and technology. For the Intergalactic League, it's a disturbing power grab within its ranks. But for the girl's family, it's a devastating loss.

For Spaceman Dick MacCaishe, permanently crippled in the line of duty and discharged from the service, it means a renewal of purpose and clarity. His cousin Ria had shown him kindness that drew him from despair, and mercy that gave him a new life when his old one was forfeit. Dick MacCaishe has no intention of leaving her in the hands of the Scientists and their unfeeling Machines.

For Leader Himu, amphibious alien humanoid and Guardian of Skywash, Ria is the one voice that drew from despair following the death of his wife and children. He will pay any price to secure her freedom. To save Ria and defeat the Science Department, Leader must face the Great Ancestors of his people in the unfathomable Deeps and awaken a force that will alter the Intergalactic League forever.

When Taggert's adopted daughter goes missing he suspects the hand of an old enemy. He gathers friends, family, and even those who don't quite trust that he has left his violent past behind. But their search leads them to an unexpected place, the past, and the consequences of their journey have a price that is higher than they can afford.

Membership in the razor neck crew is for life. But when Taggert, who can heal and hurt with just a touch, receives a call from the past he is honor bound to try and help the woman he once loved try to find her daughter. Taggert realizes the girl has more power than even he can imagine and has to wrestle with the nature of his own skills, not to mention risking the wrath of his enigmatic master and perhaps even the gods, in order keep the girl safe. In the end, Taggert will have to delve into the depths of his heart and soul to survive. After all, what really matters is family.

Chabi doesn't realize her martial arts master may not be on the side of the gods. She does know he's changed her from being an almost invisible kid to one that anyone -- or at least anyone smart -- should pay attention to. But attention from the wrong people can mean more trouble than even she can handle. Chabi might be emotionally stunted. She might have no physical voice. She doesn't communicate well with words, but her body is poetry.

Marc Vitrac was born in Louisiana in the early 1960's, about the time the first interplanetary probes delivered the news that Mars and Venus were teeming with life--even human life. At that point, the "Space Race" became the central preoccupation of the great powers of the world.

Now, in 1988, Marc has been assigned to Jamestown, the US-Commonwealth base on Venus, near the great Venusian city of Kartahown. Set in a countryside swarming with sabertooths and dinosaurs, Jamestown is home to a small band of American and allied scientist-adventurers.

But there are flies in this ointment - and not only the Venusian dragonflies, with their yard-wide wings. The biologists studying Venus's life are puzzled by the way it not only resembles that on Earth, but is virtually identical to it. The EastBloc has its own base at Cosmograd, in the highlands to the south, and relations are frosty. And attractive young geologist Cynthia Whitlock seems impervious to Marc's Cajun charm.

Meanwhile, at the western end of the continent, Teesa of the Cloud Mountain People leads her tribe in a conflict with the Neanderthal-like beastmen who have seized her folk's sacred caves. Then an EastBloc shuttle crashes nearby, and the beastmen acquire new knowledge... and AK47's.

Jamestown sends its long-range blimp to rescue the downed EastBloc cosmonauts, little suspecting that the answer to the jungle planet's mysteries may lie there, among tribal conflicts and traces of a power that made Earth's vaunted science seem as primitive as the tribesfolk's blowguns. As if that weren't enough, there's an enemy agent on board the airship...

Extravagant and effervescent, The Sky People is alternate-history SF adventure at its best.

Just how technologically advanced are they?" The Doctor frowned. "Let me put it this way: they have a non-aggression pact with the Time Lords."

The Doctor has taken his companions to paradise, or at least the closest thing he can find. A sun enclosed by an artificial sphere where there is no want, poverty or violence.

While Chris learns to surf, meets a girl and falls in love with a biplane, Roz suspects an alien plot and Bernice considers that a Dyson Sphere needs an archaeologist like a fish needs a five-speed gear box.

Then the peace is shattered by murder. As the suspects proliferate, Bernice realises that even an artificial world has its buried secrets and Roz discovers what she's always suspected -- that every paradise has its snake.

Hugo Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1958. The story can also be found in the anthology The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, Eighth Series (1959), edited by Anthony Boucher. It is included in the collections Pilgrimage: The Book of the People (1961) and Ingathering: The Complete People Stories of Zenna Henderson (1995).

Zenna Henderson is best remembered for her stories of the People which appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from the early 50s to the middle 70s. The People escaped the destruction of their home planet and crashed on Earth in the Southwest just before the turn of the century. Fully human in appearance, they possessed many extraordinary powers. Henderson’s People stories tell of their struggles to fit in and to live their lives as ordinary people, unmolested by fearful and ignorant neighbors. The People are “us at our best, as we hope to be, and where (with work and with luck) we may be in some future.”

Ingathering contains all seventeen of the People stories, including one, “Michal Without,” which has never before been published.

Table of Contents:

• ix - Introduction (Ingathering: The Complete People Stories) - (1995) - essay by Priscilla Olson
• 1 - Lea 1 - [The People - 1] - (1961) - short fiction (variant of I (Pilgrimage: The Book of the People))
• 13 - Ararat - [The People] - (1952) - novelette
• 33 - Lea 2 - [The People - 2] - (1961) - short fiction (variant of II (Pilgrimage: The Book of the People))
• 39 - Gilead - [The People] - (1954) - novelette
• 65 - Lea 3 - [The People - 3] - (1961) - short fiction (variant of III (Pilgrimage: The Book of the People))
• 67 - Pottage - [The People] - (1955) - novelette
• 97 - Lea 4 - [The People - 4] - (1961) - short fiction (variant of IV (Pilgrimage: The Book of the People))
• 103 - Wilderness - [The People] - (1957) - novelette
• 137 - Lea 5 - [The People - 5] - (1961) - short fiction (variant of V (Pilgrimage: The Book of the People))
• 141 - Captivity - [The People] - (1958) - novella
• 181 - Lea 6 - [The People - 6] - (1961) - short fiction (variant of VI (Pilgrimage: The Book of the People))
• 191 - Jordan - [The People] - (1959) - novelette
• 217 - No Different Flesh - [The People] - (1965) - novelette
• 249 - Mark & Meris 1 - [The People] - (1995) - short fiction
• 253 - Deluge - [The People] - (1963) - novelette
• 283 - Mark & Meris 2 - [The People] - (1995) - short fiction
• 287 - Angels Unawares - [The People] - (1966) - novelette
• 319 - Mark & Meris 3 - [The People] - (1995) - short fiction
• 321 - Troubling of the Water - [The People] - (1966) - novelette
• 351 - Mark & Meris 4 - [The People] - (1995) - short fiction
• 353 - Return - [The People] - (1961) - novelette
• 385 - Mark & Meris 5 - [The People] - (1995) - short fiction
• 387 - Shadow on the Moon - [The People] - (1962) - novelette
• 423 - Tell Us a Story - [The People] - (1980) - novella
• 461 - That Boy - [The People] - (1971) - novelette
• 497 - Michal Without - [The People] - (1995) - novelette
• 525 - The Indelible Kind - [The People] - (1968) - novelette
• 555 - Katie-Mary's Trip - [The People] - (1975) - short story
• 569 - The People Series - (1980) - essay
• 573 - Chronology of the People Stories - (1995) - essay by Mark L. Olson and Priscilla Olson

They were feared as witches and demons...

They possessed superhuman powers...

They could read minds, free objects from gravity, fly through the air...

They lived alone and outcast in an isolated canyon...

They were THE PEOPLE!

Table of Contents:

• [vi] - Introduction (The People Collection) - essay by Anne McCaffrey
• 1 - Pilgrimage - [The People] - (1967) - novel (variant of Pilgrimage: The Book of the People 1961)
• 265 - The People: No Different Flesh - [The People] - (1966) - collection
• 267 - No Different Flesh - [The People] - (1965) - novelette
• 311 - Deluge - [The People] - (1963) - novelette
• 351 - Angels Unawares - [The People] - (1966) - novelette
• 391 - Troubling of the Water - [The People] - (1966) - novelette
• 430 - Return - [The People] - (1961) - novelette
• 472 - Shadow on the Moon - [The People] - (1962) - novelette
• 519 - The Indelible Kind - [The People] - (1968) - novelette
• 557 - Incident After - [The People] - (1971) - short story
• 567 - The Walls - [The People] - (1971) - short story
• 579 - Katie-Mary's Trip - [The People] - (1975) - short story

Table of Contents:

• No Different Flesh - (1965)
• Deluge - (1963)
• Angels Unawares - (1966)
• Troubling of the Water - (1966)
• Return - (1961)
• Shadow on the Moon - (1962)

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 23, July-August 2018.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.