Search Worlds Without End

Original tales written in honor of Isaac Asimov's fiftieth anniversary in the genre. They are set across his works.

Contents:

• 1 - Preface (Foundation's Friends) - essay by Ray Bradbury
• 3 - Second Preface: The Nonmetallic Isaac or It's a Wonderful Life - essay by Ben Bova
• 7 - Strip-Runner - [The Positronic Robot Stories] - novelette by Pamela Sargent
• 41 - The Asenion Solution - short story by Robert Silverberg
• 57 - Murder in the Urth Degree - [Wendell Urth] - short story by Edward Wellen
• 75 - Trantor Falls - [Foundation] - short story by Harry Turtledove
• 95 - Dilemma - [The Positronic Robot Stories] - short story by Connie Willis
• 115 - Maureen Birnbaum After Dark - [Maureen Birnbaum] - short story by George Alec Effinger
• 135 - Balance - [Susan Calvin] - short story by Mike Resnick
• 141 - The Present Eternal - short story by Barry N. Malzberg
• 153 - PAPPI - [The Positronic Robot Stories] - short story by Sheila Finch
• 173 - The Reunion at the Mile-High - short story by Frederik Pohl
• 187 - Plato's Cave - [The Positronic Robot Stories] - novelette by Poul Anderson
• 217 - Foundation's Conscience - [Foundation] - short story by George Zebrowski
• 225 - Carhunters of the Concrete Prairie - [The Positronic Robot Stories] - novella by Robert Sheckley
• 273 - The Overheard Conversation - [Black Widowers] - short story by Edward D. Hoch
• 281 - Blot - [The Positronic Robot Stories] - novelette by Hal Clement
• 307 - The Fourth Law of Robotics - [The Positronic Robot Stories] - short story by Harry Harrison
• 321 - The Originist - [Foundation] - novella by Orson Scott Card
• 397 - A Word or Two from Janet - essay by Janet Asimov [as by Janet Jeppson Asimov]
• 401 - Fifty Years - essay by Isaac Asimov

Horror fiction is a special and enduring pleasure, invoking fear and wonder. For centuries, writers have struggled to achieve the sublime through these tales, at times creating works of enduring interest. Horror novels have become one of the major bestselling forms of fiction in recent years, and Hollywood has given us a huge and varied supply of popular films, which has created an audience in the millions for horror. But throughout history, many of the finest achievements in horror have been in short fiction. From these masterpieces have been selected the contents of Foundations of Fear.

This anthology presents an international selection of the strongest work by writers such as Clive Barker, H.P. Lovecraft, and Arthur Machen, who have been identified as category horror writers, and by writers such as Carlos Fuentes, Gerald Durrell, and Daphne Du Maurier, whose literary reputations transcend category. For horror in literature cuts across all category boundaries. Thus the reader will find in this volume domestic horror stories by Thomas Hardy, Violet Hunt and Mary Wilkins Freeman; and stories by Robert A. Heinlein and Philip K. Dick, masters of science fiction.

The Introduction to Foundations of Fear takes particular note of women writers, who have made important contributions to the development of the horrific in literature; in addition to those already mentioned the collection includes works by Madeline Yale Wynne, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Gertrude Atherton, and others. Foundations of Fear challenges the notion that the supernatural in fiction has in modern times been supplanted by the psychological, the idea that horror is dead. Horror is one of the dominant literary modes of our time, a vigorous and living body of literature that continues to thrill us with the mystery and wonder of the unknown.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1992) - essay by David G. Hartwell
• Don't Look Now - (1971) - novella by Daphne du Maurier
• They - (1941) - shortstory by Robert A. Heinlein
• At the Mountains of Madness - (1936) - novel by H. P. Lovecraft
• The Little Room - (1895) - shortstory by Madeline Yale Wynne
• The Shadowy Street - (1965) - novelette by Jean Ray (trans. of La ruelle ténébreuse 1932)
• Passengers - (1968) - shortstory by Robert Silverberg
• The Moonstone Mass - (1868) - shortstory by Harriet Prescott Spofford
• The Blue Rose - (1985) - novella by Peter Straub
• Sandkings - (1979) - novelette by George R. R. Martin
• The Great God Pan - (1894) - novella by Arthur Machen
• Aura - (1965) - novelette by Carlos Fuentes (trans. of Aura 1962)
• Barbara, of the House of Grebe - (1890) - novelette by Thomas Hardy
• Torturing Mr. Amberwell - (1985) - novelette by Thomas M. Disch
• The Prayer - (1895) - novelette by Violet Hunt
• Who Goes There? - (1938) - novella by John W. Campbell, Jr.
• ... and my fear is great - (1953) - novella by Theodore Sturgeon
• When Darkness Loves Us - (1985) - novelette by Elizabeth Engstrom
• We Purchased People - (1974) - shortstory by Frederik Pohl
• The Striding Place - (1896) - shortstory by Gertrude Atherton
• In the Hills, the Cities - (1984) - novelette by Clive Barker
• Faith of Our Fathers - (1967) - novelette by Philip K. Dick
• The Bell in the Fog - (1905) - novelette by Gertrude Atherton
• The Sand-Man - (1885) - novelette by E. T. A. Hoffmann (trans. of Der Sandmann 1816)
• Bloodchild - (1984) - novelette by Octavia E. Butler
• Duel - (1971) - novelette by Richard Matheson
• Longtooth - (1970) - novelette by Edgar Pangborn
• Luella Miller - (1902) - shortstory by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
• The Entrance - (1979) - novelette by Gerald Durrell
• The Lurking Duck - (1983) - novella by Scott Baker
• Notes on the Writing of Horror: A Story - (1985) - novelette by Thomas Ligotti

Completed in 1930, The Foundation Pit wasn't officially published until 1987 because of state censorship.

In Andrey Platonov's The Foundation Pit, a team of workers has been given the job of digging the foundation of an immense edifice, a palatial home for the perfect future that, they are convinced, is at hand. But the harder the team works, the deeper they dig, the more things go wrong, and it becomes clear that what is being dug is not a foundation but an immense grave.

The Foundation Pit is Platonov's most overtly political book, written in direct response to the staggering brutalities of Stalin's collectivization of Russian agriculture. It is also a literary masterpiece. Seeking to evoke unspeakable realities, Platonov deforms and transforms language in pages that echo both with the alienating doublespeak of power and the stark simplicity of prayer.

This English translation is the first and only one to be based on the definitive edition published by Pushkin House in Moscow. It includes extensive notes and, in an appendix, several striking passages deleted by Platonov. Robert Chandler and Olga Meerson's afterword discusses the historical context and style of Platonov's most haunted and troubling work.

Translated from the Russian by Robert & Elizabeth Chandler and Olga Meerson. With notes and an afterword by Robert Chandler and Olga Meerson

In Ann Aguirre's award-winning novel, Enclave, humans have taken refuge in colonies below ground. Here is the story of what drove them there, told through the eyes of a teen who would later have vast influence over the fate of many, and who gave his heart to the one person who needed him most.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

The Charisian Empire, born in war, has always known it must fight for its very survival. What most of its subjects don't know even now, however, is how much more it's fighting for. Emperor Cayleb, Empress Sharleyan, Merlin Athrawes, and their innermost circle of most trusted advisers do know. And because they do, they know the penalty if they lose will be far worse than their own deaths and the destruction of all they know and love.

For five years, Charis has survived all the Church of God Awaiting and the corrupt men who control it have thrown at the island empire. The price has been high and paid in blood. Despite its chain of hard-fought naval victories, Charis is still on the defensive. It can hold its own at sea, but if it is to survive, it must defeat the Church upon its own ground. Yet how does it invade the mainland and take the war to a foe whose population outnumbers its own fifteen to one? How does it prevent that massive opponent from rebuilding its fleets and attacking yet again?

Charis has no answer to those questions, but needs to find one... quickly. The Inquisition's brutal torture and hideous executions are claiming more and more innocent lives. Its agents are fomenting rebellion against the only mainland realms sympathetic to Charis. Religious terrorists have been dispatched to wreak havoc against the Empire's subjects. Assassins stalk the Emperor and Empress, their allies and advisers, and an innocent young boy, not yet eleven years old, whose father has already been murdered. And Merlin Athrawes, the cybernetic avatar of a young woman a thousand years dead, has finally learned what sleeps beneath the far-off Temple in the Church of God Awaiting's city of Zion.

The men and women fighting for human freedom and tolerance have built a foundation for their struggle in the Empire of Charis with their own blood.

Centuries ago, the human race fought its first great war against an alien race -- and lost. A tiny population of human beings fled to distant Safehold. Centuries later, their descendants have forgotten their history; for them, life has been an eternal Middle Ages, ruled by the Church of God Awaiting, whose secret purpose is to prevent the re-emergence of industrial civilization.

But not all of Safehold's founders were on board with this plan. Those dissidents left behind their own secret legacies. One of those is Merlyn Athrawes, cybernetic avatar of one of Earth's long-dead defenders, now reawakened after a thousand years to restart human progress and reclaim our place in the universe. Merlyn has intervened in the small Safeholdian realm of Charis, seeding it with ideas and innovations and helping it to rise to challenge the hegemony of the Church.

It's been a long and bloody fight, but aided by a stream of inventions -- breech-loading rifles, signal rockets, claymore mines, new approaches to manufacturing and supply -- Charis and its few allies seem to have finally gained the upper hand. Now major realms have begun to consider switching sides.

To all these ends, Merlyn Athrawes has been everywhere, under multiple disguises and wielding hidden powers. The secret of who and what he is has been closely held. But a new player has arrived, one who knows many secrets-including Merlyn's own.

Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy is one of the high-water marks of science fiction. It is the monumental story of a Galactic Empire in decline, and the secret society of scientists who seek to shorten the inevitable Dark Age with the science of psychohistory. Now, with the permission -- and blessing -- of the Asimov estate, the epic saga continues.

Fate -- and a cruel Emperor's arbitrary power -- have thrust Hari Seldon into the First Ministership of the Empire against his will. As the story opens, Hari is about to leave his quiet professorship and take on the all but impossible task of administering 25 million inhabited worlds from the all-steel planet of Trantor. With the help of his beautiful bio-engineered "wife" Dors and his alien companion Yugo, Seldon is still developing the science that will transform history, never dreaming that it will ultimately pit him against future history's most awesome threat.

Isaac Asimov's renowned Foundation Trilogy pioneered many of the familiar themes of modern science fiction and shaped many of its best writers. With the permission and blessing of the Asimov estate, the epic saga left unfinished by the Grand Master himself now continues with this second masterful volume.

With Hari Seldon on trial for treason, the Galactic Empire's long-anticipated migration to Star's End is about to begin. But the mission's brilliant robot leader, R. Daneel Olivaw, has discovered a potential enemy far deadlier--and closer--than he ever imagined. One of his own kind.

A freak accident erases the basic commandments in humaniform robot Lodovik Trema's positronic brain. Now Lodovic's service to humankind is no longer bound by destiny, but by will. To ensure his loyalty, Daneel has Lodovic secretly reprogrammed. But can he be trusted? Now, other robots are beginning to question their mission--and Daneel's strategy. And stirrings of rebellion, too, are infecting their human counterparts. Among them is a young woman with awesome psychic abilities, a reluctant leader with the power to join man and robot in a quest for common freedom.or mutual destruction.

Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy is one of the highwater marks of science fiction.The monumental story of a Galactic Empire in decline and a secret society of scientists who seek to shorten the coming Dark Age with tools of Psychohistory, Foundation pioneered many themes of modern science fiction.Now, with the approval of the Asimov estate, three of today's most acclaimed authors have completed the epic the Grand Master left unfinished.

The Second Foundation Trilogy begins with Gregory Benford's Foundation's Fear, telling the origins of Hari Seldon, the Foundation's creator. Greg Bear's Foundation and Chaos relates the epic tale of Seldon's downfall and the first stirrings of robotic rebellion. Now, in David Brin's Foundation's Triumph, Seldon is about to escape exile and risk everything for one final quest-a search for knowledge and the power it bestows. The outcome of this final journey may secure humankind's future-or witness its final downfall...

In the twenty-fourth century, the USS da Vinci and its S.C.E. team led by Commander Sonya Gomez roam the galaxy, solving the technical problems of the universe in a state-of-the-art ship. But back in the twenty-third century, for the newly-formed Starfleet Corps of Engineers, things did not always run so smoothly...

And on board the da Vinci, Captain Montgomery Scott recalls his younger days as the chief engineer of the legendary USS Enterprise, under the command of Captain James T. Kirk, and his encounters with a very different Corps of Engineers. From the edge of the Romulan Neutral Zone to the uncharted regions of deepest space, Scotty joins forces with a battered old vessel, the USS Lovell, to bring the S.C.E. into the future.

A THOUSAND-YEAR EPIC, A GALACTIC STRUGGLE, A MONUMENTAL WORK IN THE ANNALS OF SCIENCE FICTION

FOUNDATION begins a new chapter in the story of man's future. As the Old Empire crumbles into barbarism throughout the million worlds of the galaxy, Hari Seldon and his band of psychologists must create a new entity, the Foundation-dedicated to art, science, and technology-as the beginning of a new empire.

FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE describes the mighty struggle for power amid the chaos of the stars in which man stands at the threshold of a new enlightened life which could easily be destroyed by the old forces of barbarism.

SECOND FOUNDATION follows the Seldon Plan after the First Empire's defeat and describes its greatest threat-a dangerous mutant strain gone wild, which produces a mind capable of bending men's wills, directing their thoughts, reshaping their desires, and destroying the universe.

For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Sheldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future--to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save mankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire--both scientists and scholars--and brings them to a bleak planet at the edge of the Galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for a fututre generations. He calls his sanctuary the Foundation.

But soon the fledgling Foundation finds itself at the mercy of corrupt warlords rising in the wake of the receding Empire. Mankind's last best hope is faced with an agonizing choice: submit to the barbarians and be overrun--or fight them and be destroyed.

The Foundation novels of Isaac Asimov are one of the great masterworks of science fiction. Unsurpassed for their unique blend of nonstop action, daring ideas, and extensive world-building, they chronicle the struggle of a courageous group of men and women to preserve humanity's light against an inexorable tide of darkness and violence.

Led by its founding father, the great psychohistorian Hari Seldon, and taking advantage of its superior science and technology, the Foundation has survived the greed and barbarism of its neighboring warrior-planets. Yet now it must face the Empire - still the mightiest force in the Galaxy even in its death throes. When an ambitious general determined to restore the Empire's glory turns the vast Imperial fleet toward the Foundation, the only hope for the small planet of scholars and scientists lies in the prophecies of Hari Seldon.

But not even Hari Seldon could have predicted the birth of the extraordinary creature called The Mule - a mutant intelligence with a power greater than a dozen battle fleets - a power that can turn the strongest-willed human into an obedient slave.

Isaac Asimov's Foundation novels are one of the great masterworks of science fiction. As unsurpassed blend of nonstop action, daring ideas, and extensive world-building, they chronicle the struggle of a courageous group of men and women dedicated to preserving humanity's light in a galaxy plunged into a nightmare of ignorance and violence thirty thousand years long.

After years of struggle, the Foundation lies in ruins—destroyed by the mutant mind power of the Mule. But it is rumored that there is a Second Foundation hidden somewhere at the end of the Galaxy, established to preserve the knowledge of mankind through the long centuries of barbarism. The Mule failed to find it the first time—but now he is certain he knows where it lies.

The fate of the Foundation rests on young Arcadia Darell, only fourteen years old and burdened with a terrible secret. As its scientists gird for a final showdown with the Mule, the survivors of the First Foundation begin their desperate search. They too want the Second Foundation destroyed…before it destroys them.

At last, the costly and bitter war between the two Foundations had come to an end. The scientists of the First Foundation had proved victorious; and now they retum to Hari Seldon's long-established plan to build a new Empire that the Second Foundation is not destroyed after all-and that its still-defiant survivors are preparing their revenge. Now the two exiled citizens of the Foundation-a renegade Councilman and the doddering historian-set out in search of the mythical planet Earth. . .and proof that the Second Foundation still exists. Meanwhile someone-or something-outside of both Foundations sees to be orchestrating events to suit its own ominous purpose. Soon representatives of both the First and Second Foundations will find themselves racing toward a mysterious world called Gaia and a final shocking destiny at the very end of the universe!

The fifth novel in Asimov's popular Foundation series opens with second thoughts. Councilman Golan Trevize is wondering if he was right to choose a collective mind as the best possible future for humanity over the anarchy of contentious individuals, nations and planets. To test his conclusion, he decides he must know the past and goes in search of legendary Earth, all references to which have been erased from galactic libraries. The societies encountered along the way become arguing points in a book-long colloquy about man's fate, conducted by Trevize and traveling companion Bliss, who is part of the first world/mind, Gaia.

It is the year 12,020 G.E. and Emperor Cleon I sits uneasily on the Imperial throne of Trantor. Here in the great multidomed capital of the Galactic Empire, forty billion people have created a civilization of unimaginable technological and cultural complexity. Yet Cleon knows there are those who would see him fall - those whom he would destroy if only he could read the future.

Hari Seldon has come to Trantor to deliver his paper on psychohistory, his remarkable theory of prediction. Little does the young Outworld mathematician know that he has already sealed his fate and the fate of humanity. For Hari possesses the prophetic power that makes him the most wanted man in the Empire... the man who holds the key to the future - an apocalyptic power to be know forever after as the Foundation.

A stunning testament to his creative genius. Forward The Foundation is a the saga's dramatic climax -- the story Asimov fans have been waiting for. An exciting tale of danger, intrigue, and suspense, Forward The Foundation brings to vivid life Asimov's best loved characters: hero Hari Seldon, who struggles to perfect his revolutionary theory of psychohistory to ensure the survival of humanity; Cleon II, the vain and crafty emperor of the Galactic Empire.

In this chronicle of the early history of Valdemar, a thirteen-year-old orphan named Magpie escapes a life of slavery in the gem mines when he is chosen by one of the magical Companion horses of Valdemar to be trained as a Herald. Thrust into the center of a legend in the making, Magpie discovers talents he never knew he had and witnesses the founding of the great Heralds' Collegium.