Search Worlds Without End

Hugo Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, September 14, 1981. The story can also be found in the anthology The 1982 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha. It is included in the collection Fire from the Wine Dark Sea (1983).

Here are eight of World Fantasy Award winner S.P. Somtow's most controversial stories, including three previously uncollected ones. Each deals with a "sacred cow" of the Judaeo-Christian tradition and subjects it to the pitiless scrutiny of historian, mythographer, and fantasist. Violent, sometimes kinky, these stories nevertheless reach surprising epiphanies about faith and redemption.

A curiously sympathetic Antichrist hunts down the next messiah with the aid of a unicorn. St Paul ponders about whether, in order to make his miraculous new religion work, he needs to get rid of an inconvenient Jesus. An entertainment mogul in ancient Rome figures out how to cut costs by staging resurrections in the arena. Lot's daughter has managed to survive as a vampire and pours out her heart in an incest survivors' support group....

These aren't the Bible stories you learned in Sunday school -- yet they raise many of the questions you may not have dared ask there.

Table of Contents:

• 9 - Theology for Secular Humanists - (2008) - essay
• 19 - Brimstone and Salt - (1996) - novelette
• 55 - A Different Eden - (2005) - novelette
• 97 - Beloved Disciple - (1995) - novelette
• 127 - Hunting the Lion - (1992) - novelette
• 175 - An Alien Heresy - (2008) - novelette
• 215 - Darker Angels - (1993) - novelette
• 247 - ResurrecTech™ - (1987) - novelette
• 281 - Avoiding Close Encounters - short story
• 301 - A Thief in the Night - (1995) - short story

Nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, Darker Angels takes the reader from the bloodstained battlefields of Virginia to the slave auctions of Haiti. As Abraham Lincoln lies in state in new York, the widow of the famous abolitionist has a chance encounter with the poet Walt Witman, who has an astonishing tale to tell. Edgar Allan Poe, Lord Byron, and Marie Laveau, the legendary voodoo queen of New Orleans, all have a part to play in the epic tale of a mysterious, one-eyed shaman who dares to raise the dead from the battlefields of the Civil War.

Sturgeon Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology David Copperfield's Tales of the Impossible (1995), edited by Janet Berliner and David Copperfield. The story is included in the collection Dragon's Fin Soup (1998).

WFA nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology The Ultimate Dragon (1995), edited by Keith R. A. DeCandido, John Betancourt and Byron Preiss. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Ninth Annual Collection (1996), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, and Wings of Fire (2010), edited by Jonathan Strahan and Marianne S. Jablon. It is included in the collection Dragon's Fin Soup (1998).

Read the full story for free at the author's website.

Dragon's Fin Soup: And Other Modern Siamese Fables by World Fantasy Award Winner S.P. Somtow.

Dragon's Fin Soup in the tradition of the Marx Brothers.

Eight Rowdy Tales where East and West don't meet - they collide.

Eight Frightening Ruminations where nothing is as it seems, and even the unreal is an illusion.

Eight Delectable Servings that could only have sprung from the fevered mind of S. P. Somtow: the most unique writer of this, or any other, millennium.

Table of Contents:

• In the House of the Spirits (essay)
• Dragon's Fin Soup
• Lottery Night
• The Steel American
• Chui Chai
• Anna and the Ripper of Siam
• Diamonds Aren't Forever
• Fiddling for Waterbuffaloes
• The Last Time I Died in Venice
• S. P. Somtow--a Brief Biography

This novelette originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, April 1986. It can also be found in the anthologies Tales from the Planet Earth (1986), edited by Frederik Pohl and Elizabeth Anne Hull, and The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fourth Annual Collection (1987), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collections Dragon's Fin Soup (1998) and Opus 50 (2008). A chapbook edition appeared in 1992.

Table of Contents:

• Fire From the Wine-Dark Sea
• The Thirteenth Utopia
• A Child of Earth and Starry Heaven
• Somtow Sucharitkul: Interview I (interview of S. P. Somtow by Darrell Schweitzer)
• Kith of Infinity (poem)
• Sunsteps
• Aquila the God
• Comets and Kings
• Angels' Wings
• Messenger (poem)
• Meeting in Milan Cathedral (poem)
• On an Unfinished Pieta of Michelangelo (poem)
• Dear Caressa or This Towering Torment
• Absent Thee from Felicity Awhile...
• The What March? (essay)
• The Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine March (essay)
• Darktouch
• Coaster Time
• The Four Dragons and the Dying King (poem)
• The Last Line of the Haiku
• Somtow Sucharitkul: Interview II (interview of S. P. Somtow by Bob Halliday)
• Afterword: In Defense of Ozymandias

J.J. is upset when his brother, Ben, commits suicide, but at his aunt's house he begins getting messages from Ben on his aunt's computer.

Jasmine Nights by S. P. Somtow. A Quirky Bangkok Novel by the J. D. Salinger of Siam

At twelve years old, Little Frog has a richly fantastic and sustaining inner life. It is 1963, his parents have disappeared, and he lives with his maiden aunts, known affectionately as the Three Fates, on a family estate in Bangkok. But, fed by a steam of books and accompanied by his pet chameleon, Little Frog refuses to accept that he is Thai; eats English food; speaks only English; and answers to the name Justin.

Into Justin's eclectically fashioned, whirling fantasy world steps Virgil, a black American boy, and together they embark on a glorious spree of magic and growing up, in which sex, adult confusions, comedy, farce, politics, and the voices of the East and West are fused into a voyage of exhilarating discovery.

This novelette originally appeared in The Roots of Fantasy: Myth, Folklore & Archetype (1989) edited by Shelley Dutton Berry, and was reprinted in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, April 1990. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Seventh Annual Collection (1990), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collections Dragon's Fin Soup (1998) and Opus 50 (2008).

Set against a brilliant panorama of European expansion into the West in the late 1800s, Moon Dance is the horrifying tale of the illegitimate son of the Count von Bachl-Wolfling, leader of a pack of Viennese werewolves, and of the boy's all-too-human governess, Speranza. The pack has decided to emigrate to America, in search of wild lands and unsuspicious human prey. But unbeknownst to them, the Dakota territory is already home to the Shungmanitu--a clan of the Lakota Sioux who become wolves by the light of the full moon.

The Millennial War left a sullen void where civilization once stood. But then the whales began their song -- a mysterious song that resounded throughout the polluted seas and told an ancient heartbreaking tale that moved the survivors to revive and honored ritual...

S.P. Somtow's L.A. Fairy Tales, collected together for the first time in this new edition. Somtow puts a new spin on some classic themes in this volume of 10 short stories set in the back alleys of downtown L.A. A must-have for the modern horror reader and collector.

Table of Contents:

• Gingerbread
• A Thief in the Night
• The Hero's Celluloid Journey
• Dr. Rumpole
• The Sleeping Ice Princess
• Though I Walk Through the Valley
• Mr. Death's Blue-eyed Boy
• A Hummingbird Among Angels
• Tagging the Moon
• The Other City of Angels: A Pictorial

WFA winning novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology The Horror Writers Association Presents The Museum of Horrors (2001), edited by Dennis Etchison. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Fifteenth Annual Collection (2002), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, and The Apex Book of World SF 1 (2009), edited by Lavie Tidhar. It is included in the collections Opus 50 (2008) and the 2002 and 2013 editions of Dragon's Fin Soup.

Read the full story for free at the author's website.

Billy Binder lived in a very different world from the other kids as school. It was a place of eternal cold, a land of snow dragons and ice princesses ruled by a dark figure called the Ringmaster. A world without hope, without fear, without pain, where anger was the greatest weapon, the greatest strength. It was a desolate forsaken place, but it was better than the real world Billy had left behind. Until a group of friends dared to cross over into Billy's private world, and help him learn the secret of the Ringmaster.

WFA nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology Cold Shocks (1991) edited by Tim Sullivan. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Fifth Annual Collection (1992), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, and Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond (2013), edited by Bill Campbell and Edward Austin Hall. It is included in the collection The Pavilion of Frozen Women (1996).

Table of Contents:

• The Pavilion of Frozen Women
• Fish are Jumping, and the Cotton Is High
• Fire from the Wine-Dark Sea
• Chui Chai
• Though I Walk Through the Valley
• Hunting the Lion
• Mr. Death's Blue-Eyed Boy
• The Steel American
• Gingerbread
• Darker Angels

Firmly rooted in modern archaeological discoveries about Bronze Age cultures, The Shattered Horse paints a vivid picture of a decaying golden age seen through the eyes of the survivors of Trojan War. At the center of the story is Prince Astyanax: heir to the Trojan kingdom, marked for death as a child by the Greek conquerors, escaping, perhaps by divine intervention, and doomed, perhaps, to repeat history.

Life isn't easy for Johnny Shapiro, despite his mother's success as the author of a book about his Lakota grandfather. He finds it hard to "fit in" in his new school - until he meets Rebecca, a new student as well, and the half-human daughter of a vampire.

The son of a Hollywood special-effects technician, Aaron wishes for some real magic and is given the chance to try out as an apprentice to a two-thousand-year-old wizard, setting off a series of spectacular mishaps.

Hugo Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, January 18, 1982. The story is included in the collection The Aquiliad (1983).

On this alternate Earth, Rome rules all... including the New World, known in other dimensions as America but here as Terra Novo.

General Titus Papinianus is governor of that untamed land, and Aquila, chief of the savage Lacoti nation, is a Roman senator. But official titles aside, their duty is to Caesar. So when Caesar sends them on a quest for the fabled land of China, thought to be somewhere in Terra Novo, off they go.

They are hardly prepared for bloodthirsty Aztecs, flying machines, time-traveling aliens, or Bigfoot--and Aquila's problem-solving strategies are unconventional to say the least!

Before they know it, their adventures lead them into the hands of the Time Criminal, who is bent on altering all the multiple universes to suit his own evil whims. Somehow they have to stop him... before their world is destroyed!

Table of Contents:

• Aquila - (1982) - novelette
• Aquila the God - [Aquila] - (1982) - novelette
• Aquila Meets Bigfoot - [Aquila] - (1983) - novella
• Aquila: The Final Conflict - [Aquila] - (1983) - novella

Equus Insanus, son of the intrepid Aquila, finds the civilized life of Rome tedious. So he is eager to return to his native land of Terra Novo to assist in the construction of Caesar's latest fancy - a transprovincial railroad.

But on this alternate Earth where the Roman Empire rules America, things seldom go as planned. Soon the project is beset with savage Indian raids and inexplicable disasters... and Equus's father returns from the future with a dire warning: The evil Time Criminal is back and stronger than ever, and even Aquila of the time-trading Dimensional Patrol is powerless to act!

Now only Equus Insanus stands between the Time Criminal and the destruction of the universe!

Equus Insanus, son of Aquila, has been missing for three years on his quest to bring the vile Time Criminal to justice. His Roman half brother, Lucius, nephew to Caesar, fears him dead - until he begins receiving strange messages from the lost Lacoti warrior.

Then Lucius learns that Equus has been captured by the Time Criminal, who plans to use him as the instrument which will destroy their world. Discovering that the secret to Equus's salvation may lie in the pyramids of Giza and in the riddle of the Sphynx, Aquila and Lucius set out for Egypt. They have no idea that the answers they find will lead them across the entire Roman Empire, through space, and ultimately through time itself - for the final confrontation with the Time Criminal and the battle for a man's soul!

Our solar system, locked in a force field and towed to an uninhabited parallel universe, occupies its time, when not trying to escape, at a shopping center the size of a planet.

Here collected together for the first time are all the short stories, ads, and illustrations for S. P. Somtow's Mallworld. Included in The Ultimate Mallworld are all the original stories (and the one story left out of the Starblaze trade edition), all the ads for the Mallworld products (left out in the TOR mass market re-printing), and all the original artwork by Karl Kofoed (the artwork was not included in the TOR edition). This edition will also contain two new Mallworld stories written by Somtow along with their new interior illustrations by the original artist Karl Kofoed.

The Selespridar have locked us, the planet Earth, part of our solar system, and our sun up in a force field because the rest of the Galaxy plain and simple does not want to associate with us. Do we care? Not really. We have Mallworld, the shopping center almost the size of a planet. So come along and play human pinball at the arcades, order your custom-designed baby at Storkways, Inc., experience your ultimate death at the Way Out Suicide Parlors - death by vampire is a special way to go and just one of the three-hundred ways you can decide to end your life.

Follow the exploits of the Etchison family as their mortal world is rehaped by warring dragon-children under the control of the Darkling King Strang. Within Theo Etchison lies the power of a Turthsayer, a power the Darklings need to dominate the universe. This paperback omnibus includes the entire trilogy: Riverrun, Amorica, and the final book, Yestern.

Table of Contents:

• Riverrun
• Armorica (aka Forest of the Night)
• Yestern

Young Theo Etchison is a truthsayer -- one with the ability to navigate the great river that connects all the parallel universes. His mother, Mary, is dying of cancer, but she may also be the mother goddess, the nurturer of the world. His father, Phil, is a second-rate poet; his brother, Joshua, has been seduced by a dragon-succubus. On a journey through America to a Mexican alternative medicine clinic, the Etchison family is sucked into the world of the Darklings, superhuman creatures who are battling for domination of the cosmos, who need Theo's special gift..

Young Theo Etchison is drawn into Strang's terrifying dimension and begins a bizarre odyssey across an inverted land.

Young Theo Etchison is a truthsayer -- one with the ability to navigate the great river that connects all the parallel universes. His mother, Mary, is dying of cancer, but she may also be the mother goddess, the nurturer of the world. His father, Phil, is a second-rate poet; his brother, Joshua, has been seduced by a dragon-succubus. On a journey through America to a Mexican alternative medicine clinic, the Etchison family is sucked into the world of the Darklings, superhuman creatures who are battling for domination of the cosmos, who need Theo's special gift.

But is the Riverrun Trilogy about dragons, vampires, fabulous castles, interplanetary warfare, fabulous quests and fantastical kingdoms? Or is it about the millions of worlds inside Theo's mind? Who is the transvestite Navajo shaman who sometimes appears in the form of a raven? Why has the president of the United States turned into a vampire? Why has the king gone mad, and where is the source of the river that flows through all worlds?

From award-winning science fiction writer S.P. Somtow comes Captain Picard's most challenging dilemma: should he kill an innocent child to save a billion others? The inhabitants of Thanet believe that once every five thousand years the Death-Bringer destroys their world in a torrent of fire in order to herald a new cycle of creation -- and the eve of destruction is almost upon them. Billions will die. To Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the USS Enterprise, the Death-Bringer appears to be nothing more than a rogue comet, and one that could easily be destroyed. But Picard's position is challenged when his Counsellor, the empath Deanna Troi, discovers that the comet is alive...

ONE MAN PITTED HIMSELF AGAINST THE GREATEST POWER IN THE GALAXY, SEARCHING FOR SOMETHING HE WAS FORBIDDEN TO FIND....

Ton Davaryush had destroyed twelve utopias in the line of his duty as a Kingling of the galaxy's all-powerful Inquest: he was delivering ignorant humanity from the throes of delusion. For it was written in the Inquestral Texts that man was a fallen being and all utopias inherently false.

But now, simmering with rebellion, Davaryush plotted the Inquest's destruction and cursed the awesome extent of its power. Now he stood ready to wreak havok within the galactic tyranny.

Now he was willing to risk the Inquest's ultimate wrath. Because he had seen a thirteenth utopia, he had known the sin of joy... and he knew he would, he must, preserve it -- at any price!

AN INNOCENT CHILD IS TRANSFORMED FROM A MAN OF WAR TO A GOD OF PEACE!

The Inquest has ruled throughout the millennia with awsome power. Man has lost his hopes, his soul, his dreams of utopia. Only a unique Inquestor can free mankind from this false god.

Kelver, hand-picked as a child for this awesome mission, has survived an intergalactic struggle with other Inquestral prodigies to conquer the almighty Inquest. Now he must find and grasp the Throne of Madness, to wage mystic warfare -- and change the Universe forever!

S.P. Somtow's UTOPIA HUNTERS is an introduction to one of the most far-flung galactic civilizations ever created, In the words of Theodore Sturgeon, Somtow's CHRONICLES OF THE HIGH INQUEST deal with "the greatest magnitude of spectacle and color since Stapledon." UTOPIA HUNTERS can be read out of sequence.

Table of Contents:

• The Book of Children's Dreams - shortstory
• The Story of the Rainbow King - novelette
• The Book of Shapers and Visionaries - shortstory
• The Story of the Dust-Sculptress - novelette
• The Story of the Web Dancer - novelette
• The Book of Rememberers and Warriors - shortstory
• The Rememberer's Story - novelette
• The Comet's Story - novelette
• The Book of Three Young Inquestors - novelette
• The Myth of Mother Vara - shortstory
• The Myth of the Windbringers - shortstory
• The Story of Young Arryk - novelette
• The Book of the Darkweaver - shortstory

THE DARKLING WIND

In the long dark age that followed, the High Inquest would be remembered as a golden age. For the Inquestors had harnessed the unfathomable power of the heart of stars, sailing the overcosm in their delphinoid ships and tachyon bubbles to dance on the faces of suns.

But the Inquest had its darker side as well. For these beings played a ruthless game with billions of lives, snuffing out worlds as chessplayers take pawns. Waging an unending war on the false utopias that tempt mankind, they sought to free humanity by enslaving it.

At last, after countless centuries, the Inquest was torn apart. This is the story of the fall of that great empire, and of the rebel Inquestor who hastened its end.

As Tokyo becomes the Visitors' slaughterhouse under the nefarious commander Chen, America's victorious resistance fighters speed to their aid...

A race of death against the invading aliens...

Now acknowledged as one of the most important classics of twentieth-century gothic literarture, S.P. Somtow's tale of a twelve-year-old rock star vampire, his Jungian analyst, and the Wagnerian conductor who is his nemesis turned the entire genre upside down in the 1980s and is considered the ancestor of the "splatterpunk" movement. Vampire Junction has been voted one of the top forty horror books of all time. Timmy Valentine: "He'll steal your heart - and have it for breakfast!" 21st anniversary edition of this unforgettable classic of high-intensity horror.

Timmy Valentine is a vampire - he was created magically in an alchemical experiment performed in ancient Pompeii. But unlike most vampires of fiction, Timmy is not an adult - Timmy is forever and always an 11-year-old boy/rock star with a beautiful soprano voice and a face like an angel. This sequel to Vampire Junction finds Brian, PJ, and Terry 10 years after the disappearance of Timmy, remembering the terrible night in Junction and fighting the Gods of Chaos who believe Timmy is still alive.

Vampire Junction, S. P. Somtow's groundbreaking novel of vampiric horror, introduced Timmy Valentine, a world-famous rock star with the body of a 12 year old boy... and the ageless soul of a bloodthirsty predator. Timmy returned in Valentine, in which he finally shed his undead curse forever. Or did he?

In Vanitas, Timmy Valentine has relinquished his immortality and transferred his vampiric essence to young Angel Todd. Timmy is now an ordinary boy, awakened at last from an ancient nightmare. His new album has just come out, but there's something missing. In a desperate bid to salvage his career, he goes on a world tour. Every stop, though, brings haunting memories of his inhuman past and terrifying manifestations of a blood-drenched future.