Search Worlds Without End

Air Force lieutenant Rick Walsh has just gotten off a 12-hour flight from Guam at the Tucson Airport. All he wants right now is too see his girlfriend, Maia, and maybe have a short rest before reassignment. What Lieutenant Walsh finds instead is a month-old infant and a mystery that spans two universes.

Maia has disappeared, leaving behind her newborn, Gus, a baby with Walsh's eyes. It seems that a disturbing number of Tucson residents have gone missing as well, and the authorities don't have a clue. As Walsh races to track down Maia and her possible kidnappers, a conspiracy unfolds as the search leads him deep into the desert and then on to someplace... else. What awaits Walsh in this other land proves sinister and dangerous, and it seems to have its eye on our world.

In Dragon Season, author Michael Cassutt weaves classic suspense and modern fantasy into a wild ride that listeners won't soon forget.

This novella was first published in Analog Science Fiction & Fact, September/October 2022.

Read the full story for free at Analog.

This novelette originally appeared on Sci Fiction, January 10, 2001, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, January 2015. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Nineteenth Annual Collection (2002), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Beyond Flesh (2002), edited by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

It's 2005, and the world has changed. International terrorists have released a genetically modified disease, called X-Pox, on the world. There is no greater challenge to medicine than finding a cure. Biochem billionaire Tad Mikleszewski (called TM by nearly everyone) is a "space junkie" who has been the primary investor backing the Spacelifter project, a private attempt to build a single-stage to orbit vehicle. But Spacelifter's crucial test firing has failed, and TM is going to pull the plug. He has a better idea for getting himself into space....he'll buy research time on the International Space Station, to work on a cure for X-Pox. The Russians will sell him a seat on the Soyuz taxi vehicle for a mere $30 million.

But the equipment in the Harmony Laboratory module was salvaged from old Russian military labs, and perhaps TM's skills are a little bit out of date. A tiny leak - a small hole in the seal of the isolation box where TM is manipulating the X-Pox pathogen, and Harmony is contaminated by the disease that kills within three weeks.

Now it's a race against time, to rescue the crew and decontaminate the Space Station. NASA has a shuttle a month from launch, and if Astronaut Kelly Gessner can be retrained in decontamination procedures they can push that up two weeks. The Russians have a third Soyuz due off the assembly line, but Astronaut Mark Koskinen, NASA's chief of staff at Star City doesn't think they'll make it in time. But whether Russian or American, someone is going to have to get up there, and fast.

This short story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, July 2009. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 15 (2010), edited David G. Harwell and Kathryn Cramer.

This novelette originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July 1996. It can also be found the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual Collection (1997), edited by Gardner Dozois.

In the near future, war has torn the United States apart. Small communities barely scrape by amidst climate change and economic collapse. Powerful nation-states struggle over whatever resources remain--technology in California, money in Chicago, oil in Texas.

Some small hope has arrived in the form of the Hocq, a group of aliens on a mission to bring their advanced knowledge to Earth. But, as hostile governments across the globe vie for that knowledge, a Hocq named Harrek defects into outlaw territory. Diplomacy seems to have failed, and he can't allow the wrong nation to gain such a huge advantage over the others.

Now it's up to Lisa Marquez, the human who helped Harrek escape, and Jeremy Clayton, a poor outland farmer, to keep the alien safe from the military and outlaws. The clock is counting down, and Harrek needs to get the Genesis File into the right hands before he gets found by the humans... or the other Hocq.

In Michael Cassutt's first novel, the author takes standard SF story situations--post-holocaust tribal human struggles, first alien contact--blends them together and and brings his own uniquely original spin to a tried-and-true setting.

A suspenseful near-future story about what happens during the vetting process of a researcher from the Middle East, who is trying to enter the US to continue his studies, and the immigration lawyer assigned to his case, who is dying of cancer.

Read the full story for free at Tor Reactor

The science fiction epic of our time has arrived.

Three years ago, an object one hundred miles across was spotted on a trajectory for Earth's sun. Now, its journey is almost over. As it approaches, two competing manned vehicles race through almost half a million kilometers of space to reach it first. But when they both arrive on the entity, they learn that it has been sent toward Earth for a reason. An intelligent race is desperately attempting to communicate with our primitive species. And the message is: Help us.

The competing teams of astronauts sent to explore the asteroid Keanu discovered it was, in fact, a giant spacecraft with an alien crew carrying a plea for help. A brave new frontier beckons. But it will come at a price. Without warning, the aliens transport small groups of humans to the vast interior habitats of Keanu.

Their first challenge is to survive. Their second: discover why The Architects--the unseen aliens controlling the asteroid--brought them there. The third: find a way to take control of Keanu. Because the ship is moving again.

The Architects are going home...

Mankind's first contact with extraterrestrial life led to an incredible revelation. Their last may lead them to extinction.

Twenty years have passed since the mysterious Near-Earth Object nicknamed Keanu appeared in the night sky and transported humans from all over Earth into its interior. There they discovered that Keanu was a long-range spaceship--and they were not alone. They joined forces with the aliens called the Architects, who had come from a distant galaxy to seek help in fighting the vicious Reivers. And they defeated them.

Or so they thought.

For when Keanu reestablished contact with Earth, they learned that the Reivers have taken over the planet, placing most of the population under their dominion. But mankind's last hope may yet be hidden inside the NEO. And if the men and women still in Keanu cannot find it, humanity will be finished. And the galaxy will be next.