Search Worlds Without End

A collection of short stories. Introduction by David Hartwell.

Table of Contents:

• The Bully and the Beast
• Middle Woman
• The Porcelain Salamander
• The Princess and the Bear
• Sandmagic

Locus Award winning and Hugo Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, November 1989. The story can also be found in the anthology The 1990 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha. It is included in the collection Maps in a Mirror: The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card (1990).

As one of the most consistently exciting writers to emerge in the last twenty-five years, Orson Scott Card has been honored with numerous awards, immersing readers in dazzling worlds only he could create. Now, in Enchantment, Card works his magic as never before, transforming the timeless story of Sleeping Beauty into an original fantasy brimming with romance and adventure.

The moment Ivan stumbled upon a clearing in the dense Carpathian forest, his life was forever changed. Atop a pedestal encircled by fallen leaves, the beautiful princess Katerina lay still as death. But beneath the foliage a malevolent presence stirred and sent the ten-year-old Ivan scrambling for the safety of Cousin Marek's farm.

Now, years later, Ivan is an American graduate student, engaged to be married. Yet he cannot forget that long-ago day in the forest--or convince himself it was merely a frightened boy's fantasy. Compelled to return to his native land, Ivan finds the clearing just as he left it.

This time he does not run. This time he awakens the beauty with a kiss... and steps into a world that vanished a thousand years ago.

A rich tapestry of clashing worlds and cultures, Enchantment is a powerfully original novel of a love and destiny that transcend centuries... and the dark force that stalks them across the ages.

Hugo Award winning novella. It originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, March 1987. The story is included in the collection Maps in a Mirror: The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card (1990) and is half of Tor Double #27: Eye for Eye/The Tunesmith (1990).

A provocative collection of short fiction, edited by one of science fiction's best-known names. Of particular interest are several stories from the cyberpunk school, as well as Pat Murphy's Nebula award winning "Rachel in Love" and Ursula LeGuin's wonderful "Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight."

Table of Contents:

• Story Introductions - essay by Orson Scott Card
• Introduction: Science Fiction in the 1980's - essay by Orson Scott Card
• Rachel in Love - (1987) - novelette by Pat Murphy
• Dogfight - (1985) - novelette by Michael Swanwick and William Gibson
• A Gift from the GrayLanders - (1985) - novelette by Michael Bishop
• Fire Zone Emerald - (1986) - novelette by Lucius Shepard
• Down and Out in the Year 2000 - (1986) - shortstory by Kim Stanley Robinson
• Angel Baby - (1982) - novelette by Rachel Pollack
• The Neighbor's Wife - (1985) - poem by Susan Palwick
• I Am the Burning Bush - (1982) - shortstory by Gregg Keizer
• Pretty Boy Crossover - (1986) - shortstory by Pat Cadigan
• Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight - (1987) - novelette by Ursula K. Le Guin
• All My Darling Daughters - (1985) - novelette by Connie Willis
• In the Realm of the Heart, in the World of the Knife - (1985) - shortstory by Wayne Wightman
• Rat - (1986) - shortstory by James Patrick Kelly
• Vestibular Man - (1985) - novelette by Felix C. Gotschalk
• Green Days in Brunei - (1985) - novella by Bruce Sterling

A widely varied, immensely enjoyable, and historically important anthology, Future on Ice is a showcase for the hottest stories by the coolest SF writers of the 1980s. Complete with a preface, introduction, and story notes by Card himself, here are early stories from eighteen incredibly talented authors who have since shattered the face of science fiction.

Table of Contents:

• Preface - essay by Orson Scott Card
• Science Fiction and "The Force" - essay by Orson Scott Card
• Robot Dreams - (1986) - shortstory by Isaac Asimov
• Portraits of His Children - (1985) - novelette by George R. R. Martin
• Tourists - (1985) - shortstory by Lisa Goldstein
• Blood Music - (1983) - novelette by Greg Bear
• Time's Rub - (1984) - shortstory by Gregory Benford
• Shanidar - (1985) - novelette by David Zindell
• Speech Sounds - (1983) - shortstory by Octavia E. Butler
• Snow - (1985) - shortstory by John Crowley
• Klein's Machine - (1985) - shortstory by Andrew Weiner
• Pots - (1985) - novelette by C. J. Cherryh
• Press Enter [] - (1984) - novella by John Varley
• Dinosaurs - (1987) - novelette by Walter Jon Williams
• Face Value - (1986) - shortstory by Karen Joy Fowler
• Cabracan - (1986) - shortstory by Lewis Shiner
• Rockabye Baby - (1985) - novelette by S. C. Sykes
• The Pure Product - (1986) - novelette by John Kessel
• Out of All Them Bright Stars - (1985) - shortstory by Nancy Kress
• The Fringe - (1985) - novelette by Orson Scott Card

A dark and powerful fantasy from the bestselling author of Ender's Shadow.

Enter the city of Hart's Hope, ruled by gods both powerful and indifferent, riddled with sorcery and revenge. The city was captured by a rebellious lord, Palicrovol, who overthrew the cruel king, Nasilee, hated by his people.

Palicrovol, too, was cruel, as befitted a king. He took the true mantle of kinghood by forcing Asineth, now Queen by her father's death, to marry him, raping her to consummate the marriage. [But he was not cruel enough to rule.] He let her live after her humiliation; live to bear a daughter; live to return from exile and retake the throne of Hart's Hope.

But she, in turn, sent Palicrovol into exile to breed a son who would, in the name of the God, take back the kingdom from its cruel Queen.

Damaged Houses

A master craftsman, Don Lark could fix everything except what mattered, his own soul. After tragedy claimed the one thing he loved, he began looking for dilapidated houses to buy, renovate, and resell at a profit--giving these empty shells the second chance at life he denied himself.

Damaged Souls

Then in a quiet Southern town, Lark finds his biggest challenge: a squalid yet sturdy mansion that has suffered decades of abuse at the hands of greedy landlords and transient tenants. While two charming old neighbor ladies ply him with delicious cooking, they offer dire warnings about the house's evil past. But there is something about this building that pushes Lark on, even as its enchantments grow increasingly ominous. Will finishing the house offer Lark redemption, or unleash the darkest forces of damnation upon him?

George Galen is a brilliant scientist, a pioneer in gene therapy. But Galen is dangerously insane - he has created a method to alter human DNA, not just to heal diseases, but to "improve" people - make them stronger, make them able to heal more quickly, and make them compliant to his will.

Frank Hartman is also a brilliant virologist, working for the government's ultra-secret bio-hazard agency. He has discovered how to neutralize Galen's DNA-changing virus, making him the one man who stands in the way of Galen's plan to "improve" the entire human race.

This taut thriller takes the reader a few years into the future, and shows the promise and danger of new genetic medicine techniques.

Locus Award winning and Hugo and Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1989. The story can also be found in the anthology Back from the Dead (1991), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh and the collections Maps in a Mirror: The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card (1990) and The Changed Man (1992).

For Step Fletcher, his pregnant wife DeAnne, and their three children, the move to tiny Steuben, North Carolina, offers new hope and a new beginning. But from the first, eight-year-old Stevie's life there is an unending parade of misery and disaster.

Cruelly ostracized at his school, Stevie retreats further and further into himself -- and into a strange computer game and a group of imaginary friends.

But there is something eerie about his loyal, invisible new playmates: each shares the name of a child who has recently vanished from the sleepy Southern town. And terror grows for Step and DeAnne as the truth slowly unfolds. For their son has found something savagely evil... and it's coming for Stevie next.

In a peaceful, prosperous African American neighborhood in Los Angeles, Mack Street is a mystery child who has somehow found a home. Discovered abandoned in an overgrown park, raised by a blunt-speaking single woman, Mack comes and goes from family to family–a boy who is at once surrounded by boisterous characters and deeply alone. But while Mack senses that he is different from most, and knows that he has strange powers, he cannot possibly understand how unusual he is until the day he sees, in a thin slice of space, a narrow house. Beyond it is a backyard–and an entryway into an extraordinary world stretching off into an exotic distance of geography, history, and magic.

Passing through the skinny house that no one else can see, Mack is plunged into a realm where time and reality are skewed, a place where what Mack does and sees seem to have strange affects in the "real world" of concrete, cars, commerce, and conflict. Growing into a tall, powerful young man, pursuing a forbidden relationship, and using Shakespeare's Midsummer's Night Dream as a guide into the vast, timeless fantasy world, Mack becomes a player in an epic drama. Understanding this drama is Mack's challenge. His reward, if he can survive the trip, is discovering not only who he really is . . . but why he exists.

Both a novel of constantly surprising entertainment and a tale of breathtaking literary power, Magic Street is a masterwork from a supremely gifted, utterly original American writer–a novel that uses realism and fantasy to delight, challenge, and satisfy on the most profound levels.

An overview of the best science fiction short stories of the 20th century as selected and evaluated by critically-acclaimed author Orson Scott Card.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Orson Scott Card
• Call Me Joe - (1957) - novelette by Poul Anderson
• "All You Zombies--" - (1959) - shortstory by Robert A. Heinlein
• Tunesmith - (1957) - novelette by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.
• A Saucer of Loneliness - (1953) - shortstory by Theodore Sturgeon
• Robot Dreams - (1986) - shortstory by Isaac Asimov
• Devolution - (1936) - shortstory by Edmond Hamilton
• The Nine Billion Names of God - (1953) - shortstory by Arthur C. Clarke
• A Work of Art - (1956) - novelette by James Blish
• Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed - (1949) - shortstory by Ray Bradbury
• "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman - (1965) - shortstory by Harlan Ellison
• Eurema's Dam - (1972) - shortstory by R. A. Lafferty
• Passengers - (1968) - shortstory by Robert Silverberg
• The Tunnel Under the World - (1955) - novelette by Frederik Pohl
• Who Can Replace a Man? - (1958) - shortstory by Brian W. Aldiss
• The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas - (1973) - shortstory by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Inconstant Moon - (1971) - novelette by Larry Niven
• Sandkings - (1979) - novelette by George R. R. Martin
• The Road Not Taken - (1985) - novelette by Harry Turtledove
• Dogfight - (1985) - novelette by Michael Swanwick and William Gibson
• Face Value - (1986) - shortstory by Karen Joy Fowler
• Pots - (1985) - novelette by C. J. Cherryh
• Snow - (1985) - shortstory by John Crowley
• Rat - (1986) - shortstory by James Patrick Kelly
• Bears Discover Fire - (1990) - shortstory by Terry Bisson
• A Clean Escape - (1985) - shortstory by John Kessel
• Tourists - (1985) - shortstory by Lisa Goldstein
• One - (1995) - shortstory by George Alec Effinger

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, May 1978. It is included in the collection Maps in a Mirror: The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card (1990).

In one of the most powerful and thought-provoking novels of his remarkable career, Orson Scott Card interweaves a compelling portrait of Christopher Columbus with the story of a future scientist who believes she can alter human history from a tragedy of bloodshed and brutality to a world filled with hope and healing.

Hugo Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, September 1979. The story can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction Novellas of the Year #2 (1980), edited by Terry Carr.

Kidnapped at an early age, the young singer Ansset has been raised in isolation at the mystical retreat called the Songhouse. His life has been filled with music, and having only songs for companions, he develops a voice that is unlike any heard before. Ansset's voice is both a blessing and a curse, for the young Songbird can reflect all the hopes and fears his auidence feels and, by magnifying their emotions, use his voice to heal--or to destroy. When it is discovered that his is the voice that the Emperor has waited decades for, Ansset is summoned to the Imperial Palace on Old Earth. Many fates rest in Ansset's hands, and his songs will soon be put to the test: either to salve the troubled conscience of a conqueror, or drive him, and the universe, into mad chaos.

Songmaster is a haunting story of power and love--the tale of the man who would destroy everything he loves to preserve humanity's peace, and the boy who might just sing the world away.

Is it space travel that children dream of, or merely visiting other worlds? Todd had always set his heart on being an astronaut, but when he meets an alien and travels to another world, he doesn't use a spaceship; he just hangs out in his own back yard.

In Space Boy, Orson Scott Card, author of Ender's Game, takes listeners into a strange and wonderful future, where people from another world regularly visit Earth, usually without being noticed. And when humans travel to their world, they find themselves dangerously weak and powerless, until Todd finds a way to set both worlds to rights.

By turns funny and painful, Space Boy is Card at his best, exploring human nature for the entertainment of readers young and old.

This story originaly appeared in English on GalaxyOnline in 2000. A Polish translation apparently predates the first English publication. It was reprinted in Lightspeed, January 2011. The story can also be found in the anthologies Lightspeed: Year One (2011) and Wastelands 2: More Stories of the Apocalypse (2015), both edited by John Joseph Adams. It is included in the collection Keeper of Dreams (2008).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Originaly published as "A Planet Called Treason".

Lanik Mueller's birthright as heir to planet Treason's most powerful rulership will never be realized. He is a "rad" -- radical regenerative. A freak among people who can regenerate injured flesh... and trade extra body parts to the Offworld oppressors for iron. For, on a planet without hard metals -- or the means of escape -- iron is power in the race to build a spacecraft.

Iron is the promise of freedom--which may never be fulfilled as Lanik uncovers a treacherous conspiracy beyond his imagination.

Now charged with a mission of conquest--and exile--Lanik devises a bold and dangerous plan... a quest that may finally break the vicious chain of rivalry and bloodshed that enslaves the people of Treason as the Offworld never could.

A shattering childhood tragedy left Quentin Fears devastated and unable to cope with the world and its citizens. It didn't, however, prevent him from making millions through brilliant investments. And now the enigmatic recluse has experienced the extraordinarily unexpected: love at first sight.

But a whirlwind courtship and marriage to Madeleine - beautiful, witty, and equally ill-at-ease with reality - is bringing Quentin something other than the bliss he anticipated, for now he must meet his new wife's family.

A bizarre, dysfunctional collection of extreme characters, they are guarding a secret both shocking and terrifying, as is Madeleine herself. And suddenly Quentin Fears must prevent his dream woman from unleashing an ageless malevolence intent on ruling the world.

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Omni, March 1979. The story can aslo be found in the anthologies The 1980 Annual World's Best SF (1980), edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha, Nebula Winners Fifteen (1981), edited by Frank Herbert, and The Fourth Omni Book of Science Fiction (1985), edited by Ellen Datlow. It is included in the collections Unaccompanied Sonata and Other Stories (1981) and Maps in a Mirror: The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card (1990).

From the the bestselling and world-renowned Orson Scott Card comes this collection of science fiction stories - each destined to inspire and remain with the reader for years to come. The collection includes the short story "Ender's Game", upon which the subsequent world-famous novel was based.

"Ender's Game" - Why are the wars of the future fought by children? Because they alone are free from all moral restraints.

"Eumedines" - What was the flippered monstrosity that had taken up residence in his WC?

"Unaccompanied Sonata" - It's not easy to be a musical genius when society makes it a crime to listen to Bach!

And many more...

Table of Contents:

• Tin Men - (1980) - poem
• Introduction: An Open Letter to the Author - (1981) - essay by Ben Bova
• Ender's Game - (1977) - novelette
• Kingsmeat - (1978) - short story
• Deep Breathing Exercises - (1979) - short story
• Closing the Timelid - (1979) - short story
• I Put My Blue Genes On - (1978) - short story
• Eumenides in the Fourth-Floor Lavatory - (1979) - novelette
• Mortal Gods - (1979) - short story
• Quietus - (1979) - short story
• The Monkeys Thought 'Twas All in Fun - (1979) - novelette
• The Porcelain Salamander - (1981) - short story
• Unaccompanied Sonata - (1979) - short story
• Afterword: On Origins - (1981) - essay

A legend as old as the stars rules the constructed world of Imakuta. When the seventh seventh seventh human heptarch is crowned, he will be the Kristos and will bring eternal salvationor the destruction of the cosmos.

The dragons are coming! Here are thirteen original tales about that most popular of fabulous beasts--the dragon! Edited by Orson Scott Card, this book features works by authors such as Roger Zelazny, Michael Bishop, Craig Shaw Gardner, Steve Rasnic Tem and more.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Orson Scott Card
• Ice Dragon - novelette by George R. R. Martin
• The George Business - shortstory by Roger Zelazny
• One Winter in Eden - novelette by Michael Bishop
• A Drama of Dragons - novelette by Craig Shaw Gardner
• Silken Dragon - novelette by Steven E. McDonald
• Dragon Lore - poem by Steve Rasnic Tem
• Eagle-Worm - shortstory by Jessica Amanda Salmonson
• The Dragon of Dunloon - novelette by Arthur Dembling
• If I Die Before I Wake - novelette by Greg Bear
• As Above, So Below - shortstory by John M. Ford
• Cockfight - novelette by Jane Yolen
• From Bach to Broccoli - shortstory by Richard Kearns
• Dragon Touched - novelette by Dave Smeds

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Orson Scott Card
• Filed Teeth - novelette by Glen Cook
• Vince's Dragon - shortstory by Ben Bova
• The Thermals of August - (1981) - novelette by Edward Bryant
• The Dragons' Clubs - shortstory by Stephen Kimmel
• Negwenya - novelette by Janet Berliner
• Middle Woman - shortstory by Orson Scott Card
• The Storm King - (1980) - novelette by Joan D. Vinge
• My Bones Waxed Old - poem by Robert Frazier
• Soldatenmangel - shortstory by Victor Milán
• Alas, My Love, You Do Me Wrong - novelette by James Tucker
• Fear of Fly - shortstory by Lynn Mims
• Though All the Mountains Lie Between - novelette by Jeffrey A. Carver
• The Lady of the Purple Forest - novelette by Allan Bruton
• A Dragon in the Man - (1980) - shortstory by Kevin Christensen
• A Plague of Butterflies - shortstory by Orson Scott Card

The American Empire has grown too fast, and the fault lines at home are stressed to the breaking point. The war of words between Right and Left has collapsed into a shooting war, though most people just want to be left alone.

The battle rages between the high-technology weapons on one side, and militia foot-soldiers on the other, devastating the cities, and overrunning the countryside. But the vast majority, who only want the killing to stop, and the nation to return to more peaceful days, have technology, weapons and strategic geniuses of their own.

When the American dream shatters into violence, who can hold the people and the government together? And which side will you be on?

Orson Scott Card is a master storyteller, who has earned millions of fans and reams of praise for his previous science fiction and fantasy novels. Now he steps a little closer to the present day with this chilling look at a near future scenario of a new American Civil War.

The war of words between right and left collapsed into a shooting war, and raged between the high-technology weapons on each side, devastating cities and overrunning the countryside.

At the close of Empire, political scientist and government adviser Averell Torrent had maneuvered himself into the presidency of the United States. And now that he has complete power at home, he plans to expand American imperial power around the world.

Opportunity comes quickly. There's a deadly new plague in Africa, and it is devastating the countryside and cities. President Torrent declares American solidarity with the victims, but places all of Africa in quarantine until a vaccine is found or the disease burns itself out. And he sends Captain Bartholomew Coleman, Cole to his friends, to run the relief operations and protect the American scientists working on identifying the virus. If Cole and his team can avoid dying of the plague, or being cut down by the weapons of fearful African nations, they might do some good. Or they might be out of the way for good.

Orson Scott Card offers a Christmas gift to his millions of fans with this short novel set during Ender's first years at the Battle School where it is forbidden to celebrate religious holidays.

The children come from many nations, many religions; while they are being trained for war, religious conflict between them is not on the curriculum. But Dink Meeker, one of the older students, doesn't see it that way. He thinks that giving gifts isn't exactly a religious observation, and on Sinterklaas Day he tucks a present into another student's shoe.

This small act of rebellion sets off a battle royal between the students and the staff, but some surprising alliances form when Ender comes up against a new student, Zeck Morgan. The War over Santa Claus will force everyone to make a choice.

After twenty-three years, Orson Scott Card returns to his acclaimed best-selling series with the first true, direct sequel to the classic Ender's Game.

In Ender's Game, the world's most gifted children were taken from their families and sent to an elite training school. At Battle School, they learned combat, strategy, and secret intelligence to fight a dangerous war on behalf of those left on Earth. But they also learned some important and less definable lessons about life.

After the life-changing events of those years, these children-now teenagers-must leave the school and readapt to life in the outside world.

Having not seen their families or interacted with other people for years-where do they go now? What can they do?

Ender fought for humanity, but he is now reviled as a ruthless assassin. No longer allowed to live on Earth, he enters into exile. With his sister Valentine, he chooses to leave the only home he's ever known to begin a relativistic-and revelatory-journey beyond the stars.

What happened during the years between Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead? What did Ender go through from the ages of 12 through 35? The story of those years has never been told. Taking place 3000 years before Ender finally receives his chance at redemption in Speaker for the Dead, this is the long-lost story of Ender.

For twenty-three years, millions of readers have wondered and now they will receive the answers. Ender in Exile is Orson Scott Card's moving return to all the action and the adventure, the profound exploration of war and society, and the characters one never forgot.

On one of these ships, there is a baby that just may share the same special gifts as Ender's old friend Bean....

Hugo Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, August 1977. The story has been reprinted many times and can be found in the anthologies:

• The Spear of Mars (1980), edited by Reginald Bretnor
• The Analog Anthology #2 (1982), edited by Stanley Schmidt
• There Will Be War (1983), edited by John F. Carr and Jerry Pournelle
• Visions of Wonder (1996), edited by David G. Hartwell and Milton T. Wolf
• The Best Military Science Fiction of the 20th Century (2001), edited by Harry Turtledove and Martin H. Greenberg
• Future Games (2013), edited by Paula Guran

It is included in the collections Unaccompanied Sonata and Other Stories (1981), Maps in a Mirror: The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card (1990), and First Meetings: Three Stories From The Enderverse (2002).

The story was later expanded to the full novel Ender's Game (1985).

Contains:

• The Polish Boy
• Teacher's Pest
• The Investment Counselor

Later editions also include the novelette Ender' Game (1977).

In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn't make the cutyoung Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training.

Ender's skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister.

Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender's two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives.

In the aftermath of his terrible war, Ender Wiggin disappeared, and a powerful voice arose: The Speaker for the Dead, who told the true story of the Bugger War.

Now, long years later, a second alien race has been discovered, but again the aliens' ways are strange and frightening... again, humans die. And it is only the Speaker for the Dead, who is also Ender Wiggin the Xenocide, who has the courage to confront the mystery... and the truth.

The war for survival of the planet Lusitania will be fought in the hearts of a child named Gloriously Bright.

On Lusitania, Ender found a world where humans and pequininos and the Hive Queen could all live together; where three very different intelligent species could find common ground at last. Or so he thought.

Lusitania also harbors the descolada, a virus that kills all humans it infects, but which the pequininos require in order to become adults. The Startways Congress so fears the effects of the descolada, should it escape from Lusitania, that they have ordered the destruction of the entire planet, and all who live there. The Fleet is on its way, a second xenocide seems inevitble.

With Children of the Mind, Card returns to the story of Ender Wiggin: hero of the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Enders Game, the original Speaker for the Dead, and the hated Xenocide who murdered an entire planet. Now his adopted world, Lusitania, is threatened by the same planet-destroying weapon that he himself used so many thousands of years before.

Enders oldest friend, Jane, the computer intelligence that has evolved with him over 3000 years, is about to be killed by the Starways Congress, which has finally discovered her existence and fears her control of the galaxy-wide interlocked network of computers and ansibles.Jane can save the three sentient races of Lusitaniathe Pequeninos, the Hive Queens daughters, and the human colony. She has learned how to move ships outside the universe, and then instantly back to a different world, abolishing the light-speed limit. But it takes all the processing power available to her, and the Starways Congress is shutting down the Net world by world.

Orson Scott Card brings us back to the very beginning of his brilliant Ender Quartet, with a novel that allows us to reenter that world anew.

With all the power of his original creation, Card has created a parallel volume to Ender's Game, a book that expands and compliments the first, enhancing its power, illuminating its events and its powerful conclusion.

The human race is at War with the "Buggers", an insect-like alien race. The first battles went badly, and now as Earth prepares to defend itself against the imminent threat of total destruction at the hands of an inscrutable alien enemy, all focus is on the development and training of military geniuses who can fight such a war, and win.

The long distances of interstellar space have given hope to the defenders of Earth--they have time to train these future commanders up from childhood, forging then into an irresisible force in the high orbital facility called the Battle School.

Andrew "Ender" Wiggin was not the only child in the Battle School he was just the best of the best. In this new book, card tells the story of another of those precocious generals, the one they called Bean--the one who became Ender's right hand, part of his team, in the final battle against the Buggers.

Bean's past was a battle just to survive. He first appeared on the streets of Rotterdam, a tiny child with a mind leagues beyond anyone else's. He knew he could not survive through strength he used his tactical genius to gain acceptance into a children's gang, and then to help make that gang a template for success for all the others. He civilized them, and lived to grow older.

Bean's desperate struggle to live, and his success, brought him to the attention of the Battle School's recruiters, those people scouring the planet for leaders, tacticians, and generals to save Earth from the threat of alien invasion. Bean was sent into orbit, to the Battle School. And there he met Ender....

The War is over, won by Ender Wiggin and his team of brilliant child-warriors. The enemy is destroyed, the human race is saved. Ender himself refuses to return to the planet, but his crew has gone home to their families, scattered across the globe. The battle school is no more.

But with the external threat gone, the Earth has become a battlefield once more. The children of the Battle School are more than heros they are potential weapons that can bring power to the countries that control them. One by one, all of Ender's Dragon Army are kidnapped. Only Bean escapes and he turns for help to Ender's brother Peter.

Peter Wiggin, Ender's older brother, has already been manipulating the politics of Earth from behind the scenes. With Bean's help, he will eventually rule the world.

Bestselling author Orson Scott Card brings to life a new chapter in the saga of Ender's Earth.

Earth and its society has been changed irrevocably in the aftermath of Ender Wiggin's victory over the Formics--the unity enforced upon the warring nations by an alien enemy has shattered. Nations are rising again, seeking territory and influence, and most of all, seeking to control the skills and loyalty of the children from the Battle School.

But one person has a better idea. Peter Wiggin, Ender's older, more ruthless, brother, sees that any hope for the future of Earth lies in restoring a sense of unity and purpose. And he has an irresistible call on the loyalty of Earth's young warriors. With Bean at his side, the two will reshape our future.

Here is the continuing story of Bean and Petra, and the rest of Ender's Dragon Army, as they take their places in the new government of Earth.

Bean's past was a battle just to survive. He first appeared on the streets of Rotterdam, a tiny child with a mind leagues beyond anyone else. He knew he could not survive through strength; he used his tactical genius to gain acceptance into a children's gang, and then to help make that gang a template for success for all the others. He civilized them, and lived to grow older. Then he was discovered by the recruiters for the Battle School.

For Earth was at war -- a terrible war with an inscrutable alien enemy. A war that humanity was near to losing. But the long distances of interstellar space has given hope to the defenders of Earth -- they had time to train military geniuses up from childhood, forging them into an irresistible force in the high-orbital facility called the Battle School. That story is told in two books, the beloved classic Ender's Game, and its parallel, Ender's Shadow.

Bean was the smallest student at the Battle School, but he became Ender Wiggins' right hand. Since then he has grown to be a power on Earth. He served the Hegemon as strategist and general in the terrible wars that followed Ender's defeat of the alien empire attacking Earth. Now he and his wife Petra yearn for a safe place to build a family -- something he has never known -- but there is nowhere on Earth that does not harbor his enemies -- old enemies from the days in Ender's Jeesh, new enemies from the wars on Earth. To find security, Bean and Petra must once again follow in Ender's footsteps. They must leave Earth behind, in the control of the Hegemon, and look to the stars.

Ender’s Shadow explores the stars in this all-new novel...

At the end of Shadow of the Giant, Bean flees to the stars with three of his children--the three who share the engineered genes that gave him both hyper-intelligence and a short, cruel physical life. The time dilation granted by the speed of their travel gives Earth’s scientists generations to seek a cure, to no avail. In time, they are forgotten--a fading ansible signal speaking of events lost to Earth’s history. But the Delphikis are about to make a discovery that will let them save themselves, and perhaps all of humanity in days to come.

For there in space before them lies a derelict Formic colony ship. Aboard it, they will find both death and wonders--the life support that is failing on their own ship, room to grow, and labs in which to explore their own genetic anomaly and the mysterious disease that killed the ship’s colony.

One planet.

Three sapient species living peacefully together.

And one deadly virus that could wipe out every world in the Starways Congress, killing billions.

Is the only answer another great Xenocide?

The mining ship El Cavador is far out from Earth, in the deeps of the Kuiper Belt, beyond Pluto. Other mining ships, and the families that live on them, are few and far between this far out. So when El Cavador's telescopes pick up a fast-moving object coming in-system, it's hard to know what to make of it. It's massive and moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light.

El Cavador has other problems. Their systems are old and failing. The family is getting too big for the ship. There are claim-jumping corporate ships bringing Asteroid Belt tactics to the Kuiper Belt. Worrying about a distant object that might or might not be an alien ship seems...not important.

They're wrong. It's the most important thing that has happened to the human race in a million years. The first Formic War is about to begin.

One hundred years before Ender's Game, the aliens arrived on Earth with fire and death. This is the story of the First Formic War.

Victor Delgado beat the alien ship to Earth, but just barely. Not soon enough to convince skeptical governments that there was a threat. They didn't believe that until space stations and ships and colonies went up in sudden flame.

And when that happened, only Mazer Rackham and the Mobile Operations Police could move fast enough to meet the threat.

The story of The First Formic War continues in Earth Awakens.

Nearly 100 years before the events of Orson Scott Card's bestselling novel Ender's Game, humans were just beginning to step off Earth and out into the Solar System. A thin web of ships in both asteroid belts; a few stations; a corporate settlement on Luna. No one had seen any sign of other space-faring races; everyone expected that First Contact, if it came, would happen in the future, in the empty reaches between the stars. Then a young navigator on a distant mining ship saw something moving too fast, heading directly for our sun.

When the alien ship screamed through the solar system, it disrupted communications between the far-flung human mining ships and supply stations, and between them and Earth. So Earth and Luna were unaware that they had been invaded until the ship pulled into Earth orbit, and began landing terra-forming crews in China. Politics and pride slowed the response on Earth, and on Luna, corporate power struggles seemed more urgent than distant deaths. But there are a few men and women who see that if Earth doesn't wake up and pull together, the planet could be lost.

From Orson Scott Card, award-winning and bestselling author of Ender's Game, his first solo Enderverse novel in years.

Children of the Fleet is a new angle on Card's bestselling series, telling the story of the Fleet in space, parallel to the story on Earth told in the Ender's Shadow series.

Ender Wiggin won the Third Formic war, ending the alien threat to Earth. Afterwards, all the terraformed Formic worlds were open to settlement by humans, and the International Fleet became the arm of the Ministry of Colonization, run by Hirum Graff. MinCol now runs Fleet School on the old Battle School station, and still recruits very smart kids to train as leaders of colony ships, and colonies.

Dabeet Ochoa is a very smart kid. Top of his class in every school. But he doesn't think he has a chance at Fleet School, because he has no connections to the Fleet. That he knows of. At least until the day that Colonel Graff arrives at his school for an interview.

Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston return to their Ender's Game prequel series with this first volume of an all-new trilogy about the Second Formic War in The Swarm.

The first invasion of Earth was beaten back by a coalition of corporate and international military forces, and the Chinese army. China has been devastated by the Formic's initial efforts to eradicate Earth life forms and prepare the ground for their own settlement. The Scouring of China struck fear into the other nations of the planet; that fear blossomed into drastic action when scientists determined that the single ship that wreaked such damage was merely a scout ship.

There is a mothership out beyond the Solar System's Kuiper Belt, and it's heading into the system, unstoppable by any weapons that Earth can muster.

Earth has been reorganized for defense. There is now a Hegemon, a planetary official responsible for keeping all the formerly warring nations in line. There's a Polemarch, responsible for organizing all the military forces of the planet into the new International Fleet. But there is an enemy within, an enemy as old as human warfare: ambition and politics. Greed and self-interest. Will Bingwen, Mazer Rackam, Victor Delgado and Lem Juke be able to divert those very human enemies in time to create a weapon that can effectively defend humanity in the inexorable Second Formic War?

New York Times bestselling authors Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston return to the prequels to Ender's Game following The Swarm with The Hive, book two in the Second Formic War.

Card and Johnston continue the fast-paced hard science fiction history of the Formic Wars--the alien invasions of Earth's Solar System that ultimately led to Ender Wiggin's total victory in Ender's Game.

A coalition of Earth's nations barely fought off the Formics' first scout ship. Now it's clear that there's a mother-ship out on edge of the system, and the aliens are prepared to take Earth by force. Can Earth's warring nations and corporations put aside their differences and mount an effective defense?

Ender's Game is one of the most popular and bestselling science fiction novels of all time. The Formic War series (The First Formic War and The Second Formic War) are the prequels to Ender's story.

High above the planet Harmony, the Oversoul watches. Its task, programmed so many millennia ago, is to guard the human settlement on this planet--to protect this fragile remnant of Earth from all threats. To protect them, most of all, from themselves.

The Oversoul has done its job well. There is no war on Harmony. There are no weapons of mass destruction. There is no technology that could lead to weapons of war. By control of the data banks, and subtle interference in the very thoughts of the people, the artificial intelligence has fulfilled its mission.

But now there is a problem. In orbit, the Oversoul realizes that it has lost access to some of its memory banks, and some of its power systems are failing. And on the planet, men are beginning to think about power, wealth, and conquest.

As Harmony's Oversoul grows weaker, a great warrior has arisen to challenge its bans. His name is Moozh, and he has won control of an army using forbidden technology. Now he is aiming his soldiers at the city of Basilica, that strong fortress above the Plain.

Basilica remains in turmoil. Wetchik and his sons are not strong enough to stop a army. Can Rasa and her allies defeat him through intrigue, or will Moozh take the city and all who are in it?

The City of Basilica has fallen. Now Wetchik, Nafai, and all their family must brave the desert wastes, and cross the wide continents to where Harmony's hidden spaceport lies silent, abandoned, waiting for the command to make the great interstellar ships ready for flight again.

But of these sixteen people, only a few have chosen their exile. The others, Rasa's spiteful daughters and their husbands; Wetchik's oldest son, Elemak, have been forced against their will. Their anger and hatreds will make the difficult journey harder.

The Oversoul of the colony planet Harmony selected the family of Wetchik to carry it back to long-lost Earth. Now grown to a tribe in the years of their journey to Harmony's hidden starport, they are ready at last to take a ship to the stars. But from the beginning there has been bitter dispute between Nafai and Elemak, Wetchick's youngest son and his oldest.

On board the starship Bailica, the children of the tribe will become pawns in the struggle. Two factions are each making secret plans to awaken the children, and themselves, early from the cold-sleep capsules in which they will pass the long decades of the journey. Each side hopes to gain years of influence on the minds of the children, winning their loyalty in the struggle for control of reclaimed Earth.

But the Oversoul is truly in control of this journey. It has downloaded a complete copy of itself to the Ship's computers. And only Nafai, who wears the Cloak of the Starmaster by the Oversoul's command, really understand what this will mean to all their plans for the future.

High above the earth orbits the starship Basilica. On board the huge vessel is a sleeping woman. Of those who made the journey, Shedemai alone has survived the hundred of years since the Children of Wetchik returned to Earth.

She now wears the Cloak of the Starmaster, and the Oversoul wakes her sometimes to watch over her descendants on the planet below. The population has grown rapidly--there are cities and nations now, whole peoples descended from the who followed Nafai or Elemak.

But in all the long years of watching and searching, the Oversoul has not found the thing it sought. It has not found the Keeper of the Earth, the central intelligence that also can repair the Oversoul's damaged programming.

46 short stories 1977-1990. Many heroes are manipulated by unstoppable powers. 10 essays on motivations, autobiography, faith. Some titles are: Ender's Game, Kingsmeat, Lost Boys, Elephants of Posnan, Unaccompanied Sonata, Freeway Games, Quietus, Best Day, Fat Farm, Eye for Eye, Sepulchre of Songs, Monkey Thought Twas All In Fun, Saving Grace, Clap Hands and Sing ...

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (Book 1: The Hanged Man, Tales of Dread) - essay by Orson Scott Card
• Eumenides in the Fourth Floor Lavatory - (1979)
• Quietus - (1979)
• Deep Breathing Exercises - (1979)
• Fat Farm - (1980)
• Closing the Timelid - (1979)
• Freeway Games - (1979)
• A Sepulchre of Songs - (1981)
• Prior Restraint - (1986)
• The Changed Man and the King of Words - (1982)
• Memories of My Head - (1990)
• Lost Boys - (1989)
• Afterword (Book 1: The Hanged Man, Tales of Dread) - essay by Orson Scott Card
• Introduction (Book 2: Flux, Tales of Human Futures) - essay by Orson Scott Card
• A Thousand Deaths - (1978)
• Clap Hands and Sing - (1982)
• Dogwalker - (1989)
• But We Try Not to Act Like It - (1979)
• I Put My Blue Genes On - (1978)
• In the Doghouse - (1978)
• The Originist - (1989)
• Afterword (Book 2: Flux, Tales of Human Futures) - essay by Orson Scott Card
• Introduction (Book 3: Maps in a Mirror, Fables and Fantasies) - essay by Orson Scott Card
• Unaccompanied Sonata - (1979)
• A Cross-Country Trip to Kill Richard Nixon - (1980)
• The Porcelain Salamander - (1981)
• Middle Woman - (1981)
• The Bully and the Beast - (1979)
• The Princess and the Bear - (1980)
• Sandmagic - (1979)
• The Best Day - (1984)
• A Plague of Butterflies - (1981)
• The Monkeys Thought 'Twas All in Fun - (1979)
• Afterword (Book 3: Maps in a Mirror, Fables and Fantasies) - essay by Orson Scott Card
• Introduction (Book 4: Cruel Miracles, Tales of Death, Hope, and Holiness) - essay by Orson Scott Card
• Mortal Gods - (1979)
• Saving Grace - (1987)
• Eye for Eye - (1987)
• St. Amy's Tale - (1980)
• Kingsmeat - (1978)
• Holy - (1980)
• Afterword (Book 4: Cruel Miracles, Tales of Death, Hope, and Holiness) - essay by Orson Scott Card
• Introduction (Book 5: Lost Songs, The Hidden Stories) - essay by Orson Scott Card
• Ender's Game - (1977)
• Mikal's Songbird - (1978)
• Prentice Alvin and the No-Good Plow - (1989)
• Malpractice - (1977)
• Follower - (1978)
• Hitching - (1978)
• Damn Fine Novel - (1989)
• Billy's Box - (1978)
• The Best Family Home Evening Ever - (1978)
• Bicicleta - (1977)
• I Think Mom and Dad Are Going Crazy, Jerry - (1979)
• Gert Fram - (1977)
• Afterword (Book 5: Lost Songs, The Hidden Stories) - essay by Orson Scott Card

Eleven chilling tales, including the author's introductions and afterword comments, provoke the dreaded dark side of the reader's imagination.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Orson Scott Card
• Eumenides in the Fourth Floor Lavatory - (1979) - novelette
• Quietus - (1979) - short story
• Deep Breathing Exercises - (1979) - short story
• Fat Farm - (1980) - short story
• Closing the Timelid - (1979) - short story
• Freeway Games - (1979) - short story
• A Sepulchre of Songs - (1981) - novelette
• Prior Restraint - (1986) - short story
• The Changed Man and the King of Words - (1982) - novelette
• Memories of My Head - (1990) - short story
• Lost Boys - (1989) - short story
• Afterword - essay by Orson Scott Card

Danny North knew from early childhood that his family was different, and that he was different from them. While his cousins were learning how to create the things that commoners called fairies, ghosts, golems, trolls, werewolves, and other such miracles that were the heritage of the North family, Danny worried that he would never show a talent, never form an outself.

He grew up in the rambling old house, filled with dozens of cousins, and aunts and uncles, all ruled by his father. Their home was isolated in the mountains of western Virginia, far from town, far from schools, far from other people.

There are many secrets in the House, and many rules that Danny must follow. There is a secret library with only a few dozen books, and none of them in English - but Danny and his cousins are expected to become fluent in the language of the books. While Danny's cousins are free to create magic whenever they like, they must never do it where outsiders might see.

Unfortunately, there are some secrets kept from Danny as well. And that will lead to disaster for the North family.

In this sequel to The Lost Gate, bestselling author Orson Scott Card continues his fantastic tale of the Mages of Westil who live in exile on Earth.

Here on Earth, Danny North is still in high school, yet he holds in his heart and mind all the stolen outselves of thirteen centuries of gatemages. The Families still want to kill him if they can't control him...and they can't control him. He is far too powerful.

And on Westil, Wad is now nearly powerless - he lost everything to Danny in their struggle. Even if he can survive the revenge of his enemies, he still must somehow make peace with the Gatemage Daniel North.

For when Danny took that power from Loki, he also took the responsibility for the Great Gates. And when he comes face-to-face with the mages who call themselves Bel and Ishtoreth, he will come to understand just why Loki closed the gates all those centuries ago.

In Gatefather, the third installment in the Mithermages series, New York Times bestselling author Orson Scott Card continues his fantastic tale of the Mages of Westil who live in exile on Earth.

Danny North is the first Gate Mage to be born on Earth in nearly 2000 years, or at least the first to survive to claim his power. Families of Westil in exile on Earth have had a treaty that required the death of any suspected Gate Mage. The wars between the Families had been terrible, until at last they realized it was their own survival in question. But a Gate Mage, one who could build a Great Gate back to Westil, would give his own Family a terrible advantage over all the others, and reignite the wars. So they all had to die. And if the Families didn't kill them, the Gate Thief would-that mysterious Mage who destroyed every Great Gate, and the Gate Mage, before it could be opened between Earth and Westil.

But Danny survived. And Danny battled the Gate Thief, and won.

What he didn't know at the time was that the Gate Thief had a very good reason for closing the Great Gates-and Danny has now fallen into the power of that great enemy of both Earth and Westil.

A powerful secret. A dangerous path.

Rigg is well trained at keeping secrets. Only his father knows the truth about Rigg's strange talent for seeing the paths of people's pasts. But when his father dies, Rigg is stunned to learn just how many secrets Father had kept from him--secrets about Rigg's own past, his identity, and his destiny. And when Rigg discovers that he has the power not only to see the past, but also to change it, his future suddenly becomes anything but certain.

Rigg's birthright sets him on a path that leaves him caught between two factions, one that wants him crowned and one that wants him dead. He will be forced to question everything he thinks he knows, choose who to trust, and push the limits of his talent... or forfeit control of his destiny.

When Rigg and his friends crossed the Wall between the only world they knew and a world they could not imagine, he hoped he was leading them to safety. But the dangers in this new wallfold are more difficult to see. Rigg, Umbo, and Param know that they cannot trust the expendable, Vadesh-a machine shaped like a human, created to deceive-but they are no longer certain that they can even trust one another. But they will have little choice. Because although Rigg can decipher the paths of the past, he can’t yet see the horror that lies ahead: A destructive force with deadly intentions is hurtling toward Garden. If Rigg, Umbo, and Param can’t work together to alter the past, there will be no future.

From the internationally bestselling author of Ender's Game comes the riveting finale to the story of Rigg, a teenager who possesses a secret talent that allows him to see the paths of people's pasts.

In Pathfinder, Rigg joined forces with another teen with special talents on a quest to find Rigg's sister and discover the true depth and significance of their powers. Then Rigg's story continued in Ruins as he was tasked to decipher the paths of the past before the arrival of a destructive force with deadly intentions. Now, in Visitors, Rigg's journey comes to an epic and explosive conclusion as everything that has been building up finally comes to pass, and Rigg is forced to put his powers to the test in order to save his world and end the war once and for all.

This novelette orginally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, January 1987. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifth Annual Collection (1988), edited by Gardner Dozois, The 1988 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha, Future Earths: Under South American Skies (1993), edited by Gardner Dozois and Mike Resnick, and The Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction, 1960-1990 (1993), edited by Ursula K. Le Guin and Brian Attebery. The story is included in the collection The Folk of the Fringe (1989).

Only a few nuclear weapons fell in America-the weapons that destroyed our nation were biological and, ultimately, cultural. But in the chaos, the famine, the plague, there exited a few pockets of order. The strongest of them was the state of Deseret, formed from the vestiges of Utah, Colorado, and Idaho. The climate has changed. The Great Salt Lake has filled up to prehistoric levels. But there, on the fringes, brave, hardworking pioneers are making the desert bloom again.

A civilization cannot be reclaimed by powerful organizations, or even by great men alone. It must be renewed by individual men and women, one by one, working together to make a community, a nation, a new America.

Table of Contents:

• West - (1987) - novella
• Salvage - (1986) - novelette
• The Fringe - (1985) - novelette
• Pageant Wagon - (1989) - novella
• America - (1987) - novelette
• Author's Note: On Sycamore Hill - (1985) - essay
• Afterword - essay by Michael R. Collings

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1985 and was reprinted in Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, #14, September 2009. The story can aslo be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection (1986), edited by Gardner Dozois, Nebula Awards 21 (1986), edited by George Zebrowski and Future on Ice (1998), edited by Orson Scott Card. It is included in the collection The Folk of the Fringe (1989).

From the New York Times bestselling author of Enders Game comes a brand-new series following a teen who wakes up on an abandoned Earth to discover that he's a clone.

Laz is a side-stepper: a teen with the incredible power to jump his consciousness to alternate versions of himself in parallel worlds. All his life, there was no mistake that a little side-stepping couldn't fix.

Until Laz wakes up one day in a cloning facility on a seemingly abandoned Earth

Laz finds himself surrounded by hundreds of other clones, all dead, and quickly realizes that he too must be a clone of his original self. Laz has no idea what happened to the world he remembers as vibrant and bustling only yesterday, and he struggles to survive in the barren wasteland he's now trapped in. But the question that haunts him isn't why was he created, but instead, who woke him up... and why?

There's only a single bright spot in Laz's new life: one other clone appears to still be alive, although she remains asleep. Deep down, Laz believes that this girl holds the key to the mysteries plaguing him, but if he wakes her up, she'll be trapped in this hellscape with him

This is one problem that Laz can't just side-step his way out of.

WFA winning and Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, August 1986. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fourth Annual Collection (1987), edited by Gardner Dozois, Best SF of the Year #16 (1987), edited by Terry Carr, The American Fantasy Tradition (2002), edited by Brian M. Thomsen and New Magics: An Anthology of Today's Fantasy (2004) edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden.

From the primal depth's of the world's greatest myths comes this gripping fantasy of a boy, born to be a Maker, whose dangerous journey towards knowledge and power makes history...

Amid the deep woods where the Red Man still holds sway, a very special child is born. Young Alvin is the seventh son, and such a boy is destined to become great - perhaps even a man with the enormous powers of a Maker. But even in the loving safety of his home, dark forces reach out to destroy him. Somewhere out there is a power that will do anything to prevent him growing up...

Come here to the magical America that might have been, and marvel as the tale of Alvin Maker unfolds. The seventh son of a seventh son is a boy of mysterious powers, and he is waking to the mysteries of the land and its own chosen people.

The Tales of Alvin Maker series continues in volume three, Prentice Alvin. Young Alvin returns to the town of his birth, and begins his apprenticeship with Makepeace Smith, committing seven years of his life in exchange for the skills and knowledge of a blacksmith. But Alvin must also learn to control and use his own talent, that of a Maker, else his destiny will be unfulfilled.

Alvin is a Maker, the first to be born in a century.

Now a grown man and a journeyman smith, Alvin has returned to his family in the town of Vigor Church. He will share in their isolation, work as a blacksmith, and try to teach anyone who wishes to learn the knack of being a Maker. For Alvin has had a vision of the Crystal City he will build, and he knows that he cannot build it alone.

But he has left behind in Hatrack River enemies as well as true friends. His ancient foe, the Unmaker, whose cruel whispers and deadly plots have threatened Alvin's life at every turn, has found new hands to do his work of destruction.

Peggy is a Torch, able to see the fire burning in each person's heart. She can follow the paths of each person's future, and know each person's most intimate secrets. From the moment of Alvin Maker's birth, when the Unmaker first strove to kill him, she has protected him.

Now they are married, and Peggy is a part of Alvin's heart as well as his life.

But Alvin's destiny has taken them on separate journeys. Alvin has gone north into New England, where knacks are considered witchcraft, and their use is punished with death.

Peggy has been drawn south, to the British Crown Colonies and the court of King Arthur Stuart in exile. For she has seen a terrible future bloom in the heartfires of every person in America, a future of war and destruction. One slender path exists that leads through the bloodshed, and it is Peggy's quest to set the world on the path to peace.

Using the lore and the folk-magic of the men and women who settled North America, Orson Scott Card has created an alternate world where magic works, and where that magic has colored the entire history of the colonies. Charms and beseechings, hexes and potions, all have a place in the lives of the people of this world. Dowsers find water, the second sight warns of dangers to come, and a torch can read a person's future---or their heart.

In this world where "knacks" abound, Alvin, the seventh son of a seventh son, is a very special man indeed. He's a Maker; he has the knack of understanding how things are put together, how to create them, repair them, keep them whole, or tear them down. He can heal hearts as well as bones, he build a house, he can calm the waters or blow up a storm. And he can teach his knack to others, to the measure of their own talent.

Alvin has been trying to avert the terrible war that his wife, Peggy, a torch of extraordinary power, has seen down the life-lines of every American. Now she has sent him down the Mizzippy to the city of New Orleans, or Nueva Barcelona as they call it under Spanish occupation. Alvin doesn't know exactly why he's there, but when he and his brother-in-law, Arthur Stuart, find lodgings with a family of abolitionists who know Peggy, he suspects he'll find out soon.

But Nueva Barcelona is about to experience a plague, and Alvin's efforts to protect his friends by keeping them healthy will create more danger than he could ever have suspected. And in saving the poor people of the city, Alvin will be put to the greatest test of his life---a test that will draw on all his power. For the time has come for him to turn to his old friend Tenskwa-Tawa, the Red Prophet who controls the lands to the west of the Mizzippy. Now Alvin must take the first steps on the road to the Crystal City that was shown to him in a vision so long ago.

Contains:

• A Sleep and a Forgetting
• A Thousand Deaths
• Skipping Stones
• Second Chance
• Breaking the Game
• Lifeloop
• Burning
• And What Will We Do Tomorrow?
• Killing Children
• When No One Remembers His Name Will God Retire?
• The Stars That Blink

The book follows Jason Worthing, also known as Jazz, who is a boy growing up on Capitol, the capital planet of the Empire. Jas has "the swipe", which is a genetic mutation that enables telepathy. The swipe is feared in the Empire, so those who possess it are executed. After being found out as a swipe, Jas tries to escape, which leads to his capture by Abner Doon, who helps him rise to prominence as a space pilot. Eventually, Abner sends Jason away as the head of a colony so that the swipe would become more widespread, but when his ship reaches the planet, he is attacked, and the memories of all but one of the three-hundred eleven colonists are destroyed and two-third of the colonist are killed or damaged beyond awakening.

Gathering every story about Jason Worthing, this volume includes "The Worthing Chronicle," as well as all of the other stories set on Capitol and later on Jason's colonized planet.

It was a miracle of science that permitted human beings to live, if not forever, then for a long, long time. Some people, anyway. The rich, the powerful--they lived their lives at the rate of one year every ten. Somec created two societies: that of people who lived out their normal span and died, and those who slept away the decades, skipping over the intervening years and events. It allowed great plans to be put in motion. It allowed interstellar Empires to be built.

It came near to destroying humanity.

After a long, long time of decadence and stagnation, a few seed ships were sent out to save our species. They carried human embryos and supplies, and teaching robots, and one man. The Worthing Saga is the story of one of these men, Jason Worthing, and the world he found for the seed he carried.

Table of Contents:

• Author's Introduction - essay by Orson Scott Card
• The Worthing Chronicle - (1983) - novel
• Skipping Stones - (1979) - short story
• Second Chance - (1979) - short story
• Lifeloop - (1978) - short story
• Breaking the Game - (1979) - novelette
• Killing Children - (1978) - novelette
• And What Will We Do Tomorrow? - (1979) - short story
• Worthing Farm - short story
• Worthing Inn - short story
• The Tinker - (1980) - novelette
• Afterword - essay by Michael R. Collings

Eye for Eye:

Mick Winger is only seventeen -- and already he's killed over a dozen people. Not on purpose; he never meant to hurt anyone. But when Mick gets angry, people die, even the people he loves the most. Now he's on the run from his own terrible talent, and from those who would use his power for their own obscene purposes. But Mick is not alone. There are others like him. And if he will not join them, they will make him pay -- Eye for Eye.

The Tunesmith:

Erlin Baque is the last true musician on Earth. Commercial jingles have replaced real art. The Performers' Guild enforces mediocrity on pain of blacklisting. And the powerful overlords of business and industry are not about to let a lone tunesmith change this very profitable arrangement. But Basque has one weapon his enemies cannot resist: his music.