Search Worlds Without End

A single-volume edition of "Bolo" and "Rogue Bolo". The most powerful servants of the Terran Empire are machines endowed with artificial intelligence, designed to protect humankind - and the most powerful of all are the Bolos. They started out as simple tanks but now control the entire galaxy.

Table of Contents:

• The Night of the Trolls (1963) - novella
• Courier - [Retief] (1961) - novelette (variant of The Frozen Planet)
• Field Test (1976) - short story
• The Last Command (1967) - short story
• A Relic of War (1969) - short story
• Combat Unit (1960) - short story
• Rogue Bolo (1986) - novella
• Final Mission (1986) - novella
• A Short History of the Bolo Fighting Machines (1976) - short story

Originally developed as far back as the 1980's by the Bolo Division of General Motors, these great artillery machines took on awareness in later designs and gradually began to replace man in that most human of endeavors: War.

But let BOLO speak for itself. In the action-packed Annals of the Dinochrome Brigade, the ultimate fighting machines tell their own fascinating, far-ranging and ultimately tragic story...

Table of Contents:

• A Short History of the Bolo Fighting Machines (1976) - short story
• The Night of the Trolls (1963) - novella
• Courier - [Retief] (1961) - novelette (variant of The Frozen Planet)
• Field Test (1976) - short story
• The Last Command (1967) - short story
• A Relic of War (1969) - short story
• Combat Unit (1960) - short story

The saga of the first completely automated bolos - and perhaps the beginning of the end for the human race.

Table of Contents:

• Rogue Bolo (1986) - novella
• Final Mission (1986) - novella
• A Short History of the Bolo Fighting Machines (1976) - short story

Awakened from suspended animation aboard his exploration starship, John Jackson is shocked to discover that the ship never left Earth - and that he has slept a century after a world war. Facing a nightmare wilderness inhabited by neo-barbarians and sentient tanks, Jackson is the only man who can bring the world to its senses.

On the colony worlds of the Confederation, on the very edge of the galaxy, the colonists were sure that they had no enemies to worry about... until reptilian aliens discovered the metal-rich worlds of the Confederation and began slaughtering the colonists without mercy. Once more the survival of humanity depends on one machine: the always-faithful Bolo. And Bolos never surrender!

The enemy has stuck the human colony of cloud with merciless precision, an attack so deadly that even the world's sole Bolo, a Mark XXXIII Mod HCT named Hector, was overwhelmed. Within days, the survivors of cloud's shattered military had been herded into slave camps, while Hector, recognized as kin by the alein machine invaders, was "repaired, " his loyalities electronically suborned as he became a slave camp guard in the service of the !*!*! masters.....

When Colonel Jon Streicher leads his team of men and Bolos in a planetary invasion against Caern and the Aetryx, a group of mysterious beings, they find themselves caught in a trap, stranded in the midst of a battle against an immortal foe.

When a ruthless political regime, led by the charismatic and ambitious Vittori Santorini, seizes control of a planet still struggling to recover from an alien invasion, Kafari Khristinova must take on her former colleagues and the Bolo she once called friend to free the world from the evil Santorini, who has also brainwashed Kafari's young daughter, Yalena.

Controlled by their tireless electronic brains which were programmed to admit no possibility of defeat, the gigantic robot tanks known as Bolos were almost indestructible, and nearly unstoppable. Their artificial intelligences were designed to make them selflessly serve and protect humans throughout the galaxy and made each Bolo the epitome of the knight sans peur et sans reproche, and often far more noble than the humans who gave them their orders.

Now, David Weber, New York Times best-selling author of the Honor Harrington series, continues the history of the Bolo, in four short novels, one of them published here for the first time. One Bolo is driven over the edge by the very humans it is pledged to protect. Another Bolo must decide whether or not to disobey when it is given an order that constitutes genocide. A third must hunt one of its own kind whose robot brain is damaged and rescue two children which the deranged Bolo thinks it is protecting from a nonexistent enemy. And more, including as a bonus, David Weber's own authoritative technical history of the Bolo, all in a volume that will be irresistible both for David Weber's huge readership and Bolo fans everywhere.

Captain Maneka Trevor was the sole human survivor of the Dinochrome Brigade's 39th Battalion... but she hadn't wanted to be one.

The Bolo known as "Lazarus" -- Unit 28/G-179-LAZ -- was the 39th's sole surviving Bolo... but he hadn't been hers.

The doctors and the Bolo techs have put them both back together again, yet there are wounds no doctor or technician can heal.

And now Maneka and Lazarus must serve together once again, in a war whose stakes are literally the survival or extermination of the human race. They are all that stand between a desperate, secret colony of humanity and destruction: a Bolo commander torn by survivor's guilt and a Bolo whose very existence reminds her of all she has lost.

The odds against them are heavy, the stakes are huge, and surrender is not an option. The Dinochrome Brigade is used to that, but can Maneka and Lazarus survive their own shared past to defend the present?

Table of Contents:

• Lost Legion - [Bethany Martins 1] - novelette by S. M. Stirling
• Camelot - novelette by Shariann Lewitt
• The Legacy of Leonidas - novella by Andrew Keith
• Ploughshare - novella by Todd McCaffrey
• Ghosts - short story by Barry N. Malzberg and Mike Resnick
• The Ghost of Resartus - novelette by Christopher Stasheff
• Operation Desert Fox - novelette by Larry Dixon and Mercedes Lackey
• As Our Strength Lessens - short story by David Drake

Table of Contents:

• Ancestral Voices - [Bethany Martins 2] - novelette by S. M. Stirling
• Sir Kendrick's Lady - novelette by Shariann Lewitt
• You're It - novelette by Shirley Meier
• Shared Experience - novella by Christopher Stasheff
• The Murphosensor Bomb - novelette by Karen Wehrstein
• Legacy - novelette by Todd McCaffrey
• Endings - short fiction by William R. Forstchen

Table of Contents:

• The Farmer's Wife - novelette by Linda Evans
• Little Red Horn - novella by Linda Evans and Robert R. Hollingsworth
• Little Dog Gone - novella by Linda Evans
• Miles to Go - novel by David Weber
• Technical Notes (The Triumphant) - short fiction by David Weber

Table of Contents:

• The Sixth Sun - [Bethany Martins 3] - novella by S. M. Stirling
• The Traitor - novelette by David Weber
• Yesterday's Gods - novelette by William R. Forstchen and John Mina
• Memories of Erin - novelette by Robert Greenberger
• Hold Until Relieved - novelette by William H. Keith, Jr.
• A Question of Valor - novelette by Todd McCaffrey [as by Todd Johnson]
• In the Flesh - novelette by John DeCamp and Steve Perry
• And Don't Come Back - novelette by Mark Thies
• A Time to Kill - novella by David Weber
• A Brief History of Human Expansion Beyond Concordiat Space - essay by Linda Evans

Table of Contents:

• Incursion - novella by Mark Thies
• Rook's Gambit - novelette by John Mina
• The Sky Is Falling - novella by Dean Wesley Smith and J. Steven York
• Brothers - novelette by William H. Keith, Jr.

Table of Contents:

• Prologue (Cold Steel) - short fiction by uncredited
• The Greater Machine - novella by Dean Wesley Smith and J. Steven York
• Though Hell Should Bar the Way - novel by Linda Evans

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (The Best of the Bolos: Their Finest Hour) - essay by David Weber
• Combat Unit - short story by Keith Laumer
• Lost Legion - [Bethany Martins 1] - novelette by S. M. Stirling
• A Time to Kill - novella by David Weber
• Operation Desert Fox - novelette by Larry Dixon and Mercedes Lackey
• The Last Command - short story by Keith Laumer
• Little Dog Gone - novella by Linda Evans
• As Our Strength Lessens - short story by David Drake
• The Traitor - novelette by David Weber
• A Relic of War - short story by Keith Laumer
• Hold Until Relieved - novelette by William H. Keith, Jr.
• A Brief Technical History of the Bolo - short fiction by David Weber