Search Worlds Without End

This novelette originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, April 2016. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2017, edited by Rich Horton.

Contents

• Warning-- (Devil Worshipers) - essay by Frank D. McSherry, Jr.
• Sweet Sixteen (1958) - short story by Robert Bloch
• The Missing Item - [Black Widowers] (1977) - short story by Isaac Asimov
• The Compleat Werewolf - [Fergus O'Breen] (1942) - novella by Anthony Boucher
• No News Today (1941) - short story by Cleve Cartmill
• The Night Train to Lost Valley (1948) - short story by August Derleth
• The Sacrifice (1905) - short story by Perceval Gibbon
• Young Goodman Brown (1835) - short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Vicar of Hell - [Simon Ark - 5] (1956) - novelette by Edward D. Hoch
• The Words of Guru (1941) - short story by C. M. Kornbluth
• The Power (1945) - short story by Murray Leinster
• The Stranger from Kurdistan - [Ismeddin] (1925) - short story by E. Hoffmann Price
• The Globe of Memories (1937) - novella by Seabury Quinn
• School for the Unspeakable (1937) - short story by Manly Wade Wellman
• Such Nice Neighbors (1985) - short story by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
• The New People (1958) - short story by Charles Beaumont

This novelette originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 17, July-August 2017. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Twelve (2018), edited by Jonathan Strahan.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny Magazine.

Her mother's death freed Lea from a lifetime of repression and frigidity, only to make her the helpless prey of wild fantasies and nightmare terror. Alone in her mountain cabin retreat, Lea's body and her very soul are subjugated by a phantom from the depths of Hell, who demands that she worship at his evil shrine. To transform the demon into the flesh-and-blood lover she craves. Lea is forced to commit crime after hideous crime, until she realizes that only the ultimate sacrifice will satisfy her Master's lust!

This ninth book of a fantasy series is also a complete story in itself. Asodo Hatch and Lupur Lon Oliver compete for the position of instructor at Combat College, which produces Startroopers for the Stormforce of the Nexus. One has to defeat the other in combat within the illusion tanks.

Once upon a time, Aveda Jupiter (aka Annie Chang) was demon-infested San Francisco's most beloved superheroine, a beacon of hope and strength and really awesome outfits. But all that changed the day she agreed to share the spotlight with her best friend and former assistant Evie Tanaka--who's now a badass, fire-wielding superheroine in her own right. They were supposed to be a dynamic duo, but more and more, Aveda finds herself shoved into the sidekick role. Where, it must be said, she is not at all comfortable.

It doesn't help that Aveda's finally being forced to deal with fallout from her diva behavior--and the fact that she's been a less than stellar friend to Evie. Or that Scott Cameron--the man Aveda's loved for nearly a decade--is suddenly giving her the cold shoulder after what seemed to be some promising steps toward friendship. Or that the city has been demon-free for three months in the wake of Evie and Aveda's apocalypse-preventing battle against the evil forces of the Otherworld, leaving Aveda without the one thing she craves most in life: a mission.

Contents:

• The Jesus Incident - (1979) - novel by Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom
• The Lazarus Effect - (1983) - novel by Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom
• The Ascension Factor - (1988) - novel by Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom

The starship Earthling, filled with thousands of hybernating colonists en route to a new world at Tau Ceti, is stranded beyond the solar system when the ship's three Organic Mental Cores--disembodied human brains that control the vessel's functions--go insane. An emergency skeleton crew sees only one chance for survival: to create an artificial consciousness in the Earthling's primary computer, which could guide them to their destination... or could destroy the human race.

A sentient Ship with godlike powers (and aspirations) delivers the last survivors of humanity to a horrific, poisonous planet, Pandora--rife with deadly Nerve-Runners, Hooded Dashers, airborne jellyfish, and intelligent kelp. Chaplain/Psychiatrist Raja Lon Flattery is brought back out of hybernation to witness Ship's machinations as well as the schemes of human scientists manipulating the genetic structure of humanity. Sequel to Frank Herbert's Destination: Void, the first book in Herbert & Ransom's Pandora Sequence.

The Lazarus Effect (1983) is the third science fiction novel set in the Destination: Void universe by the American author Frank Herbert and poet Bill Ransom. It takes place some time after the events in The Jesus Incident.

The Ascension Factor (1988) is the fourth and final science fiction novel set in the Destination: Void universe by the American author Frank Herbert and poet Bill Ransom. It takes place about twenty five years after The Lazarus Effect. It completes the story of the humans descended from those left by the Voidship Earthling on the planet Pandora approximately 480 years earlier.