Search Worlds Without End

When adventurers Bastin, Bickley, and Arbuthnot are marooned on a South Sea island, they discover two Atlanteans in a state of suspended animation. One of the awakened sleepers, Lord Oro, is a superman -- the last king of the Sons of Wisdom, who'd relied on hyper-advanced technology to subjugate the planet's lesser peoples. The other is Oro's sexy daughter, Yva... who falls in love with Arbuthnot. Using astral projection, Lord Oro visits London and the battlefields of the Western Front. Why? To determine whether or not he should once again employ an infernal chthonic machine to drown the worthless human race, as he'd done 250,000 years earlier!

The novel, which Rudyard Kipling helped plot, was first published in 1919.

"Every child knows how the story ends. The wicked pirate captain is flung overboard, caught in the jaws of the monster crocodile who drags him down to a watery grave. But it was not yet my time to die. It's my fate to be trapped here forever, in a nightmare of childhood fancy, with that infernal, eternal boy."

Meet Captain James Benjamin Hook, a witty, educated Restoration-era privateer cursed to play villain to a pack of malicious little boys in a pointless war that never ends. But everything changes when Stella Parrish, a forbidden grown woman, dreams her way to the Neverland in defiance of Pan's rules. From the glamour of the Fairy Revels, to the secret ceremonies of the First Tribes, to the mysterious underwater temple beneath the Mermaid Lagoon, the magical forces of the Neverland open up for Stella as they never have for Hook. And in the pirate captain himself, she begins to see someone far more complex than the storybook villain.

With Stella's knowledge of folk and fairy tales, she might be Hook's last chance for redemption and release if they can break his curse before Pan and his warrior boys hunt her down and drag Hook back to their neverending game. Alias Hook by Lisa Jensen is a beautifully and romantically written adult fairy tale.

Nebula Award nominated short. It originally appeared in Universe 12, edited by Terry Carr. The story can also be found in the anthologies Bestiary!, edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois, and Modern Classics of Fantasy (1997), edited by Gardner Dozios. It can also be found in the collections Howard Who? (1986) and Strange Things in Close-Up: The Nearly Complete Howard Waldrop (1989).

Read this story for free online at the SciFiction archive.

John Baker’s life keeps going from bad to worse. Against a background of global recession and financial meltdown, first he loses his job and then he loses his girlfriend…

Oh, and then, of course, there are the zombies…

One by one the rich nitrate miners of Antofagasta, Chile, were being hideously crushed to death by falling boulders. Then the Man of Bronze saw the evil hand of The Mad Earth Shaker -- and uncovered his terrifying plot to control the world!

Lester Dent authored this novel under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

Whirlpool of Stars opens with a starship breaking down - something in the engineroom blows up as a result of shoddy maintenance. The passengers and crew are forced to flee in lifeboats, though this is no orderly evacuation. Hook is aboard, and he manages to get a seat aboard one of the lifeboats. The nearest planet, however, is run by a rival corporation to that which had operated the starship, and everyone who lands would be subject high fees... which they can pay off by indentured labour... Hook evades the authorities and, with a woman in tow, runs about the planet, trying to avoid slavery and also the Boosted Men, who are after him.

Published (as is the rest of the series) under the penname Tully Zetford.

Peter, now grown up, returns to London with his wife and two children. During their visit to Wendy, the children disappear from the nursery, and all that can be found is a cryptic note, signed "Jas Hook, Captain".

It's time for Peter to return to Neverland and find his children.

One of five stories inspired by the same painting by John Jude Palencar. Anthologized in The Palencar Project and later in The Year's Best SF 18. It is included in the collection 'Not So Much' Said the Cat (2016).

Read this story online for free at Tor.com.

The Hook: It was a college coffee house puzzle, a conundrum that excused freedom's purists from actually doing anything about governmental oppression except talk about it, make speeches, and write turgid tomes all of which did little to advance the cause of freedom in a world plummeting into a mire of collectivist control. The best freedom's advocates could offer were compromises until, as much of the world once again stood on the brink of yet another war and by the grace of a horrific hurricane and the efforts of a good many students, a patch of pure libertarian freedom came into existence. The Hook, however, still stood without an answer. Unless an answer could be found, that patch of freedom would be crushed out of existence, thousands would die, and millions would be returned to oppression. It was a problem for a particular kind of savant, but Jerry Track first needed to find something in which to believe. The Hook is the fifth book of Jerome Track's autobiography.

Once invited, always welcome.
Once invited, never free.

Captain James Hook, the immortal pirate of Neverland, has died a thousand times. Drowned, stabbed by Peter Pan's sword, eaten by the beast swimming below the depths, yet James was resurrected every time by one boy's dark imagination. Until he found a door in the sky, an escape. And he took the chance no matter the cost.

Now in London twenty-two years later, Peter Pan's monster has found Captain Hook again, intent on revenge. But a chance encounter leads James to another survivor of Neverland. Wendy Darling, now a grown woman, is the only one who knows how dark a shadow Neverland casts, no matter how far you run. To vanquish Pan's monster once and for all, Hook must play the villain one last time...