Georgia on My Mind and Other Places

Table of Contents

Introduction

A very brief overall introduction to the collection.

The Feynman Saltation

Colin Trantham, a biological artist, has brain cancer. His sister Julia, a paleontologist, comes to take care of him following his surgery and the chemotherapy that follows. But she notices, as he gets worse, that his drawings are changing. Despite his lack of interest in her profession, he's now drawing scenes of prehistoric animals. The ones she recognizes are as accurate as usual for him, but some she can't even identify.

The Bee's Kiss

Gilden, a voyeur, has been caught sending one of his spying devices into the bedroom of the heir to Earth's throne on his wedding night. Normally, death by slow torture would be the penalty. But his skill is needed to penetrate the spaceship of an alien species which has landed on a distant planet.

Millennium

On December 31, 1999, a man readies himself for Judgment Day. But what actually happens is very surprising.

Fifteen-Love on a Dead Man's Chest

Carlo Moolman, a member of a syndicate, has been murdered because he's believed to be carrying an immortality potion. But there's no sign of the potion itself. The authorities hire an attorney to pose as a friend of Moolman at his funeral, hoping to flush out the killers. But the case becomes a comedy of errors, involving mortuaries, undertakers, and a very weird game of tennis.

Deep Safari

Clancy Fletcher is summoned to help try to revive his former lover, Miriam Pearce, who now won't speak to him. She has injected herself with experimental medical nanomachines, and has fallen into a strange, but stable unconsciousness. Fletcher invented the first ones with her, but now operates a company which uses the technology and virtual reality to hunt insects. One of the problems, however, is that Fletcher believes Tom Abernathy, head of the hospital which Miriam's family owns, and where she works, is her new lover, and Abernathy's resentment is obvious.

Beyond the Golden Road

M. di Piacenza instructs Johannes of Magdeburg to visit China, and bring back a report on whether various reported wonders are true. Dari, di Piacenza's 13-year-old slave, requests to go along as a translator. But as they're crossing the desert, almost out of water, they meet another party, escorting a young virgin destined as a gift bride to Kublai Khan. Dari thinks she's a witch-woman, and becomes increasingly concerned with the time she's spending with Johannes, and learning about his abacus.

Health Care System

Miriam Greenwood, a very wealthy but dying woman, hires Thomas Matlock to set up a personal health care system to prolong her life. But once he does, she incrementally increases her demands and her threats if he doesn't fulfill them, leading him down a path of growing unethical and illegal conduct.

Humanity Test

In violation of the law, a small amount of human genes has been introduced into chimpanzees, creating a new species that seems to think and communicate at least at the level of children. They're used as a labor force, but now the courts are hearing a case that may grant them human rights. The resolution may depend on the account of an acknowledged space hero, now missing both arms and legs, and the role this new species played in contributing to his current state.

That Strain Again

After landing on a newly-discovered planet, astronauts are puzzled by the reaction. The natives are both relieved and surprised to see visitors from Earth.

Destroyer of Worlds

A noted scientist, Jason Lockyer, has disappeared, and his wife hires Rachel, a young private detective, to find him. Her investigations lead to a secret society, and an experiment in developing self-sustaining biospheres that could sustain human life in space. But there's something wrong with both the society, and with the evolution within one of the biospheres.

The Fifteenth Station of the Cross

Puladi, the dictator of Earth, is dying. From his physician, he learns that a cure for his disease is fifteen years away, and he has only months to live. But a scientist in India is working on a time machine, and though it can't be used to send things into the future, it can retrieve them from the past, giving Puladi an idea that might help him live those fifteen years.

Trapalanda

Klaus Jacobi lived most of his life in the region of Patagonia known as the Kingdom of the Winds. Now he has retired to Switzerland, but John Kenyon Martindale hires him for one more expedition to the region. Martindale thinks he knows how to find the legendary city Trapalanda.

Obsolete Skill

A science fiction writer who has been cryogenically frozen is awakened two hundred years in the future, only to be told that the skills he knows have no place in the new world.

Georgia on My Mind

A scientist who has returned to his native New Zealand discovers evidence on a remote farm that some unknown persons attempted to build a mechanical computer like Charles Babbage's in the 1850s. He calls an old friend and colleague, and together, they try to piece together the mystery behind the artifacts.

ack to Off the Shelf.