A collection of stories from Atalanta’s Worlds, some of them featuring her crew Ali Karil and Loris, others featuring various secondary characters from the novels. Each story takes place on a different moon or planet, which becomes a kind of character in the story: the bottomless atmosphere of Jupiter, the dark world of Ganymede City beneath the ice, the bleak and war-torn surface of Mars, the jungles and deserts of the Hothouse Earth, and the terrible prison on the surface of Venus. Also included is a collection of fantasy tales with wizards, witches, and dragons.
The novels were all written long ago and constantly changed since, but the short stories of Planetscapes and the three novellas of The Dark Lord’s Kingdom were products of the author’s old age, during a cancer scare in which it seemed wise to write shorter works. The short stories particularly came out full-blown, like Athena from the forehead of Zeus. In a week or two, each one was done. “Down and Out on Callisto and Ganymede” is an homage to Film Noir; Ganymede City is a dark place beneath the icy surface of Ganymede, with wet streets, dubious mores, and tough cops. Karil and Loris have been Galilean Security partners for a while now and have changed each other’s character. But these are Atalanta’s worlds.