A fan from an early age, Chalker was also active as an editor, founding a small press in his early 20s, but it is as a writer that he is best known. Although his earliest novels were singletons, he soon turned his attention to the sequences that would dominate his career: most notably, The Well of Souls series. This omnibus collects the first volume of that series, MIDNIGHT AT THE WELL OF SOULS; book one of his Soul Rider series, SPIRITS OF FLUX AND ANCHOR; and standalone novel, THE IDENTITY MATRIX.