Slow Train to Arcturus

Make Tracks to the Stars!

0 Ye civilized of Earth: send forth your outcasts, your primitive throwbacks, your religious fundamentalists, your sexual separatists—and heck, you can even toss in your totalitarian crackpots in the bargain. Pack them all in sealed habitats, rocket them into space, and pronounce good riddance to those lunatics, oddballs and losers!

But if you happen to be an alien explorer stranded on that ship and looking to find a way home? Well then, your one chance lies in seeking out the true iconoclasts in a sea of nutcase societies—for verily, it is only the absolutely original and terminally weird who shall inherit the stars!

New York Times best-seller Eric Flint and Dave Freer deliver an adventure through the eeriest alien realm of all—human culture at its most extreme!

"[T]he sharpest moments in this giddy entertainment are those where [Flint and Freer] blithely skewer human mores."
—Publisher's Weekly on Rats, Bats & Vats

Cover Art by David Mattingly

Hardcover

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

First printing, October 2008

Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

Pages by Joy Freeman (www.pagesbyjoy.com)
Printed in the United States of America

ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-5585-8
ISBN-10: 1-4165-5585-4

Copyright© 2008 by Eric Flint & Dave Freer

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original
Baen publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
https://www.baen.com

Electronic version by Baen Books
https://www.baen.com

Baen Books by Eric Flint & Dave Freer

Rats, Bats & Vats • The Rats, The Bats & the Ugly
 
Pyramid Scheme • Pyramid Power
 
Slow Train to Arcturus

With Mercedes Lackey

The Shadow of the Lion • This Rough Magic
Also in this series: A Mankind Witch by Dave Freer
 

Baen Books by Dave Freer

The Forlorn
 

Baen Books by Eric Flint

Ring of Fire Series

1632
1633 with David Weber
1634: The Baltic War with David Weber
Ring of Fire ed. by Eric Flint
1634: The Galileo Affair with Andrew Dennis
1634: The Bavarian Crisis with Virginia DeMarce
1635: The Ram Rebellion with Virginia DeMarce et. al.
1635: The Cannon Law with Andrew Dennis
1635: The Dreeson Incident with Virginia DeMarce (forthcoming)
Grantville Gazette ed. by Eric Flint
Grantville Gazette II ed. by Eric Flint
Grantville Gazette III ed. by Eric Flint
Grantville Gazette IV ed. by Eric Flint
Ring of Fire II ed. by Eric Flint (forthcoming)
 

Joe's World series:

The Philosophical Strangler
Forward the Mage (with Richard Roach)
 

With David Drake:

The Tyrant
 

The Belisarius Series with David Drake:

An Oblique Approach • In the Heart of Darkness
Belisarius I: Thunder at Dawn (omnibus) • Destiny's Shield
Fortune's Stroke • The Tide of Victory • The Dance of Time
 

Edited by Eric Flint

The World Turned Upside Down (with David Drake & Jim Baen)
The Best of Jim Baen's Universe • The Best of Jim Baen's Universe II
 

Standalone Titles

Mother of Demons
Crown of Slaves (with David Weber)
The Course of Empire (with K.D. Wentworth)
Mountain Magic (with Ryk E. Spoor, David Drake & Henry Kuttner)