Earth has been devastated after a near miss by a white-hot protoplanet ejected from Jupiter. The poles and climatic bands have been shifted, continents and oceans resculpted in titanic cataclysms, and civilization as we know it has ended.

Only the colony of Kronia, established among Saturn's moons, preserves technology and human culture. While the few bands of dazed survivors left on Earth revert rapidly to brutality and barbarism, the Kronian culture is already opening up new realms of physics that will carry humankind to the stars.

The Kronians have a vision of founding a new civilization on the reborn Earth, building upon foundations of freedom and the power of unbridled human creativity worthy of a stargoing civilization, and avoiding the destructive influences of conquest and exploitation. So when conditions on Earth stabilize sufficiently, Landen Keene, previously a nuclear propulsion engineer in the world that no longer exists, returns with the first Kronian reconnaissance mission to establish a base in what was a region of Africa, and commence the task of beginning anew.

But not everyone wants a free society in which individual worth is measured by ability and contribution, not possessions and power. The Terrans who were brought to Kronia included people whose status and recognition on Earth stemmed from wielding power of the kind that the old order understood. When their bid for a bigger part in running things fails, they resort to deception, violence, and the methods that previously served them well.

They plan a series of coordinated moves to seize the newly established base on Earth, and initiate a new Terran order built on the old principles of force, subjugation, and domination all over again. Isolated by distance from the hope of any immediate help from Saturn, and with only a few helpers and pitifully slim resources at his disposal, Keene emerges as the only hope of improvising an effective resistance.

But maybe that was precisely why he was sent there.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James P. Hogan is a science fiction writer in the grand tradition, combining informed and accurate speculation from the cutting edge of science and technology with suspenseful story-telling and living, breathing characters.

Born in London in 1941, he worked as an aeronautical engineer specializing in electronics and digital systems, and for several major computer firms before turning to writing full-time in 1979. His first novel was greeted by Isaac Asimov with the rave, "Pure science fiction ... Arthur Clarke, move over!" and his subsequent work quickly consolidated his reputation as a major SF author. He has written over a dozen novels including Paths to Otherwhere and Bug Park (both Baen), the "Giants" series (coming soon from Baen), the New York Times bestsellers The Proteus Operation and Endgame Enigma and the Prometheus Award Winner The Multiplex Man (all available from Baen). Hogan currently splits his time between residences in Ireland and Florida.

More information about James Hogan and his work is available from his website at http://jamesphogan.com.

THE LIVING DEAD WERE MAKING HIS LIFE A LIVING HELL . . .

A year ago, Chris Csejthe (pronounced "Chay-tay") was completely human - then a blood transfusion from the Lord of the Undead changed everything. No/w he is a hunted man, sought by human and vampire alike for the secrets he knows and the powers that his mutated blood may bestow. So far he's dodged undead assassins, werewolves, a 6,000-year-old Egyptian necromancer, and Vlad Dracula himself. But now he's really got problems.

The dead are turning up on his doorstep after dark to ask for justice and the police want to know where all those corpses are coming from. Undead terrorists are testing a doomsday virus on his new hometown and he's caught in the crossfire between a white supremacist militia and the resurrected Civil War dead. His werewolf lover, jealous of his dead wife's ghost, has left him. And the centuries-old and still very beautiful (and very deadly) Countess Bathory is determined to have his uniquely transformed blood for her own dark purposes.

Now, more than ever, life sucks!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Wm. Mark Simmons is the author of five novels. His first, In The Net of Dreams, was a finalist for the Compton Crook Award and made the Locus "Best" list in 1991. That novel, with its two sequels, When Dreams Collide and the new novel The Woman of His Dreams, have recently been published in one hardcover volume by Meisha Merlin Publishing. For Baen he wrote the popular and critically praised One Foot in the Grave, to which Dead on My Feet is a sequel. Simmons has worked as a teacher, actor, director, musician, and entertainer, hosting his own shows on both television and radio while winning awards as a journalist and copywriter. He currently manages a public radio station in Louisiana, and hosts a classical music program.

THE OLD GODS ARE RETURNING-
AND SOME OF THEM ARE NOT
FRIENDLY!

When Derek Secrest was suddenly pulled out of Naval flight officer school to take part in a top secret government project involving telepathy—because tests showed that he had a strong latent talent for psi powers— he thought things couldn't get weirder. He was wrong.

Soon he was contacted by a mysterious woman who could open portals at will through spacetime. Her powers seemed godlike—and they were. Millennia ago, extra-dimensional beings with great powers had come to earth and taken on human form, remembered in legends as gods and goddesses—and titans, the ancient enemies of the gods. The godlike beings had driven off the titans, but now the old enemy is returning, with a new plan to use humans with psionic abilities to rule the Earth, and not be driven from it this time. And the titans always did have a fondness for human sacrifice.

Unless Derek and a handful of other telepaths can join forces with the ancient gods to defeat the titans, the world will be plunged into a new dark age of terror and death. Even so, judging from mythology, how much can you really trust a god. . .

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Steve White was an officer in Naval Intelligence, and served in the Mediterranean and the Vietnam War Zone. In addition to the Starfire series with David Weber, he has written several popular science fiction adventure novels for Baen. They include the trilogy comprising The Disinherited, Legacy and Debt of Ages, which combine fast-paced space opera with Arthurian mythology. He has also written the galaxy-spanning adventure Prince of Sunset, and its sequel Emperor of Dawn. His latest is Eagle Against the Stars. He currently works for a legal publishing company in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is married and has three daughters.

CAN A MYHR MORTAL
SURVIVE SUCH PERIL

His name is Myhr—rhymes with purr!—he's half-man, half-cat, and all-adventure, traveling the multi-verse with Terrin, a twisted wizard who's into techno-raves and obscene T-shirt art. Displaced from Earth by a travel spell gone bad, they're heading home, bouncing from one bizarre planet after another.

Their latest hasty escape has landed them on a world with a lethal magic problem. While Myhr sings Beatle tunes for their supper, Terrin tries to get them an Astral Plane road map—only there's a catch. All the magic has vanished from Rumpock City, along with nearly all the magicians, the catastrophe linked to an uncanny black fog that rolls through town each night.

Trying to pick up clues, Myhr is picked up himself by the gorgeous lady Filima, a devious and not-so-very-bereaved widow in need of a fall-cat. It's up to Myhr to find where the magic went before Terrin's own powers are drained dry, leaving him worse than dead and the rest of the planet going to Hell in an express-mail handbasket.

Praise for the Fantasy of P.N. Elrod:

"Winning characterizations . . . clever and fast-paced . . . .a powerful tale...." — Weekly

"Plenty of action, full of twists and betrayals, and the quirky characters . . . keep things amusing." —Locus

"A unique, very special experience for lovers of the supernatural, fantasy, [and] horror . . . refreshingly creative . . . very special, a keeper above keepers." —The Midwest Book Review

A COMEDY OF TERRORS . . .

A rich Komarran merchant fleet has been impounded at Graf Station, in distant Quaddiespace, after a bloody incident on the station docks involving a security officer from the convoy's Barrayaran military escort. Lord Miles Vorkosigan of Barrayar and his wife, Lady Ekaterin, have other things on their minds, such as getting home in time to attend the long-awaited births of their first children. But when duty calls in the voice of Barrayar's Emperor Gregor, Miles, Gregor's youngest Imperial Auditor (a special high-level troubleshooter) has no choice but to answer. 

Waiting on Graf Station are diplomatic snarls, tangled loyalties, old friends, new enemies, racial tensions, lies and deceptions, mysterious disappearances, and a lethal secret with wider consequences than even Miles anticipates: a race with time for life against death in horrifying new forms. 

The downside of being a troubleshooter comes when trouble starts shooting back . . .

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lois McMaster Bujold burst upon the science fiction world in 1986 with the first of the Vorkosigan Saga novels, Shards of Honor, closely followed by The Warrior's Apprentice, which introduced Miles Vorkosigan, the hyperkinetic military genius with bones of glass. She has won an unprecedented four Hugo Awards for works in the Vorkosigan Saga. Bujold has published sixteen novels to date, all but one with Baen Books. The mother of two, Bujold lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

NOT THAT DARWIN—HIS GRANDFATHER!

 18^th Century Europe: It is an age when superstition is beginning to give way to the force of human reason, and no man so fully embodies the spirit of the times as Dr. Erasmus Darwin. Thinker, healer, and explorer of the bizarre and the seemingly supernatural, no mystery can stand for long against Darwin's enlightened analysis. And there are far more mysteries than history knows. . . .

For Erasmus Darwin's world is filled with oddities that most cannot believe: from unknown beings lurking just outside the boundaries of civilization, to anomalies that even the greatest natural philosophers will be hard-pressed to explain, to mysterious deaths that give rise to fears of malevolent sorcery.

And when the renowned Dr. Darwin is called upon to heal a man dying of an ailment that seems impossible, he has no idea that it is the beginning of a quest that will lead him to the darkest corners of Europe, and a stunning encounter with the most famous inhabitant of a certain Scottish loch. . . .

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Charles Sheffield, a mathematician and physicist, is a past president of both the American Astronautical Society and the Science Fiction Writers of America, and the chief scientist of the Earth Satellite Corporation. He has published over a hundred technical papers and monographs on such subjects as nuclear physics, gravitational field analysis, and general relativity, and an equally large body of popular science articles for the layman. He serves as a science reviewer for several prominent publications.

In science fiction, Dr. Sheffield has received the coveted Nebula and Hugo Awards, as well as the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for his novel for Baen, Brother to Dragons. His other SF novels for Baen include The Mind Pool and its sequel, The Spheres of Heaven, Between the Strokes of Night, Convergent Series, and Transvergence. He is also the author for Baen of Borderlands of Science: How to Think Like a Scientist and Write Science Fiction, which is both a nonfiction survey of current scientific frontiers and an explanation of how a science fiction writer can write SF using bona fide scientific knowledge. Which is just the sort of SF that Dr. Sheffield has been writing for some time now, to the resounding acclaim of readers and critics alike.