It began as a favor to a woman trying to get away from an abusive husband.
Jon Moore grew up in a prison laboratory. When he escaped with nothing but his body's nanotech enhancements and more anger than even a long lifetime could wash away, an entire planet died behind him. Memories of the things he'd done still haunted him; because of them, he often ended up helping those in need.
His kindnesses frequently didn't work out well. This one really didn't work out well. It hurled Jon and Lobo, the intelligent assault vehicle and Jon's only friend, down an accelerating, ever more dangerous spiral involving:
• Private armies and government covert ops teams
• A courtesan who always seems a step ahead of him
• Rival superpowers that define Good in terms of their own advantage and Ethics as whatever doesn't get in the way of their Good
• And a brilliant, amoral scientist to whom human beings are just more experimental animals--and who might be Lobo's creator.
Jon and Lobo take the reader on a headlong rush through armed enemies and untrustworthy allies and encounter what just might be the worst danger their partnership will face: the truth.
About the Author
Mark L. Van Name, whom John Ringo has said is "going to be the guy to beat in the race to the top of SFdom," has worked in the high-tech industry for over 30 years and today runs a technology assessment company in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. A former Executive for Ziff Davis Media and a national technology columnist he's published over a thousand computer-related articles and multiple science fiction stories in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including the Year's Best Science Fiction. Jon & Lobo stories have appeared in a Baen anthology and Jim Baen's Universe.
Best-selling author Fred Saberhagen created three popular series: his Berserker stories and novels telling of the endless war of humans and their alien allies against the Berserkers, gigantic robot battleships programmed by an unknown extinct race to destroy all life in the galaxy; his high fantasy Lost Swords series; and his Dracula series, the first novels to tell a story from the vampire's point of view. In a book that will be irresistible for the thousands of Saberhagen fans, all three series are represented here, as well as gems from his other series, including his first-published story and his last-written story, marking the endpoints of a remarkable writer's remarkable career that spanned more than four decades As Joan Spicci Saberhagen writes in her foreword, "Even Fred's most ardent fans will have a fresh look at his talents. Whatever the setting, Fred's stories provide fast moving action and a thought provoking theme."
Nicholas van Rijn, the most flamboyant member of the Polesotechnic League of star traders, could see dark times ahead. Fellow league members were using tactics verging on outright piracy, and others were all too eager to sell starships and high-tech weapons to alien barbarians. A planet not previously known for interstellar commerce suddenly revealed a secret fleet of armed starships, and started building an empire. Even if Van Rijn and his right-hand man David Falkayn could find a way to stop this blatant aggression, the glory days of the League were over. Hereafter, for its own protection against well-armed alien marauders the Earth must maintain a strong military fleet, and one charismatic man would found an empire that would learn nothing of the lessons history taught about the fates of other empires as it began annexing other star systems, whether they wanted to join the Terran Empire or not . . .
This is the third volume in the first complete edition of Poul Anderson's Technic Civilization saga, and it includes a classic novella which appears here in book form for the first time. And the next volume begins the adventures of Poul Anderson's other legendary character, Captain Sir Dominic Flandry.
Move over, urban fantasy—here comes suburban fantasy. What self-respecting witch, vampire, or werewolf would be caught dead—or undead—anywhere but the Big City, you may ask Look, let's give the uncanny crew a little credit for intelligence: If they had the smarts to see the advantage in packing up and moving into the cities, why wouldn't they have the smarts to move out of said cities if it looked like they could get a better quality-of-life/death elsewhere (Tough enough going about your otherworldly business and evading the occasional mob wielding halogen torches and designer pitchforks, but have you ever seen city real estate prices )
So let's welcome our first group of supernatural suburbanites, the witches. Their powers are awesome, their methods of coping with the lumps, bumps, and idiosyncrasies of Suburbia are ingenious, and they always bring the loveliest gingerbread to the PTA bake sale. But whatever you do, don't try telling them that life in a non-city setting is bland, banal and boring, or you might get turned into . . . ribbit!
Stories of suburban sorcery by Harry Turtledove, Sarah A. Hoyt, Jan and S.M. Stirling, K. D. Wentworth, and more—including Esther Friesner herself.
The Very Large Object That ATE the Other Very Large Objects!
The Sargasso. Space ships go in, and they don't come back. But as the all-destroying Nefrim drive humanity from the stars, everything depends on one captain's desperate gambit: to dial his stardrive to zero—to "fall off the map"—and plunge into the ocean-covered pocket universe that is the Sargasso. Within is a secret that can change a galaxy. And, though escape is a trick generations of trapped starfarers have tried and failed to master—now the fate of two universes depends on Mikail Volkov being the first to GET OUT!
The dawn of a new hard-hitting space adventure by the winner of the 2003 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer!
"Buffy fans should find a lot to like in [Spencer's] resourceful heroine."
—Publishers Weekly
"Wit and intelligence."
—Publishers Weekly on multiple-award-winning Wen Spencer.
The Stars are Ours: Dard Nordis is a hunted man. His brother was murdered for covert activities as a scientist in a world in which scientists and engineers are blamed for the global war that smashed civilization. The global dictatorship of Pax has ordered their execution. Now he is on the run, trying to find the secret stronghold of his brother's friends and colleagues—a hidden place where the few remaining scientists are desperately building a spaceship to escape to the stars.
Star Born. Centuries after the desperate flight from Earth, Pax has been overthrown and humanity again reaches for the stars. Rof Kurbi's spaceship reaches the planet Astra, but he and the crew do not know that the planet already has a colony established centuries ago by the fugitive humans from Earth. Nor do they know that the apparently friendly natives of the planet are actually the malevolent remnants of a corrupt civilization that all but destroyed itself millennia ago—and that they are plot-ting to eliminate all humans from Astra, both the recent arrivals and the star born colonists.
Publisher's Note:Star Flight has been previously published in parts as The Stars are Ours and Star Born. This is their first combined publication.
David Drake 
