Growing up, Travis Uriah Long yearned for order and discipline in his life . . . the two things his neglectful mother couldn't or wouldn't provide. So when Travis enlisted in the Royal Manticoran Navy, he thought he'd finally found the structure he'd always wanted so desperately.
But life in the RMN isn't exactly what he expected. Boot camp is rough and frustrating; his first ship assignment lax and disorderly; and with the Star Kingdom of Manticore still recovering from a devastating plague, the Navy is possibly on the edge of extinction.
The Star Kingdom is a minor nation among the worlds of the Diaspora, its closest neighbors weeks or months away, with little in the way of resources. With only modest interstellar trade, no foreign contacts to speak of, a plague-ravaged economy to rebuild, and no enemies looming at the hyper limit, there are factions in Parliament who want nothing more than to scrap the Navy and shift its resources and manpower elsewhere.
But those factions are mistaken. The universe is not a safe place.
Travis Long is about to find that out.
Listen to the authors discuss the book on the Baen Free Radio Hour: Part 1 | Part 2.
Utopia has been achieved. For centuries, disease, hunger, poverty and war
have been things found only in the history tapes. And applied genetics has
given men and women the bodies of athletes and a lifespan of over a century.
They should all have been very happy . . .
But Hamilton Felix is bored. And he is the culmination of a star line; each of his
last thirty ancestors chosen for superior genes. Hamilton is, as far as genetics
can produce one, the ultimate man. And this ultimate man can see no reason
why the human race should survive, and has no intention of continuing the
pointless comedy.
Revolutionaries are about to find out that recruiting a superman is definitely
not a good idea . . .
The mantis cyborgs: insectlike, cruel, and determined to wipe humanity from the face of the galaxy.
The Fleet is humanity’s last chance: a multi-world, multi-national task force assembled to hold the line against the aliens’ overwhelming technology and firepower. Enter Harrison Barlow, who like so many young men of wars past, simply wants to serve his people and partake of the grand adventure of military life. Only, Harrison is not a hot pilot, nor a crack shot with a rifle. What good is a Chaplain’s Assistant in the interstellar battles which will decide the fate of all?
More than he thinks. Because while the mantis insectoids are determined to eliminate the human threat to mantis supremacy, they remember the errors of their past. Is there the slightest chance that humans might have value? Especially since humans seem to have the one thing the mantes explicitly do not: an innate ability to believe in what cannot be proven nor seen God. Captured and stranded behind enemy lines, Barlow must come to grips with the fact that he is not only bargaining for his own life, but the lives of everyone he knows and loves. And so he embarks upon an improbable gambit, determined to alter the course of the entire war.
Listen to the author discuss the book here on the Baen Free Radio Hour.
From the dragons of legend to Jack the Giant Killer’s colleague to King Kong
and Godzilla, people have found the idea of giant creatures both scary and
fascinating. Why so many should find accounts of a critter big enough to gulp
down a puny human like an insignificantly small hor d’oeuvre or step on said
human and leave a grease spot might be explained by the psychologists, but
such yarns are undeniable fun. Here’s a book crammed full of large things that
you can’t outrun (because they take big steps) by writers with equally large
reputations, including: David Drake, best-selling author of the Hammer’s
Slammers and RCN series, Robert Bloch, winner of the Hugo award and
the lifetime achievement award of the World Fantasy Convention, Philip
Wylie, co-author of the SF classic, When Worlds Collide and other imaginative
works, Murray Leinster, known as the Dean of science fiction writers, H.P.
Lovecraft, renowned master of horror, and many more! Plus all-new stories
by New York Times best-selling author Larry Correia, and award-winning
authors Sarah A. Hoyt and Wen Spencer. And much more.
Listen to the author discuss the book here on the Baen Free Radio Hour.
In an alternate 15th century where magic still is part of life, the Holy Roman Empire rules Europe. Constantinople is under siege by the Venetians and their allies. Hekate, Goddess of Crossroads, presides over the conflict and carnage as alternate visions of civilization collide. And since Constantinople is the crossroad city of east and west, and it is here that Italian captain Benito Valdosta must deal with the powerful magical manifestation of the Weeping Woman, a disguised Hekate, in order to save his daughter and to destroy the fleets of the Chernobog assembling in the Black Sea before they can cut into the soft underbelly of Europe.
With land battle, naval action, cunning assassinations, and heartbreak aplenty—not to mention the ongoing conflict between Lord of the Dead Aidonus and Benito for the love of a woman, civilization is at the crossroads and choices must be made that will bring victory and freedom for centuries to come—or a new Dark Age.
It's a tough universe out there. A hard‑hitting collection of the best fiction of Michael Z. Williamson, creator of the popular Freehold military SF saga, along with a helping of truth‑telling nonfiction by a guy who has been there and done that, both at home and abroad.
Duty in the face of danger on a planetary scale. Pride and competence in the face of idiotic clients who hate that that they need your services, and an enemy who wants to make your bad day even worse. These are stories of the warriors and civilians who get things done in extreme situations, whether it's rescue from a ship broken in space and leaking air and radiation, hard choices by a brigade of mercenary swords in a world of blood and magic, or scramble and response by troops in the Sandbox doing what it takes to make it through another scorching, rocket‑filled day.
Eric Flint and David Carrico serve up the latest entry in the best‑selling alternate history saga of them all, the Ring of
Fire!
It is the year 1636. The United States of Europe, the new nation formed by an alliance between the Swedish king
Gustavus Adolphus and the West Virginians hurled back in time by a cosmic accident, is on the verge of civil war.
His brain injured in the war with Poland, the USE's emperor Gustavus Adolphus is no longer in command. Enter
Swedish chancellor Oxenstierna, a leader of aristocratic reaction against democracy. His goal: to assemble the forces
of the hidebound ruling class in Berlin and drown the revolution in a bloodbath.
In Magdeburg, the capital of the USE, Mike Stearns' wife Rebecca Abrabanel is organizing popular resistance to
Oxenstierna's plot. As part of the resistance, the American musician Marla Linder and her company of down‑time
musical partners are staging an opera that will celebrate the struggle against oppression. Princess Kristina, the heir to
the USE's throne, is now residing in Magdeburg and is giving them her support and encouragement.
But another plot is underway‑‑this one right in the heart of the capital itself, and with murder as its method. The only
people standing in the way are a crippled boy and the boxing champion who befriended him, and an unlikely pair of
policemen. Can the American detective Byron Chieske and his down‑timer partner Gotthilf Hoch thwart the killers
before they succeed in their goal?
Download the Reader’s Group Discussion Guide here.
Listen to the authors discuss the book here on the Baen Free Radio Hour.
The Hostage of Zir is the first new novel in L. Sprague De Camp's famous future-history series in more than a decade. De Camp's tales of Viagens Interplanetarias the Krishna Series, has continued since the 1950s with such famous works as The Queen of Zamba and The Tower of Zanid. De Camp has developed a society in Earth's distant future with Brazil the preeminent power, and Portugese the major language of spacefaring Earthmen. The most interesting of the planets Earthmen visit is Krishna, which is inhabited by strange animals and by a humanoid race with a society and technology that are virally medieval.
Krishna has now been opened to tourism by Earth authorities, but the planet remains socially medieval. Earth people visiting outside the spaceport city of Novorecife must still be cosmetically altered, with the addition of skin dye and feathery antennae, to appear like the humanoid natives.
Reith, the hero of THE HOSTAGE OF ZIR, is to take a party of tourists on a guided tour of Krishna, to culminate in a visit to Dur, the capital of the most advanced kingdom on the planet. Tashian, who rules this kingdom, is an enlightened monarch, and his proudest achievement is the construction (with the aid of Earthmen) of a railroad powered by elephant like bishtars.
At the construction site, the party of tourists is caught in an attack by the Witch of Zir and her forces, who are in rebellion against Tashian. Seeing the red-haired Reith, the Witch's forces imagine him to be the prophesied red-haired god: the symbol of rebellion.
With wit and cunning, Reith manages to escape and to accomplish the release of the captured tourists, only to become enmeshed in an affair with the lusty daughter of Tashian--whom Tashian wants him to marry!
This colorful adventure lives up to de Camp's reputation for top-notch SF.
