Lobo: AI-inhabited space battlecruiser and sardonic companion of man-of-interplanetary-action Jon Moore in Mark L. Van Name’s popular Jon and Lobo series. What you would do if you could have Lobo for a day? Send us your answer in 500 words or less, and win.
Details here.
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Long-time Baen Books designer Carol Russo delivers the goods on Baen covers, Baen history, and recollections of Jim Baen himself in an illuminating interview.
Click to read the full interview
We proudly present another in our line of Teacher and Student Guides for Baen books. Here’s a guide for Eric Flint, Gorg Huff, and Paula Goodlett’s excellent new entry in Flint’s Ring of Fire series, 1636: The Kremlin Games.
Click to download this month’s guide
Baen Teacher and Student Guide Catalog
A barbarian warrior serving a good king must lead one last desperate thrust to send word for reinforcements to fight against an implacable enemy who has his beloved sovereign surrounded. A tale of blood, swords, humanity, and heroism from legendary weaponsmith and fight-master Hank Reinhardt, author of upcoming nonfiction masterpiece of bladed weapon history and fighting technique, Hank Reinnhardt’s Book of Knives
THE AGE OF THE WARRIOR
by Hank Reinhardt
The chatter and gaiety of the feast had been stilled, and although the candles still burned brightly, fear and apprehension darkened the Great Hall of Castle Glaun. Rank was forgotten as lord and lady, townsman and guardsman mingled in small, quiet clusters. The low murmur of their voices would still as the door to the ducal chambers opened, but picked up as soon as only a servingman or maid appeared.
The evening had started out well enough. Lyulf II, King of Lyvane, accompanied by his retinue and the Duke of Jagai, had arrived earlier in the day. The Duke of Glaun had been well prepared for his royal guests, and the feast he had served was splendid. The recent treaty between King Lyulf II and Togai, King of the Shang, was an event to be well remembered, and the Duke had spared no expenses to celebrate it.
It was right after an impromptu wrestling match, won by Asgalt, Duke of Jagai, against a young guardsman, that the blow fell. A messenger arrived bearing the ill news that the Shang had invested Castle Kels, and it looked as if the castle would fall within a few days.
Pandemonium broke loose, and the King with his closest advisors retired to the private chambers of the Duke of Glaun.
In the chambers the King sat hunched over a table, poring over a map as if seeking to change the very lay of the land with his thoughts. Around the table stood several of his ministers, while in the corner the two Dukes engaged in a heated argument.
The King glanced with annoyance at the two men, and with a tone of less than regal forbearance snarled, "Will you two stop that damned bickering and get over here! The whole kingdom is threatened and you two argue over propriety!"
Asgalt, about to make a point, stopped in mid-sentence and looked at the King. "Sire, I do not argue, I merely defend myself."
The Duke of Glaun, Colwen by name, bowed from the waist and answered. "Your Pardon Sire, but I feel that it is unseemly for a Duke of the Realm to wrestle a common guardsman, even if the man is a champion."
Asgalt grunted in disgust. "Bah, you only object because I win." Lyulf glared at the two, then in his most Kingly voice, "We do not care about wrestling, or the proprieties. We do care about advice!"
Is Pluto still a planet? Where is extraterrestrial life most likely to be found? A fascinating tour of the solar system full of cutting-edge science and delivered with epic scope by popular Baen author and editor Les Johnson, who is also the Deputy Manager for the Advanced Concepts Office at the NASA George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Johnson and multiple-award-winner Jack McDevitt are the editors of upcoming Going Interstellar, a collection of science and science fiction stories on interstellar travel using technology we could develop now.
Rediscovering the Solar System
by Les Johnson
Water geysers on Saturn's moon, Enceladus, as photographed by the Cassini spacecraft. (Image courtesy of NASA.)
The Solar System isn’t what it used to be. No, the Solar System hasn’t changed all that much, but our understanding of it certainly has. Dramatically. In the past fifty years, we’ve learned that Mars has water; Jupiter’s moon Europa has lots of water – an ocean, in fact; Neptune had a big blue spot, much like Jupiter’s red one… and then it didn’t; and Pluto, planet or not, isn’t alone out there. We’ve also learned, and only in just the last couple of years, that there are planets around other stars, forming stellar systems all their own. No, this isn’t the Solar System I learned about in school. It’s much more interesting.
When talking about the Solar System, we usually begin with the Sun. After all, it is the largest object around and firmly anchors the rest of the objects in the Solar System in orbit around it. Instead, we’ll begin our tour at the very edge and work our way inward.
