New Releases (6)

Down These Mean Streets

Down These Mean Streets

New science fiction and fantasy stories with a hardboiled noir twist—focusing on the mean streets of the city. Stories by Larry Correia, Laurell K. Hamilton, Steve Diamond, Mike Massa, and more.

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Among the Gray Lords

Among the Gray Lords

An encounter with an old friend becomes tragically fatal, and Indrajit and Fix set out on a high-stakes quest across the ancient city of Kish to bring their friend back to life. Can the heroes save their friend? Can Indrajit and Fix survive? Will Kish itself fall?

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Weird World War: China

Weird World War: China

Glimpses of the war that might be between two superpowers—with some supernatural twists. Stories by Larry Correia, David Drake, Brian Trent, Martin L. Shoemaker, Kevin Ikenberry, Brad R. Torgersen, T.C. McCarthy, and more.

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Time Trials

Time Trials

Retired Egyptologist Marty Cohen finds himself and his ragtag team of archaeologists transported back in time to a North Africa dominated by monsters. And behind the war against the monster overlords lies a greater struggle: Marty and his team have been chosen to be champions of all Earth and to run a gauntlet on humanity’s behalf. Failure will mean extinction.

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Poor Man's Sky

Poor Man's Sky

When a contestant in the reality show determining who will colonize Mars is found murdered on the Moon, a homicide detective, a Benedictine monk, an asteroid miner, and a hydroponic farmer will find themselves on a collision course with forces far beyond the control of trillionaires or nation states.

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Escape Orbit

Escape Orbit

Five years ago, astronaut Jack Templeton took the spacecraft Magellan to the farthest reaches of our solar system, never to be heard from again. Until now.

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Electronic Advance Reader Copies

The Icarus Job - eARC

The Icarus Job - eARC

An easy job and a chance for a big payout prove too tempting to Gregory Roarke and his partner Selene. But there’s a catch—there’s always a catch. The person they’ve been hired to escort is a professional, high-priced, highly feared assassin. And she’s on the job.

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United We Stand - eARC

United We Stand - eARC

The world was brought to its knees by the zombie virus. But humanity has risen from the ashes and has begun to rebuild. Courageous men and women have kindled a fire of hope in the darkness. But mere survival is not enough. The real challenge is how to keep that future alive and to stand united.

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Interstellar Medic: The Long Run - eARC

Interstellar Medic: The Long Run - eARC

Melanie Mooney was just doing her job when she came upon an unusual accident in the deep woods late one night. But she soon finds herself recruited by emissaries of a galaxy-spanning civilization and is thrust into a world she thought only existed in supermarket tabloids.

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Beggar's Sky - eARC

Beggar's Sky - eARC

Igbal Renz is one of the Four Horsemen—trillionaires who have successfully privatized the space industry in Earth’s solar system. Now, Renz has constructed a starship capable of making the twenty-year journey to Alpha Centauri. So why is he stopping at barely one-tenth that distance, with a cargo of a hundred frozen scientists and diplomats?

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An Angel Called Peterbilt - eARC

An Angel Called Peterbilt - eARC

Michael and Melanie Anderle are hauling a tanker full of oil with their Peterbilt eighteen-wheeler when they’re struck by a temporal irregularity that sends them, the truck, and their daughter back in time a thousand years.

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Beyond Enemies - eARC

Beyond Enemies - eARC

Talinn Reaze and Bee serve as “Breezy,” part of the United Colonial Force’s elite Artificial Intelligence Troops. Exceeding expectations to become one of the premier heavy tanks, they lead assaults on several fronts of the long war against the Interstellar Defense Corps. But, when they’re thrown to a backwater base without cause, boredom becomes their main enemy—until the world falls out from under their treads . . .

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Announcements

This is a scrolling content area for announcements about press releases, price changes, etc (Baen will provide and update these announcements)

This is a scrolling content area for announcements about press releases, price changes, etc (Baen will provide and update these announcements)

This is a scrolling content area for announcements about press releases, price changes, etc (Baen will provide and update these announcements)

This is a scrolling content area for announcements about press releases, price changes, etc (Baen will provide and update these announcements)

This is a scrolling content area for announcements about press releases, price changes, etc (Baen will provide and update these announcements)

Announcements

This is a scrolling content area for announcements about press releases, price changes, etc (Baen will provide and update these announcements)

This is a scrolling content area for announcements about press releases, price changes, etc (Baen will provide and update these announcements)

This is a scrolling content area for announcements about press releases, price changes, etc (Baen will provide and update these announcements)

This is a scrolling content area for announcements about press releases, price changes, etc (Baen will provide and update these announcements)

This is a scrolling content area for announcements about press releases, price changes, etc (Baen will provide and update these announcements)

December Contest

Light of the Veil Giveaway

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Baen Free Radio Hour

Jane Lindskold talks Over Where book three, House of Rough Diamonds, and Tinker Part 34

For the audio-only podcast click here

For the video podcast click here

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Study Guides

A new teacher guide is available for 1637: The Peacock Throne

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Baen's Bar

Talk about Baen books with other Barflies!

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Young Adult

This is a list of books published by Baen deemed to be appropriate for young adults.

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This Month’s Bundle

Only 23 days left to buy W202402 February 2024 Monthly Baen Bundle!

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Dave Drake was my friend, and my colleague, for more than three decades. He passed away peacefully this weekend, on Sunday, in fact. If he were here, I’d be tempted to tell him that he took that whole “day of rest” thing a little too far. . . .  He was appreciative of gallows humor; we published two volumes of his humorous stories at Baen starting with All the Way to the Gallows. Of course, that wasn’t what he was best known for. The modern subgenre of military science fiction accreted around the core of Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers stories, those that Jim Baen first published in Galaxy magazine, and then at Ace, with an introduction by Jerry Pournelle. Jim continued to publish Dave everywhere he went: first Ace, then Tor, then Baen. The two of them made a great team.

I enjoyed everything Dave wrote, from his chatty reports on foreign travels, to his thoughtful Christmas cards. Still, I had my favorites among his literary works. The standalone novel Starliner was one of them, pure adventure science fiction and as light and carefree as Dave ever got. Redliners, another; the quintessential volume of military SF, and Dave in a very different mode. If you want to read one book to get a feel for his work, this is it. I loved the RCN series, buddy stories loosely inspired by Jim Baen’s favorite Napoleonic naval novels by Patrick O’Brien, written after Redliners, and thus after some demons had been, if not laid to rest, at least come to terms with. His Old Nathan fantasy stories, so evocative of the place he’d come to live, and inspired by his friend Manly Wade Wellman’s Silver John stories. The Lord of the Isles series with the great brother and sister team of Cashel and Ilna. His two Belisarius-inspired series with both S.M. Stirling and Eric Flint (and later Tony Daniel). The Lacey SF stories. The Vettius Roman fantasy stories. From his start writing horror and dark fantasy short stories, to the last far-future Arthurian novels of The Spark, The Storm and The Serpent, he remained a fascinating storyteller.

He was an incredibly talented writer, and game for anything. He considered himself a craftsman, and consistently downplayed his talents and contributions, but they were many and his works will last—they already have. But not the least of his contributions to the field was his generosity to his fellow writers—and editors, like me--through collaborations, short stories in anthologies, and time spent sharing his knowledge of the field. And he always delivered.

Dave was a collector and fan of pulp magazines, and he helped keep the pulps alive not only with his own small press with his friend Karl Edward Wagner, Carcosa, but also through his advocacy of such stories with Jim Baen. So, too, Rudyard Kipling, which resulted in two Kipling-centric volumes. And he translated Latin for fun (for examples of which, see his website: https://david-drake.com/).

He was a man of honor, and sometimes that made him prickly. But he was also decent and kind down to his bones, and you will see many, many examples of this in the testimonies pouring forth on social media. But I am very glad that his good friend Mark Van Name made sure that he understood he was appreciated before he died when he put together the festschrift Onward, Drake! https://www.baen.com/onward-drake.html. He appeared many times on the Baen Free Radio Hour podcast, as an interviewee, and even reading poetry, and we’ll do a roundtable retrospective of his career in January.

More can and will undoubtedly be written about Dave, but I’ll close this short appreciation of him and his life with words he often used to end telephone conversations: Go do good things!


We lost David Drake on December 10, 2023. He was a giant in the genre and a friend to Baen Books, and he will be missed. Drake wrote some of the most influential fiction in the genre and touched the lives of many readers and writers. To celebrate his legacy we’re offering discounts on some key Drake titles from his backlist along with discounts of works that show the mark of his influence.


Details here

D.J. Butler is the author of the Witchy War series, the Cunning Man series (with Aaron Michael Ritchey), Abbott in Darkness, and many other novels and stories. “One Man's Rescue” takes place in his Indrajit & Fix series, which includes In The Palace of Shadow and Joy and Between Princesses & Other Jobs.

One Man's Rescue

D.J. Butler

The scab-eyed Gund Yazzo leaned forward across the squat planks of the tavern table. He hulked over Indrajit and Fix, blocking the light from the doorway with his massive frame, wrapped in gray wool. “I want you to rescue two baby Gunds.” 

Indrajit scratched an itch along the upper length of his bony nose ridge and looked out the window. The rag dangling resistless in the opening permitted the cold wet wind of the King of Thunder Steppes to spray moisture across his face and shoulders. The cool shock was pleasant, reminding him of the shaded grottos and rocky bays of his youth. 

“The problem,” his partner Fix said, leaning forward into the Gund’s musty, vaguely paperlike stink, “is that one man’s rescue is another man’s kidnapping.” Fix’s voice was high-pitched, almost feminine. He was shorter than Indrajit, with a broad, muscular chest. His black hair and coppery skin contrasted starkly with the pallor of the Gund. For this meeting, he’d left the bulk of his weapons in their room, wearing only his falchion at his belt. 

Yazzo scowled, its muzzle twisting to reveal a mouthful of yellow warrior’s teeth, some menacing and sharp and others shattered by trial. Other than its teeth and its many arms, Yazzo had no visible weapons. “Are you saying you won’t take my money?” Its voice rumbled low, seeming to rise from beneath the table. As if to serve as punctuation, it dropped a fist-sized bag to the table with a metallic clink. 

On the other side of the common room sat the dog-headed Kyone Munahim and the Pelthite slinger Philastes Larch, pretending to drink and chat idly. At the Gund’s menacing expression, Munahim set down his cup and Philastes put a hand on his dagger. 

Fix gripped Indrajit by the shoulder. “We will take your money.” 

“Also,” Indrajit continued deliberately, “we care why we’re doing things. Even out here in the lands of the barbarians, we are men of principle. We rescue princesses and undertake other heroic tasks.” 

“By preference, at least,” Fix said. “It’s why we call ourselves the ‘Protagonists.’” 

The Gund leaned back, emitting a groaning sound that might have been a laugh. Behind its head, the white insectoid limbs sprouting from its shoulders rattled together like a bamboo grove in a monsoon. On other side of its pale face, Yazzo had a column of three eyes rising from its cheek to its temple. On both sides, the lower two eyes were filled with dark red tissue, clots the size of eggs, with a thick trailing strip connecting the two and dropping toward the Gund’s jaw. 

“You want to hear a story,” it said. 

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Jim Beall (BS-Math, MBA, PE) has been a nuclear engineer for over forty years, a war gamer for over fifty, and an avid reader of science fiction for even longer. His experience in nuclear engineering and power systems began as a naval officer. Experience after the USN includes design, construction, inspection, enforcement, and assessment with a nuclear utility, an architect engineering firm, and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC).

The term “Artificial Intelligence” (AI) was coined by mathematician and computer scientist John McCarthy at a 1956 Dartmouth conference now deemed to be the birthplace of AI as a field of science, but the idea goes back nearly three millennia!

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Finalists exemplify the best of near-future, forward-thinking science fiction. Annual contest marks 16 years of highlighting bright futures and rising talent.

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Baen Books has signed a contract with author Christopher Ruocchio to publish the final two books in his internationally award-winning Sun Eater series, as well as for a first look deal for Ruocchio’s next series.

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We’re happy to announce an easier way to deliver our Ebooks directly from Baen.com to your favorite Ereader. You can now email EPUB files directly to your device from our site—no download necessary!

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Baen to publish new science fiction novels from authors Monalisa Foster and Marisa Wolf

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Lucille Robbins, Eric Flint’s widow and heir, in conjunction with Baen Books would like to announce the forthcoming titles from Eric Flint.

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Baen to publish sword and sorcery series The Chronicles of Hanuvar, with first book in August 2023

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Baen Books formally announced this year’s finalists for the Baen Fantasy Adventure Award earlier this month.

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It is with a heavy heart that we share the news that Eric Flint has passed away. We were proud to publish Eric’s first novel, Mother of Demons, in 1997, and to continue publishing his many worlds, including the best-selling Ring of Fire series that started with 1632.

There are several of Eric’s works already delivered and on the schedule. Eric was a tireless collaborator, and readers can also expect more of his works to be released with Eric’s designated collaborators in the future.

We will be celebrating Eric and his works on the Baen Free Radio Hour this week and the following week and encourage all to tune in.

—Toni Weisskopf
Publisher, Baen Books

Lakewood, Colorado author Wil McCarthy has been named the winner of the 2022 Prometheus Award for Best Novel, for his novel Rich Man’s Sky.

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To all of those who expressed interest and support for Baen's Bar in recent weeks, we are happy to announce it is back on-line, though with some changes. Baen is handing the Bar over to its users, and will henceforth be run by SFF Forums, LLC, and may be found at https://www.baensbar.net. Returning users will be able to use the Bar as usual, but new members will have to make a purchase at baen.com before they can log in. (Note: New users will not have to buy a book; there is a Bar tipjar option so they may contribute to the maintenance of the forum).

—Toni Weisskopf for SFF Forums

Innovative Independent Publisher to Bring Author Readings, Q&As, and Convention-Style Programming to Facebook LIVE

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Over 170 titles from Baen Books to be published as audiobooks over the next three years

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