ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Poul Anderson (1926–2001) was one of the most prolific and popular writers in science fiction. He won the Hugo Award seven times and the Nebula Award three times, as well as many other awards, notably including the Grand Master Award of the Science Fiction Writers of America for a lifetime of distinguished achievement. With a degree in physics and a wide knowledge of other fields of science, he was noted for building stories on a solid foundation of real science, as well as for being one of the most skilled creators of fast-paced adventure stories. He was author of more than one hundred science fiction and fantasy novels and story collections, and several hundred short stories, as well as historical novels, mysteries, and non-fiction books. He wrote several series, notably the Technic Civilization novels and stories, the Psychotechnic League series, the Harvest of Stars novels, and his Time Patrol series. In my not-all-that-humble opinion, all novels and stories in his gigantic opus are worth seeking out, but then, they were written by Poul Anderson, so that really goes without saying.
Hank Davis (b. 1944) is originally from Kentucky, wasted far too much time in New York, and has been a sometimes-spectral presence at Baen Books for more than three decades. He has never quite shaken off the life-changing event of reading A.E. Van Vogt’s Slan while in the second grade, leading to his reading every bit of sf he could get his hands on during his portion of the twentieth century, along with watching a lot of TV shows and movies, many of them pretty bad. However, the twenty-first century has mostly been disappointing (even with better movies and TV shows). For example, he sold a story to Harlan Ellison in 1969, shortly before being shipped off to Vietnam to help the 101st Airborne Division lose the war, under LBJ’s ineptitude, and recently learned, over half a century later, that it will not be published in The Last Dangerous Visions. More successfully, he has had stories published in the magazines If, Analog, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Bluegrass Woman, as well as Orbit 11 and a few other original anthologies (but not in TLDV). He is currently vegetating in North Carolina and, as an advanced glaucoma case, listens to e-texts and wishes that even if the disappointing twenty-first century doesn’t have flying cars, it could at the very least have brought forth cars that drive themselves by now.
T.R. Fehrenbach (1925–2013) was a noted historian, and at one time headed the Texas Historical Commission. After his death, the Commission established the T.R. Fehrenbach Award for notable books about Texas. His most popular and enduring work was Lone Star, an authoritative history of his native state. Born in San Benito Texas, he served during World War II in the U.S. Infantry, and later served in the Korean War. In between, he graduated from Princeton in 1947. He published more than twenty books, including U.S. Marines in Action, The Battle of Anzio, and This Kind of War (about the Korean war). He sold numerous pieces to such publications as The Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, The Atlantic, The New Republic, and other magazines, as well as writing a newspaper column. Analog editor John W. Campbell obviously thought highly of Fehrenbach’s “Remember the Alamo” and reprinted it in Analog I, the first of a series of anthologies reprinting stories from that magazine. About thirty years later, when another anthology reprinted the story, a reviewer in Locus was outraged and poured scorn on the piece. Its inclusion here will probably again upset the sort of people who deserve to be upset, and I (Hank) look forward to it.
Edmond Hamilton (1904–1977) was one of the most prolific contributors to Weird Tales, which published 79 of his stories between 1926 and 1948. Unusually for a WT mainstay, most of his work was science fiction (or, as the magazine tagged it initially, “weird-scientific stories”) rather than fantasy, dark or otherwise. He was also prolific outside the pages of WT, with stories in many other pulps, sometimes under pseudonyms. In the late 1940s, as interest in rip-roaring adventure SF waned, Hamilton developed a more serious style, with deeper characterizations, notably in “What’s It Like Out There?” (included in Baen’s Space Pioneers) and his 1960 novel, The Haunted Stars.
During the 1950s, he was also a prolific scripter for such D.C. comic books as The Legion of Super-Heroes. He continued writing into the 1970s, with stories in the SF magazines and new novels in paperback. He was a writer’s writer, with a gift for exciting tales of adventure. Some critics may have felt that such tales were insignificant, but that was—and is—their loss. Readers should be grateful for such a good and prolific writer and “Comrades of Time,” demonstrates that in spades.
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) began his career with a competently told, but not very striking story, “Lifeline,” which gave no clue that it was the first installment of the grandest saga in the history of science fiction, his “Future History” series, but soon, more substantial and vitamin-packed landmark yarns followed in those magical years when new Heinlein stories were regularly appearing in John W. Campbell, Jr.’s Astounding, making it known to all what untapped potential the SF field was capable of reaching. Sometimes, there would even be more than one Heinlein story in an issue, though the originator of some of those masterpieces would be concealed under pseudonym such as Anson MacDonald and John Riverside. (True, John Riverside’s byline appeared only once, in Campbell’s other classic pulp, Unknown Worlds, rather than Astounding, but as long as Heinlein and Campbell were remaking the shape of science fiction, fantasy had it coming, too.)
Alas, it was much too soon to take a long pause, but, thanks to Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese warlords, it was utterly necessary. Heinlein’s incandescent writing career had to cool down while Heinlein and several million others around the globe pitched in to put Hitler and his pals out of business. Heinlein’s career resumed after the war’s end, and the next four decades brought the classic juvenile novels, the sales to high-paying “slick” magazines, the trailblazing movie Destination Moon, the New York Times bestsellers, and more. This is, of course, an inadequate introduction to a Heinlein yarn; but, then, aren’t they all?
Jacob Holo’s story, “Doctor Quiet,” relates a small episode in the sprawling and far-ranging time war that Holo and co-author David Weber have conceived and depicted in the best-selling novel The Gordian Protocol, and its recent best-selling sequel, The Valkyrie Protocol (both from Baen). Between novels, Jacob enjoys gaming of all sorts, whether video gaming, card gaming, miniature wargaming, or watching speed runs on YouTube. He is a former-Ohioan, former-Michigander who now lives in sunny South Carolina with his wife/boss H.P. and his cat/boss Nova.
Robert Anson Hoyt grew up in the comforting shadow of the Rocky Mountains with a namesake that—let’s be honest—nobody could live up to. Still, he has not been completely idle. A writer since the age of eight, he both completed his first novel and made his first professional short story sale in middle school. Today his short stories can be found in a number of anthologies, and his first novel, Cat’s Paw, as well as its prequel novella, Ratskiller, can be found on Amazon. (He also enjoys utterly shameless plugs.) Despite a demanding professional life, he is continuing to work on both novels and short stories as often as he is able.
Although he’s been called far from where he was raised, his roots will always reach back deep into the mountain foothills. But as for home—home is, and always will be, wherever his loving wife is there to greet him when he gets home from a long day; wherever a cat stands ready to grudgingly accept pets after snubbing him properly for leaving; wherever his two thousand, six-hundred and fourteen little side projects rest just one crucial step from completion. His fondest hope is that when you read his stories you find them fun—at least as much fun as they are to write.
Sarah A. Hoyt won the Prometheus Award for her novel Darkship Thieves, the first in a series of novels which so far includes Darkship Renegades (a Prometheus Award finalist), A Few Good Men, Through Fire and Darkship Revenge (the last two being Prometheus Award finalists). Her collaborative novel with Kevin J. Anderson, Uncharted, won the Dragon Award for Best Alternate History Novel. Her first novel, Ill Met by Moonlight, was a finalist for the Locus and Mythopoeic Awards in its year. Her latest bestseller is Monster Hunter International: Guardian, a collaborative novel with Larry Correia set in his New York Times best-selling series. In fantasy, her popular shape shifter series so far includes Draw One in the Dark, Gentleman Takes a Chance, and Noah’s Boy. Her short fiction has been published—among other places—in Analog, Asimov’s, and Amazing Stories. She has written numerous short stories and novels in science fiction, fantasy, mystery, historical fiction and genre-straddling historical mysteries, many under a number of pseudonyms, and once stated, “No genre is safe from me.” She has a strong online presence, with an impressive number of novels and story collections available as e-books, and her According to Hoyt is one of the most outspoken and fascinating blogs on the internet, as is her FaceBook group “Sarah’s Diner.” Originally from Portugal, she lives the U.S.A. with her husband and “the surfeit of cats necessary to a die-hard Heinlein fan.”
Keith Laumer (1925–1993) was born in Syracuse, NY, and raised in Buffalo, NY, and Florida. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Air Force, and later as a Foreign Service Officer in the U.S. Foreign Service, in posts all over the world. This gave him a solid background both for his fast-moving adventure stories and his satirical comedies of Retief, the galaxy’s only two-fisted diplomat, who deftly and repeatedly saved both the skins of beleaguered human colonists and the careers of his bungling superiors in a popular series that spanned four decades. Almost as popular were his stories of the Bolos, gigantic robot tanks who serve valiantly throughout the galaxy, guarding humans who are often far less noble than their cybernetic defenders. He was renowned as one of the top writers of science fiction adventure and several of his novels and stories were finalists for the Hugo and Nebula awards.
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) began his writing career in a 1939 issue of the now-legendary fantasy magazine Unknown, with “Two Sought Adventure,” which introduced his popular and enduring characters, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. The pair of itinerant swordsmen and thieves would return in a host of short stories, novellas, and novels, marking a high point in the fantasy subgenre of sword and sorcery, a term that Leiber coined. He may be best remembered for the Mouser and Fafhrd yarns, but he was equally adept at horror fiction, and often appeared in another classic fantasy magazine, Weird Tales. And of course, he was a master of science fiction. In 1981, the Science Fiction Writers of America made it official, naming him a SFWA Grand Master. His many other honors include being the guest of honor at the 1951 and 1979 World SF Conventions and a total of six Hugo Awards, two Nebula Awards, and three World Fantasy Awards—one of them for lifetime achievement. The Horror Writers Association also recognized his importance to their field, presenting him in 1988 with their Bram Stoker Award for lifetime achievement. In 2001, he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. More could be cited, but space is limited, unlike Leiber’s talent.
Henry Beam Piper (1901–1964) was a prolific writer of science fiction from the late 1940s until the early sixties when he committed suicide. While he apparently had a number of reasons for checking out, one often cited is that he thought he was a failure as a writer. In fact, the reality was that he had an incompetent agent who had not notified Piper of a number of sales, nor sent along the proceeds before he suddenly died. (Note to beginning writers, choose an agent who is both competent and healthy!) The irony here is deafening, since his works proved very popular in the years after his death, with numerous paperback editions, and other writers continuing his series, including his Federation series, of which the “Fuzzy” stories about small but intelligent furry aliens have been a strikingly popular offshoot, and, in particular for this anthology, Piper’s “paratime” stories, in which one of a number of parallel timelines has invented the technology to travel between the adjacent universes, and exploits their resources in a benign but secret way. Piper’s own short stories in the series have been collected in the book Paratime, and the novel Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen was posthumously published. Piper was a student of history and a gun collector who put his knowledge to good use in his fiction. And as another person given the unfortunate name of “Henry,” I envy him the use of that more striking single initial.
Christopher Ruocchio is the internationally award-winning author of The Sun Eater, a space opera fantasy series, and the former junior editor at Baen Books, where he edited several anthologies. His work has also appeared in Marvel Comics. He is a graduate of North Carolina State University, where he studied English Rhetoric and the Classics. Christopher has been writing since he was eight and sold his first novel, Empire of Silence, at twenty-two. His books have appeared in five languages.
Christopher lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with his wife, Jenna.
Robert Silverberg, prolific author not just of SF, but of authoritative nonfiction books, columnist for Asimov’s SF Magazine, winner of a constellation of awards, and renowned bon vivant surely needs no introduction—but that’s never stopped me before. Born in 1935, Robert Silverberg sold his first SF story, “Gorgon Planet,” before he was out of his teens, to the British magazine Nebula. Two years later, his first SF novel, a juvenile, Revolt on Alpha C followed. Decades later, his total SF titles, according to his semi-official website, stands at 82 SF novels and 457 short stories. Early on, he won a Hugo Award for most promising new writer—rarely have the Hugo voters been so perceptive.
Toward the end of the 1960s and continuing into the 1970s, he wrote a string of novels much darker in tone and deeper in characterization than his work of the 1950s, such as the novels Nightwings, Dying Inside, The Book of Skulls, and many other novels. He took occasional sabbaticals from writing to later return with new works, such as the Majipoor series. His most recent novels include The Alien Years, The Longest Way Home, and a new trilogy of Majipoor novels. In addition The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted him in 1999. In 2004, the Science Fiction Writers of America presented him with the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. For more information see his “quasi-official” website at www.majipoor.com heroically maintained by Jon Davis (no relation).
Alfred Elton Van Vogt (1912–2000) was a roaring success as a science fiction writer, being one of the earliest to have novels and story collections published by major publishers in the postwar era, while Asimov’s first books, for example, came from fan presses, such as Gnome Press. His books stayed in print in paperback, and omnibus editions. He was the very model of a successful sf writer, you might say, and that seemed odd since he was one of the most attacked writers by notable sf critics, Damon Knight in particular, but also by such major writer-critics as Algis Budrys and Frederik Pohl (though Pohl’s adverse opinion didn’t keep him from publishing Van Vogt’s stories in the magazines he edited in the 1960s). Van Vogt’s targeting by critics might have led him to echo the prize fight promoter’s remark, “I cry all the way to the bank,” except that he also had his defenders, including such critics as David Hartwell and Leslie Fiedler, and such highly praised writers as Philip K. Dick, Barry Malzberg, and Harlan Ellison. And then there was France, where Van Vogt was even more popular in French than in English, and French critics considered him one of the leading surrealists of the twentieth century. In any case, Van Vogt remained in print, and obviously pleased the only critics who really matter, the readers, and this reader in particular, with such novels as The Voyage of the Space Beagle, and The Weapon Shops of Isher and its sequel The Weapon Makers, Empire of the Atom and its sequel, The Wizard of Linn, with its unforgettable image of spaceships that barbarian hordes use to transport horse cavalry to other planets, The Book of Ptath, The Mind Cage, The War Against the Rull, The Pawns of Null-A (which I much prefer to its predecessor, The World of Null-A), and many more novels, plus such shorter works as “Recruiting Station,” “The Vault of the Beast,” “Asylum,” “The Monster,” “Dear Pen Pal,” “Enchanted Village,” “The Search,” “Far Centaurus,” and I’d better stop there, though I will further note that reading Van Vogt’s great novel Slan when I was in the second grade made me a permanent sf addict. Thank you, sir, wherever you are.
Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) was one of, if not the most critically praised and award-winningest writers in science fiction and fantasy (if he saw a difference; he was once quoted as saying that “All novels are fantasies. Some are more honest about it.”). He received two Nebula Awards, four World Fantasy Awards, a John W. Campbell Memorial Award, an August Derleth Award, a British SF Association Award, a Rhysling Award, seven Locus Awards, and was nominated for a Hugo Award eight times, but with no wins, which is . . . interesting . . . in view of some of the specimens of thin gruel that have won that tarnished rocket lately. And when it comes to lifetime achievement, he has received the World Fantasy Award and the Science Fiction Writers of America’s award for just that. In 2007, he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. All that, and, according to Wikipedia, in his other life as an engineer, he contributed to the machine used to make Pringle’s potato chips. Of such things is immortality made. Ursula K. LeGuin has stated, “Wolfe is our Melville.” I don’t recall his writing about pursuit of great white whales, or even of stubborn scriveners, but if he had, I’m sure it would have been typically brilliant and typically atypical.
John C. Wright has been an attorney, a newspaperman, a technical writer, and, most important (of course), a notable science fiction and fantasy writer. His first novel, The Golden Age, was praised by Publishes Weekly, whose reviewer wrote that Wright “may be this fledgling century’s most important new SF talent.” The novel was followed by The Phoenix Exultant and The Golden Transcendence, to make up the major space opera trilogy The Golden Oecumene, which reads like a collaboration between A.E. Van Vogt and Jack Vance. Speaking of Van Vogt, Wright wrote a powerful continuation (and possible culmination) of that writer’s classic Null-A novels, the Null-A Continuum, as well as a companion book to another classic, William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land, titled Awake in the Night Land. His fantasy novel Orphans of Chaos was a Nebula Award finalist, and his novel Somewhither won the Dragon Award for the best novel of 2016. In 2015, he was nominated for six Hugo awards in both fiction and nonfiction: one short story, one novelette, three novellas, and one nonfiction related work, setting a historical record for the most Hugo Award nominations in a single year. His short fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s SF Magazine, Absolute Magnitude, and other publications. For more details on his work, visit his website. He lives in Virginia with his wife, fellow writer L. Jagi Lamplighter, and their four children.