Five thousand miles from the U.S., the president of the United States is facing death. In one hour, an American force will strike back—with the most daring rescue mission ever!

The RDF—Marine Corps Rapid Deployment Force—can strike anywhere in the world in under an hour. Their secret weapon: the Trans-Atmospheric Vehicle flown at 15,000 miles per hour by the Air Force’s most elite pilots, carrying a deadly cargo of highly trained marines. The technology is unproven. But its time has come.…

Some writing classes caution their students to avoid first-person stories—too traditional, too dated, too difficult to sell. We’ve convinced 5-time Hugo Award winner Mike Resnick to show you how it’s done with two dozen of his best first-person stories.

You want Hugo nominees? We got ’em.
Humor? Them, too.
Award winners and nominees? Yep.
Fantasy? But, of course.
Science fiction? Absolutely.
Sherlock Holmes? We’ve even got one of them.

Mike Resnick is, according to Locus magazine, the all-time leading award winner, living or dead, for short fiction. First Person Peculiar will explain why.

Long ago Earth's paleobiologists established the planet Anee as a vast storehouse of extinct species, each continent home to life forms of a different era. For a thousand years the starfarers' great sea serpents formed a wall of teeth and flesh that protected Smilodon Bay from the ravaging dinosaurs that swam across the ocean from Hotland. Now the serpents are gone and Anee is being ravaged by tyranny, war and slavery.

Tull, son to a human father and a Neanderthal mother, feels doomed to toil his life away as a common field hand, but his mission becomes clear when he takes action to save his homeland. Tull must seek a distant river in the slave nation of Craal, where young serpents can be found. Legend has it that Adjonai, the Neanderthal god of terror, is king of Craal. Yet only by facing this dark enemy can Tull hope to bring home his serpent catch alive.

This is the first installment of a four part series. Originally published under the name "Dave Wolverton."

Long ago Earth's paleobiologists established the planet Anee as a vast storehouse of extinct species, each continent home to life forms of a different era. For a thousand years the starfarers' great sea serpents formed a wall of teeth and flesh that protected Smilodon Bay from the ravaging dinosaurs that swam across the ocean from Hotland. Now the serpents are gone and Anee is being ravaged by tyranny, war and slavery.

Tull, son to a human father and a Neanderthal mother, feels doomed to toil his life away as a common field hand, but his mission becomes clear when he takes action to save his homeland. Tull must seek a distant river in the slave nation of Craal, where young serpents can be found. Legend has it that Adjonai, the Neanderthal god of terror, is king of Craal. Yet only by facing this dark enemy can Tull hope to bring home his serpent catch alive. (Originally published under the name "Dave Wolverton")

Catching the serpents was only the beginning. Before Tull can lead his people to freedom, he must first free himself from the beast within.

He must break the fiery chains of Adjonai as he leads an uprising against the powerful Slave Lords, but the ultimate battle for Tull and his allies will come against the Creators, machines with minds of crystal waging a program of total genocide against all life on Anee.

The last installment of the Serpent Catch Series

Catching the serpents was only the beginning. Before Tull can lead his people to freedom, Tull must first free himself from the beast within.

He must break the fiery chains of Adjonai as he leads an uprising against the powerful Slave Lords, but the ultimate battle for Tull and his allies will come against the Creators, machines with minds of crystal waging a program of total genocide against all life on Anee.