S. M. Stirling Books

IT'S HOWLING TIME IN KNOWN SPACE Those war-crazed fur-balls from the planet Kzin just won't give up, even though the canny pseudo-pacifists from Planet Earth cut through the Kzinti like a laser through catmeat (once the humans rediscovered old technologies and old instincts that never quite bred out). The ferocious Kzinti never seemed to be able to come up with a more complicated strategy than "Scream and Leap." But after three hard-fought wars, a few of the powerful pussycats have learned from their foes. Now, they are ready, and all that stands between freedom and a feline-filled universe is the human race. Good luck, monkey-boys. Cover illustration: Steven Hickman

The Bronze Age. The era of Troy, of Gilgamesh, of the dawning of human mastery over the earth. For decades, fantasists have set tales of heroism and adventure in imagined worlds based on the real Bronze Age, from the "Hyborean Age" of the Conan stories to the Third Age of Middle-earth.Now bestselling science fiction and fantasy author Harry Turtledove, a noted expert on the ancient world, teams up with author and Egyptologist Noreen Doyle to present fourteen new tales of the real Bronze Age from some of the best writers in science fiction.In The First Heroes: here is Gene Wolfe's mock-journal of a man from the future who travels with figures out of history and mythology; Judith Tarr's tale of a a town that sends its resident goddess to try to learn the secrets of the morose God of Chariots; Harry Turtledove's story about mythological beings witnessing the devastating effect of the first humans on the Earth's natural order; and a poignant new story from the late Poul Anderson, in which a modern scholar is sent to the late Bronze Age to witness the end of an era, emerging with memories from the past as vibrant and intact as those from his accustomed life.