When three Terrans — a space pilot, a planetary queen and an obese tycoon — crash-landed on Diomedes, they realized that the chances for survival were quite slim. The native food was totally poisonous to humans, and the survivors had only six weeks’ worth of supplies to get them across thousands of miles of unmapped territory to the one Terran outpost. Their only hope was to enlist the aid of the winged inhabitants of Diomedes, and these barbarian tribes cared only for battle and glory. There was little that could induce them to worry about the lives of three humans.

Bribed to explore a supposedly barren moon, Lt. Flandry finds it swarming with a hideous race of killers, controlled by a deranged computer brain!

Dominic Flandry gets sent to put down a rebellion against the Terran Empire. His investigation reveals that the rebellion is morally justified: an evil governor had engaged in mass murder against innocents. However, Dominic Flandry cannot stand by while the good-intentioned rebels throw the empire into chaos; neither can he allow the governor to bring his vile plans to fruition. To complicate things, Flandry falls in love with the rebel leader’s wife.

The ninth shared-world anthology laid in Niven's Known Space universe during the wars against those fighting felinoids, the alien Kzin, offers four notably readable long stories. In the late Poul Anderson's "Pele," a human couple on a research expedition rescue a Kzin with more courage than sense. Hal Colebatch's "His Sergeant's Honor," probably the book's strongest entry, features a Kzin who backs up his race's fanatical concept of honor with keen tactical sense. In Paul Chafe's "Windows of the World," a member of the UN police, ARM captain Joel K. Allson, and Allson's Kzin partner confront a mysterious murder aboard an orbital habitat, along with several conspiracies and a beautiful suspect. Niven's own "Fly-By-Night" features Beowulf Shaeffer rescuing the title character from another Kzin with vaulting ambitions and a keen eye for legal loopholes. For action and military SF fans, these four tales intelligently develop the Kzin, who still have all the ferocity of their carnivorous, predatory ancestors but have assumed more complexity as they carry their civilization into space. At a time when mindless brutality may strike a somewhat negative note with many readers, more sophisticated Kzin will add to the audience for these well-wrought aliens and their human friends and foes. Stephen Hickman's menacing, prosthetically enhanced catlike hero from "His Sergeant's Honor" almost jumps off the jacket.

In a thrilling collection of hard science fiction stories, a master of speculative fiction envisions a volatile future when Earth's colonies throughout the galaxy attempt to break free from home-world rule On a spaceship rocketing toward the stars, an official council meets to discuss how to censor history for the benefit of a new generation in space—which stories to preserve and which ones to discard forever . . . Golden-age hard science fiction luminary Poul Anderson approached the future with a mixture of excitement, hope, and skepticism. In Tales of the Flying Mountains, the multiple Hugo and Nebula Award winner offers stories from a new war of independence and beyond—portending a time when a North American government on Earth will take up arms against its own rebellious children colonizing the cosmos, then exploring the shape of the universe in the war's aftermath. Firmly based in hard science and human nature, here are seven...

With this story, I’ve enter a future in which mankind has spread itself far out into the galaxy of which Earth’s sun — and Earth itself, of course — are such microscopically small bits of dust. In Anderson’s concept, most life forms encountered seem to be essentially humanoid. In this story, indeed, they are not only humanoid, but measurably “human” in their psychological reactions. If one wanted to draw some comparisons, one could, I suppose, compare Cundaloa in this tale with the islands of the Pacific, and Skontar with the Scandinavian countries. Sweden, for example, is Swedish through and through. Hawaii? Whatever Hawaii is, and it sounds wonderful for a vacation, it surely no longer belongs to the original Hawaiians… You will get the point of this analogy as you read on, of course. Poul Anderson

Science Fiction. 25019 words long. First published in 2009, 2009

The saga of Harald Harrede. "He was a huge man, fully seven feet tall and no one could stand before him in battle or sport...His manner was often curt and haughty, though he know how to win to him those whom he liked...and he could never hear enough of far lands." "So wide a world and so short a span to wander it!"

Dominic Flandry, troubleshooter for the decaying Terran Empire, returns to the spaceways and becomes tangled up in the well-laid plans of his lifelong enemy, Aycharaych.

Product DescriptionThe gathering forces of the Dark Powers threaten the world of man. The legions of Faery, aided by trolls, demons and the Wild Hunt itself, are poised to overthrow the Realms of Light. Holger Carlsen, a bemused and puzzled twentieth-century man mysteriously snatched out of time, finds himself the key figure in the conflict. Arrayed against him are the dragons, giants and elven warriors of the armies of Chaos, and the beautiful sorceress Morgan le Fay. On his side is a vague prophecy, a quarrelsome dwarf and a beautiful woman who can turn herself into a swan, not to mention Papillon, the magnificent battle-horse, and a full set of perfectly fitting armour, both of which were waiting for him when he entered the magical realm. The shield bears three hearts and three lions - the only clue to Holger Carlsen's true identity. Could Carlsen really be a legendary hero, the only man who can save the world?