The premise of this science fiction (more specifically alternate history) series is that a war between two competing societies in the future spills over to 6th century Earth. The New Gods back the Malwa Empire of India and commence attempts to conquer the world and stamp out meritorious accomplishment as a means to privilege and instead favor planned eugenics and hereditary birth (Autocracy) in order to change the future. Meritorious performance is seen to originate in the Eastern Roman Empire, and the root cause of a future that must be changed by conquest, and Malwa has a malleable society and the base power for their intervention. Anything in the way (other Indian kingdoms, the Sassanid Persian Empire, and so forth) must be crushed, including plans to deal with China after Byzantium falls. The Malwa Empire is advised and controlled by a calculating cyborg (human/machine) interface named Link, and the empire uses gunpowder technology to conquer most of the rest of India. To counter t

About the Author:

David Drake was attending Duke University Law School when he was drafted. He served the next two years in the Army, spending 1970 as an enlisted interrogator with the 11th armored Cavalry in Viet Nam and Cambodia. Upon return he completed his law degree at Duke and was for eight years Assistant Town Attorney for Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He has been a full-time freelance writer since 1981. Besides the bestselling Hammer’s Slammers series, his books for Baen include the Lt. Leary series, the latest being The Way to Glory, and the Belisarius series, written in collaboration with Eric Flint, the first two novels of which are now combined in ((TITLE??)).

Eric Flint is the New York Times best-selling author of the Ring of Fire alternate history series, the first of which is 1632. His impressive first novel, Mother of Demons (Baen), was selected by SF Chronicle as one of the best novels of 1997. In addition to his collaborations with David Drake, he has also joined forces with David Weber in 1633 and the New York Times best seller 1634: The Baltic War, both novels in the Ring of Fire series, and on Crown of Slaves, a best of the year pick by Publishers Weekly. Flint received his masters degree in history from UCLA and was for many years a labor union activist. He lives in East Chicago, IL, with his wife and is working on more books in the best-selling Ring of Fire series.

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