Contents
The stories in this volume are:
- "Introduction: The Hounds of Zeus": A brief introduction to the world of The Company.
- "Noble Mold": Mendoza and Joseph attempt to secure a special plant from a Native American family living in 19th century Mission California.
- "Smart Alec": On the origins of the mysteriously talented Alec Checkerfield.
- "Facts Relating to the Arrest of Dr. Kalugin": Vasilii Kalugin has a bad week in the company of a very old Company operative.
- "Old Flat Top": A young Cro-Magnon learns some facts about how his valley came to be settled from the Enforcer Joshua.
- "The Dust Enclosed Here": A simulacrum of William Shakespeare encounters Alec Checkerfield and comes out of the experience changed.
- "The Literary Agent": Robert Louis Stevenson hallucinates a strangely contemporary encounter with a Mephistophelean figure who helps him rediscover his inspiration.
- "Lemuria Will Rise": Mendoza encounters an eccentric hermit in 19th century Pismo Beach.
- "The Wreck of the Gladstone": Victor and Kalugin have to recover Company property from a wreck off the coast of Los Angeles without damaging the local mortals too badly.
- "Monster Story": Young Alec Checkerfield goes to take his exams.
- "Hanuman": Mendoza gets hit on by an augmented australopithecine with a story to tell about his tragic upbringing.
- "Studio Dick Drowns Near Malibu": Joseph goes to shed one mortal identity and assume a new one, but first he has to resolve a complication.
- "The Likely Lad": Alec Checkerfield and his amoral pet artificial intelligence take to the high seas.
- "The Queen in Yellow": Literature Preservation Specialist Lewis is given a job on a dig in Egypt for which he is poorly suited.
- "The Hotel at Harlan's Landing": A storm on the coast of California during the Great Depression where Company secrets are revealed, and more questions posed.
William Shakespeare was an English poet, playwright and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's greatest dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His extant works, including collaborations, consist of approximately 39 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.
Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist and travel writer, most noted for Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and A Child's Garden of Verses.
Australopithecus is a 'genus' of hominins. From paleontological and archaeological evidence, the genus Australopithecus apparently evolved in eastern Africa around 4 million years ago before spreading throughout the continent and eventually becoming extinct two million years ago. Australopithecus is not literally extinct as the Kenyanthropus, Paranthropus and Homo genera probably emerged as sister of a late Australopithecus species such as A. Africanus and/or A. Sediba. During that time, a number of australopithecine species emerged, including Australopithecus afarensis, A. africanus, A. anamensis, A. bahrelghazali, A. deyiremeda (proposed), A. garhi, and A. sediba.
The story "Smart Alec" was later incorporated into the novel The Life of the World to Come .
The Life of the World to Come (2004) is the fifth installment in the series of science fiction time travel novels by Kage Baker concerning the exploits of The Company.
The story "The Literary Agent" runs counter to other Company stories in that it shows Joseph using a time travel capsule as a routine tool. The basis for much of the backstory is that the time travel technology is too expensive and risky for this.
In "Monster Story", Alec Checkerfield "helps" another boy to answer the test questions, resulting in that boy being committed to a "special" school for those with deviant psychological profiles. In a later story a character, who is apparently that boy grown up, leads the Company's "Adonai" project, which results in the birth of Alec Checkerfield.
Fritz Reuter Leiber Jr. was an American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. He was also a poet, actor in theater and films, playwright and chess expert. With writers such as Robert E. Howard and Michael Moorcock, Leiber can be regarded as one of the fathers of sword and sorcery fantasy, having coined the term.
Roger Joseph Zelazny was an American poet and writer of fantasy and science fiction short stories and novels, best known for The Chronicles of Amber. He won the Nebula award three times and the Hugo Award six times, including two Hugos for novels: the serialized novel ...And Call Me Conrad (1965), subsequently published under the title This Immortal (1966) and then the novel Lord of Light (1967).
Lawrence Taylor Shaw was a Hugo Award-winning science fiction fan, author, editor and literary agent who usually published as Larry T. Shaw.
The October Country is a 1955 collection of nineteen macabre short stories by American writer Ray Bradbury. It reprints fifteen of the twenty-seven stories of his 1947 collection Dark Carnival, and adds four more of his stories previously published elsewhere.
In the Garden of Iden is a 1997 science fiction novel by American writer Kage Baker. Although it is set entirely in the 16th century, in Spain and England, it is a science fiction story revolving around the activities of a group of immortal cyborgs, individuals who appear human but have been transformed by high technology.
Sky Coyote is a science fiction novel of The Company by Kage Baker. It is the second in the series which began with In The Garden of Iden and continues with Mendoza in Hollywood.
The Graveyard Game is the fourth installment in the series of science fiction time travel novels by Kage Baker concerning the exploits of The Company.
The Children of the Company is a science fiction novel by Kage Baker. It is another in the series concerned with the exploits of The Company, a 24th-century cabal which exploits history for profit with the aid of immortal cyborgs living in the past.
Tomorrow, the Stars is an anthology of speculative fiction short stories, presented as edited by American author Robert A. Heinlein and published in 1952.
The Machine's Child is a science fiction novel by Kage Baker. It is the seventh book in the series concerning the exploits of Dr. Zeus Inc., otherwise known as The Company.
The Enchanter Reborn is an anthology of five fantasy short stories edited by American writers L. Sprague de Camp and Christopher Stasheff, the first volume in their continuation of the Harold Shea series by de Camp and Fletcher Pratt. It was first published in paperback by Baen Books in 1992; an ebook edition followed from the same publisher in May 2013. The book has also been translated into Italian. All but one of the pieces are original to the anthology; the exception, de Camp's "Sir Harold and the Gnome King", first appeared in the World Fantasy Convention program book in 1990 and was then published as a separate chapbook in 1991.
"The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth" is a science fiction novelette by Roger Zelazny. Originally published in the March 1965 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, it won the 1966 Nebula Award for Best Novelette, and was nominated for the 1966 Hugo Award for Best Short Fiction.
Gods and Pawns (ISBN 0-765-31552-1) is a collection of stories written by Kage Baker and published by Tor Books. The stories are set in the same universe as her series about The Company.
James Judson Harmon, better known as Jim Harmon, was an American short story author and popular culture historian who wrote extensively about the Golden Age of Radio. He sometimes used the pseudonym Judson Grey, and occasionally he was labeled Mr. Nostalgia.
The Water of the Wondrous Isles is a fantasy novel by William Morris, perhaps the first writer of modern fantasy to unite an imaginary world with the element of the supernatural, and thus a precursor of much of present-day fantasy literature. It was first printed in 1897 by Morris' own Kelmscott Press on vellum and artisanal paper in a blackletter type of his own design. For the wider reading public, a hardcover trade edition was published later that year by Longmans, Green and Co. The novel was republished by Ballantine Books as the thirty-eighth volume of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in November, 1971. The Ballantine edition includes an introduction by Lin Carter.
The Sons of Heaven is a science fiction novel written by Kage Baker. It is the last in her series of novels about The Company.
Virginia Kidd was an American literary agent, writer and editor, who worked in particular in science fiction and related fields. She represented science fiction American authors such as Ursula K. Le Guin, R.A. Lafferty, Anne McCaffrey, Judith Merril, and Gene Wolfe. Wolfe modeled Ann Schindler, a character in his 1990 novel Castleview, in large part on Kidd.
Dr. Zeus Inc., also known simply as the Company, is a fictional entity in a series of time travel science fiction stories by Kage Baker. Most of the characters in the novels are immortal cyborgs created by Company operatives throughout history and recruited to work on preserving art, artifacts, rare species and other valuable items which the Company can sell for huge profits in the 24th century. The cyborgs look forward to receiving their final reward when they reach the 24th century by living through all the preceding times, but some suspect that when they do, they will instead be deactivated, or worse.
