Turn Left to Tomorrow

In his first collection, Bailey exhibits the expansive imagination that distinguishes his Dragonkin novels and led to his current presidency of the Science Fiction Writers of America. With a heavy bent toward action-driven military sf, Bailey's tales often feature jaded antiheroes grappling with ill-fated careers and hostile environments. A sword-wielding officer in a battle-weary space brigade forges an intimate relationship with her enemy in a bid to end the war. A blind starship pilot seizes the chance to regain his eyesight on a mission to rescue an imperiled craft carrying his commanding officer's parents. In "Doing Time," a time traveler accidentally jumps ten million years ahead and stumbles on a prison camp exiled to the far future. In the volume's longest, most dynamic story, "Toy Soldiers," a mercenary exposes the identities of an embattled planet's guerilla warriors as ageless, superintelligent children. From the first paragraph, Bailey's visceral prose grabs and doesn't let go, resulting in a collection as likely to stimulate adrenaline as to entertain. Hays, Carl Back To Top