Publisher's Synopsis
With a veteran 's eye for the harsh and
gritty details of war, David Drake depicts a
futuristic analog of Vietnam-era tank combat
in his Hammer's Slammers fiction. Upon this
tactical foundation, Drake uses historical
metaphor to provide a rich and detailed
future-history that is both unique and
strangely familiar. The characters that make
up the Hammer's Regiment are neither
cartoon heroes nor propaganda villains;
rather they are competent professionals
engaged in a deadly business. The inevitable
conflicts between policy, necessity, and
human nature are often at the forefront of the
Slammers narratives, and it is this rich fusion ofa
elements that makes Drake's Slammers fiction
instantly identifiable and utterly compelling.
The Hammer's Slammers series is some
of the most important and influential work
in military SF. The Vietnam War made
indelible marks on the science fiction genre,
and Drake's service with the Blackhorse
Regiment during the war gives his fiction a
unique perspective. It is this perspective
that is sometimes lacking in military SF, and
one that makes Drake's work so important
to the science fiction genre as a whole. This
three-volume set collects all the Slammers
short fiction and novels into a set of uniform
editions, and presents a new, previously
uncollected piece of fiction in each volume.
This third volume collects the last two
Slammers novels, The Sharp End (1993) and Paying the Piper (2002). The novella "The Darkness" was written for this volume, and has
been uncollected prior to the publication of
this volume.
