For information about the stories and novels, see Hammer’s Slammers Fiction

The series has been adapted to various forms of gaming.  See Hammer’s Slammers Games

HAMMER’S SLAMMERS is a short story collection, not a novel, and my first book. It made it possible for me to become a full-time writer, though I didn’t realize it at the time.

I’d sold a story as an undergraduate, another story after I started law school, and even one while I was in Nam. After I came back I continued writing at a faster rate, in part because I became friends with two writers in the Triangle area: Manly Wade Wellman and Karl Edward Wagner. Manly and Karl suggested that I use Southeast Asian settings instead of writing historical fantasies. I wrote a fantasy, Arclight, and an SF story, Contact! and both sold. These were set in Nam (come to think, both were based on things that happened in Cambodia), but there was no military theme to the stories.

Then I wrote The Butcher’s Bill: an sf story about soldiers and war rather than an sf story with soldiers as characters. It didn’t sell to quite a number of markets. One of the editors rejecting it was Fred Pohl who said it required too sophisticated a knowledge of the military for the entry-level anthology he was buying for. I immediately wrote Under the Hammer in which the reader could view the milieu through the eyes of a young recruit who got on-the-job training in somewhat the same fashion as I did in Cambodia.

Fred rejected that one also; but pretty much by chance I’d used the same unit, Hammer’s Slammers, as the setting for both stories even though I was only trying to sell the second story at the time. I had a series.

Jim Baen bought those two stories for Galaxy and another in the series besides. He rejected two more, but when he took over as sf editor of Ace Books he asked my agent for a collection of Hammer stories which would include the five already written and additional wordage to bring the book up to length.

All that was important, but the stories were more important to me as self-therapy than they were as the start of a career. They gave me a chance to write about what I’d seen and heard; about the men I’d served with and person I’d become in that time. Being able to get that out on paper helped me keep it between the ditches and (from what they’ve told me) helped other veterans by showing them that they weren’t alone.

At one point I hoped the stories would help civilians understand also. I don’t think that can happen. It’s nobody’s fault, it’s just a matter of people not having the background to hear what the words mean to people who’ve been there.

That’s OK. I’ve still been able to do something for myself and my people.

Contents of the original HAMMER’S SLAMMERS book, with note as to which omnibus volume reprints the stories:

• Intro: Mercenaries and Military Virtue by Jerry Pournelle
• But Loyal to His Own (The Butcher’s Bill)
• The Butcher’s Bill (The Butcher’s Bill)
• Under the Hammer (The Tank Lords)
• Cultural Conflict (The Butcher’s Bill)
• Caught in the Crossfire (Caught in the Crossfire)
• Hangman (The Butcher’s Bill)
• Standing Down (The Butcher’s Bill)
• Interludes: Supertanks, The Church of the Lord’s Universe, Powerguns, Backdrop to Chaos, The Bonding Authority, and Table of Organization and Equipment, Hammer’s Regiment (The Tank Lords, as Appendix) The Baen (1987) edition adds The Tank Lords (The Tank Lords)

–Dave Drake

Hammer’s Slammers. Hammer’s Slammers Series. 1979, NewYork, NY: AceBooks. 274p.0441315933 (pb) (There were nine printings at five prices from $1.95 to $2.95 of this edition.)
————– 1987, Riverdale, NY: Baen. 318 p. 0671656325. $3.50.
————– 1989, Riverdale, NY: Baen. 318 p. 0671656325. $3.95.

If you decide to write about far-famed Achilles, make him active, hot-tempered, inexorable, and fierce; let him deny that laws were made for him, let him think his sword rules all. –Horace, The Art of Poetry (lines 120-2)

My undergraduate double major was history and Latin, and I continued to take Latin courses while I was in law school in a laughable attempt to stay sane.  Reading Latin centers me. (Note “laughable” in the previous sentence.)

A story doesn’t depend on the language in which it’s told, and a story that’s been around for several thousand years is likely to be a very good story.  While rereading The Odyssey (in translation; Ben Jonson would be even more slighting about my Greek than he was about Shakespeare’s) I remarked to a friend that the story would make an excellent Western.

And as I said that, a light dawned.  The Odyssey would make a heck of a space opera as well, though translating Homer’s story to an SF idiom would take some subtlety if I were to avoid being absurd. For example, I couldn’t just have my hero land on a planet of one-eyed giants who shut him and his crew in a cave. But what about an automated city that . . . ?

I did a precis of The Odyssey and plotted my story around that armature, focusing always on situations that would serve the same structural purposes that Homer had achieved in his medium.  Then I wrote Cross the Stars.

By the way, the Cyclopes appear twice in The Odyssey: once in direct conflict with Odysseus (which everybody remembers) and once as the creatures whose savage attacks drove the Phaecians out of their original home. If you’ve just finished reading Cross the Stars, you may recall a passing reference to giant one-eyed mutants. The latter, like the local creature called the argus and other asides in my novel, is homage to the man/men/woman who wrote The Odyssey; and who is, for my money, the greatest literary genius of all time.

As I was writing Cross the Stars I commented to the same friend that while The Odyssey translated easily to other media, The Iliad (perhaps an even greater achievement) was too fixed in its own cultural idiom to be used the way I did the other. For a long time I believed that I couldn’t use The Iliad at all in my fiction.

One day I was rereading Horace’s Ars Poetica and came to the quotation I’ve translated as the epigraph to this essay. Homer is the only source for the character of Achilles (which Horace summarizes with his usual succinct brilliance), but the character can have a life outside the cultural confines of The Iliad. There are and always have been men (and here I mean “male human beings”) like Achilles; Alexander the Great made a conscious attempt to model his life on the character (and succeeded, in my opinion, only too well).

So I thought about the problem for a long while, then wrote The Warrior. I set the piece (a short novel) in the Hammer universe, as I had Cross the Stars before it, but The Warrior was straight military–as surely as The Iliad is. I used the milieu of modern warfare, of tanks rather than armored spearmen, and the background has no connection with the Siege of Troy.

But remember, Homer didn’t say he was writing about the Siege of Troy: I sing the wrath of Achilles. . . .

Not all of my plots come from classical (or even historical) sources, but most of them do. That’s not only because of my personal taste, but because I believe (with Shakespeare) that literature wich survives the buffeting of time is worth a second or thirty-second look.

I opened with a quote from Horace. I’ll close with another one:  I have builded a monument more lasting than bronze. . . . Horace did; and Homer did, and Apollonius did, and so many others did. I’m proud to be able occasionally to stand on their magnificent structures.

–Dave Drake, 1994

Cross the Stars. Hammer’s Slammers Series. 1984, New York, NY: Tor. 342 p. 0812536142 (pb). $2.95.
————– 1994, New York, NY: Tor. 342 p. 0812509994 (pb). $2.95.
————– 1999, Riverdale, NY: Baen. 309 p. 0671578219. $1.99.

1985, Riverdale, NY: Baen. 0-671-55978-8
——- with Rolling Hot (audiobook),  Audible.com, 2011

Contains three short pieces:

“At Any Price” also available in:
————– The Butcher’s Bill. 1998, Riverdale, NY: Baen.
————– The Complete Hammer’s Slammers, v.2. 2006, San Francisco, CA: Night Shade Books.
————– The Complete Hammer’s Slammers, v.2. 2010, Riverdale, NY: Baen.

“The Interrogation Team” also available in:
————– There Will Be War, v.5, J. E. Pournelle, ed. 1985, New York, NY: Tor.
————– Caught in the Crossfire. 1998, Riverdale, NY: Baen.
————– Other Times Than Peace. 2006, Riverdale, NY: Baen.
————– The Complete Hammer’s Slammers, v.1. 2006, San Francisco, CA: Night Shade Books.
————– The Complete Hammer’s Slammers, v.1. 2008, Riverdale, NY: Baen.

“Code-Name Feirefitz” also available  in:
Men of War, J. E. Pournelle, ed. 1984, New York, NY: Tor.
————– Space Infantry, D. Drake, C. G. Waugh and M. H. Greenberg, eds. 1989, New York, NY: Ace.
————– The Tank Lords. 1997, Riverdale, NY: Baen.
————– The Complete Hammer’s Slammers, v.1. 2006, San Francisco, CA: Night Shade Books.
————– The Complete Hammer’s Slammers, v.1. 2008, Riverdale, NY: Baen.

Counting the Cost. Hammer’s Slammers Series. 1987, Riverdale, NY: Baen. 267 p. 0671653555. $3.50.

Also available in:
————– Caught in the Crossfire. 1998, Riverdale, NY: Baen.
————– The Complete Hammer’s Slammers, v.2. 2006, San Francisco, CA: Night Shade Books.
————– The Complete Hammer’s Slammers, v.2. 2010, Riverdale, NY: Baen.
————– with The Warrior (audiobook), Audible.com, 2011.

For those of you who weren’t around at the time, the Viet Cong made a massive win-the-war attack on US and South Vietnamese forces during the truce declared for the Lunar New Year holiday, Tet. Politically, it won them the war: Tet proved that President Johnson and the US generals had been lying when they claimed the VC was nearly finished as a fighting force. Such public support for the war as had previously existed vanished abruptly.

Militarily what happened is that the guerrillas came out in large numbers where US firepower slaughtered them. The Blackhorse was tasked to recover the huge Bien Hoa airbase, and that’s just what happened. One platoon sergeant showed me his snapshots of VC bodies in windrows on the concrete runways where cal fifties and canister rounds from tank main guns had laid them.

The thing is, tanks don’t fight wars by themselves; they’re tools, controlled by the human beings inside them. In a very real sense, human beings also become tools under the stress of war: automatons which flee or die or win through. The situation short circuits the higher regions of the brain which make reasoned decisions. All the firepower in the world won’t help if the crews are cowering in their bunkers rather than face determined enemies who outnumber them twenty to one.

Rolling Hot, like much of my fiction, is about people who don’t run away. They aren’t necessarily good people; their cause may not be any better than our attempt to save the brutally corrupt Saigon regime was; and they may lose, just as we did in Viet-Nam. But the fact that there are people who don’t quit is the reason that, for good or ill, the human race has survived. I’m proud to have served with them.

–Dave Drake

Rolling Hot. 1989, Riverdale, NY: Baen. 280 p. 0671698370 (pb). $3.95.
————– 1990, Riverdale, NY: Baen. 280 p. 0671720562 (pb).
————– The Tank Lords. 1997, Riverdale, NY: Baen.
————– The Complete Hammer’s Slammers, v.2. 2006, San Francisco, CA: Night Shade Books.
————– The Complete Hammer’s Slammers, v.2. 2010, Riverdale, NY: Baen.
————– with At Any Price (audiobook), Audible.com, 2011.

The Warrior.

includes two pieces:

“The Warrior” also available in:
————– Caught in the Crossfire. 1998, Riverdale, NY: Baen
————– “The Warrior (Extract)” Power, S. M. Stirling, Editor. 1991, Riverdale, NY: Baen. (Part 1 of a 3 part novel.)
————– The Complete Hammer’s Slammers, v.2. 2006, San Francisco, CA: Night Shade Books.
————– The Complete Hammer’s Slammers, v.2. 2010, Riverdale, NY: Baen.

and

“Liberty Port” also available in:
————– Free Lancers, E. Mitchell, ed. 1987, Riverdale, NY: Baen.
————– The Butcher’s Bill. 1998, Riverdale, NY: Baen. Dogs of War. 2002, New York, N.Y.: Warner Aspect.
————– The Complete Hammer’s Slammers, v.1. 2006, San Francisco, CA: Night Shade Books.
————– The Complete Hammer’s Slammers, v.1. 2008, Riverdale, NY: Baen.

The early ’90s were a difficult period for me. I’d been a full-time freelance writer since 1981. I’d done all right financially from the beginning and from the mid-’80s on had done very well indeed. We’d bought a tract of land in the country and my wife was becoming increasingly demanding that we should start to build a (much larger) house on it. She was quite right: it was time. We arranged with an excellent and utterly trustworthy architect and contractor to begin work.

I was terrified to an irrational degree. Our son was in a private college, and I was very well aware that a freelance writer is in an extremely chancy business. I’d dealt with the uncertainty by buying nothing on time: if I couldn’t pay cash, I waited. This understandably created stress at home, since people with much lower incomes were (for example) buying new cars.

I was, I repeat, irrational on the subject; though I think many people take–and certainly took, fifteen years ago–far too much for granted. My need for a completely controlled environment is in part a reaction to Vietnam, which put an emotional loading on matters which others mostly saw from my reactions alone.

When I was firmly committed to building the new house, the Berlin Wall came down and the USSR collapsed. I was just as happy about that as anybody else, but one of the obvious consequences was that the US military would be downsized. Much of my income depended on Military SF, a subgenre which would be negatively impacted by the fact that there would be a million fewer young men and women with an interest in the military and time in barracks to read.

I say ‘obvious’ because it certainly was obvious to me, but I couldn’t get anybody else to listen. I wrote space operas, in no sense Military SF, and saw them published with “The King of Military Science Fiction!” on the cover. And sure enough, Military SF took a serious hit. (I’m sure Cassandra would’ve agreed with me that there’s no satisfaction in saying, “I told you so!” when your world is burning down around you.)

I had three publishers at the time: Tor, Ace, and Baen. My (wonderful) editor at Ace had left publishing. This had a bad result for my books there because though my new editor was a friend and very able, she was also a VP of Putnams, the parent corporation, and simply didn’t have the time to work with individual titles. I learned that my next Ace book wouldn’t be published for two years after I’d turned it in. There was going to be a considerable period in which no book of mine appeared.

I noted earlier in this essay that Nam was part of my problem. On the credit side, it–or at least the fact I served with the Blackhorse–taught me to react to bad situations instead of waiting for them to roll over me. I knew Jim Baen could bring a book out quickly, so I called him and arranged to do one to plug into the gap.

The problem was that Jim wanted something military. It struck me that I could satisfy him by having soldiers as my viewpoint characters while actually writing an action/adventure story. I’d use a six-man team assessing a gangster-ruled planet for potential mercenary deployment. The book could be honestly marketed as adventure if Jim came around to my way of thinking later. (He didn’t.)

I stole the plot from Dashiell Hammett. His first novel, Red Harvest, has always been a favorite of mine (second only to The Glass Key).

When in 1962 I saw A Fistful of Dollars, the first spaghetti western, I assumed it’d been lifted from Red Harvest with the addition of an important scene from The Glass Key. I later learned that that Leone, the director, had copied Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, and that it was Kurosawa who’d cribbed it from Hammett. I like both movies very much, however movie people are not only thieves (which doesn’t bother me) but litigious thieves. With that in mind I wish to emphasize that the entire plot of The Sharp End came from Dashiell Hammett, not from Akira Kurosawa or Sergio Leone.

I adapted the plot and was proceeding happily with an 80,000 word paperback original when Jim called and told me he’d be doing the book as a hardcover. I wasn’t one of the writers who demanded the prestige of hardcover publication. I made my money from mass-market paperbacks, and status isn’t a major concern of mine. A hardcover needed more bulk than a paperback (even in the early ’90s), but it was too late to add an additional 20-30K into the plot proper. Furthermore, the change would delay publication, the whole reason I was doing the book in the first place.

Man proposes, God disposes; and once more, thank God for Blackhorse training. I wrote introductory scenes giving the background of the six main characters, bringing the total wordage to 109,000–just what I’d been aiming at.

All six of my central characters are trying to redeem themselves. One of them, Johann Vierziger, is what Hammer’s dead assassin and bodyguard, Joachim Steuben, might’ve been if he were returned to the waking world to find what in his case is redemption of a particularly muscular kind.

Many readers have asked me how that could happen. I don’t have an answer or at least not a rational answer. I hope that everyone who’s looking for redemption finds it somewhere, though; whether or not we can find a rational basis for it.

Jim pushed his sales force hard enough to get out a lot of copies of The Sharp End; more than half of them came back. Jim told me–volunteered to me with some irritation–that the book had failed in hardcover and that Military SF was in serious trouble. Neither of those things was news to me.

Things got better. My son graduated. I paid off the new house. I began writing epic fantasy successfully with covers that didn’t refer to Military SF. And for that matter, Military SF picked up to previous levels for me, because writers who’d come into the subgenre because it was booming were sifted out of the marketplace when it crashed.

The paperback of The Sharp End did fine on initial release and continues to bring in money every royalty period. It’s a good book, as it should be when I used a master like Dashiell Hammett for my model.

But the text itself is only a small part of what goes through my mind when I think about a book, and this book comes with a lot of baggage.

–Dave Drake

The Sharp End. Hammer’s Slammers Series. 1993, Riverdale, NY: Baen. 377 p. 0671721925. $20.00.
————– “The Sharp End (Extract)” Amazing, October 1993.
————– 1994, Riverdale, NY: Baen. 377 p. 0671876325 (pb). $5.99.
————– The Complete Hammer’s Slammers, v.3. 2007, San Francisco, CA: Night Shade Books.
————– The Complete Hammer’s Slammers, v.3. 2010, Riverdale, NY: Baen.
————– (audiobook), Audible.com, 2011

I think I did what I set out to do, but I learned some new lessons besides. The most important was that not all epics are equal.

The Odyssey, my model for Cross the Stars, was composed in the Early Iron Age, a savage time whose bones stick out through the story’s fabric in many places. I changed a number of situations in order to soften them.

On the other hand, Apollonius was head of the foremost intellectual and literary center of his time, the Library of Alexandria; he was a highly sophisticated man (and poet) by any standards. He told the story of the Argo very skillfully, but he didn’t describe (and perhaps couldn’t visualize) the brutal realities that must have underlain such a story.

I’d been thinking about the project for many years before I actually wrote The Voyage. In fact, I recall beginning to precis the Argonautica during one of my trips to Atlanta in 1983 while I was working on Window of Opportunity. I’d used the Odyssey only as a general model when I wrote Cross the Stars, but The Voyage stuck very close to Apollonius. That is, I eliminated some incidents and conflated others, but those which remain (up to the climax) are from the Argonautica and in the order Apollonius set them out.

The Argonautica stops as the Argo and her triumphant crew approach their home port. The bloodbath that followed the return was outside the taste and understanding of a literary sophisticate like Apollonius. In another, better, world I might have been able to say the same about myself; but in this one, I was drafted and sent to Southeast Asia in 1970. I was able to tell the rest of the story; and for the sake of the men I served with, I thought and think I needed to tell it.

Hiding that sort of truth makes it more likely that some later LBJ or Robert S MacNamara could send our children into a cesspool like the one those statesmen created in Viet-Nam. The Voyage is a more violent book than could’ve appealed to Apollonius, but I hope he would have appreciated the degree to which it’s homage to him. Besides, the book contains a vignette that’s both as good and as peaceful as anything I’ve written: a scene modeled on Jason’s sighting of the Cattle of the Sun on the island of Trinacria. Apollonius–and also his rival Callimachus–might well have taken pleasure in that little flash of tranquility.

–Dave Drake

The Voyage. Hammer’s Slammers Series. 1994, New York, NY: Tor. 415 p. 0312851588. $23.95.
————– 1995, New York, NY: Tor. 403 p. 0812513401 (pb). $5.99.