Category Archives: More Books
German Edition of Killer
Here’s the cover of a new German hardcover translation of Killer just published…. Read more about Killer
Starliner
2017 update: Baen brought out my 1992 Starliner as a trade paperback with a new cover by Dominic Harman. This was a book I wrote for myself–it was one of my frequent attempts to get noticed as something besides a … Continue reading
Onward Drake!
Onward, Drake! Baen Books published a tribute book in conjunction with World Fantasy Con in November 2015, where Dave, who turned 70 that year, was a Special Guest. There are stories and essays from John Lambshead, Cecelia Holland, Barry Malzberg, … Continue reading
Dinosaurs & a Dirigible
This is a compilation of my five time-travel novelettes, published by Baen, September 2014. The four Henry Vickers dinosaur-hunting stories have never been published together (which is odd now that I think about it). The dirigible comes from Travellers, a … Continue reading
Transgalactic
Transgalactic is a collection of works by A E van Vogt. Eric Flint negotiated with the van Vogt estate, and I wrote the short introduction and chatted with Eric about the contents. It contains the original versions of what as … Continue reading
Night & Demons
Cover art: Alan Pollack My earliest published fiction was fantasy and horror. I stopped writing horror in about 1980 as I started to get my head up from Viet Nam. The horror boom of the ’80s that followed the success … Continue reading
Team Yankee
In 1987 Team Yankee, a novel by Harold Coyle set in the world of Sir John Hackett’s The Third World War of 1985, became successful in hardcover. Berkley Books bought the paperback rights and teamed with First Comics to bring … Continue reading
Window of Opportunity
In 1983, Jim Baen heard Newt Gingrich, then a junior congressman from Georgia, speak at Balticon. Jim was so impressed that he signed Newt up to do a book setting forth his vision for the future in a series of … Continue reading
Loose Cannon
In 2011, Baen Books reprinted the paired Tom Kelly thrillers (SKYRIPPER and FORTRESS) as an omnitrade under the combined title LOOSE CANNON . The mass market paperback is due out August 2012. Tom Doherty really liked Tom Kelly; I didn’t, … Continue reading
Novel Plot Outlines
Updated February 2014 Dave wrote detailed plot outlines (5,000-15,000 words) plots for other writers to develop into novels. As Dave says, “They did the real work of developing the outline into a novel. I don’t consider my involvement to be … Continue reading
Essays
Essays and Miscellaneous Writings updated March 2015 “Accidentally and By the Back Door” The New York Review of Science Fiction, 2004. 17:3(195): p. 17-18. ——— The Complete Hammer’s Slammers v.1. 2006, San Francisco CA: Night Shade Books. ——— The Complete … Continue reading
Books Edited by Dave
Armageddon. D. Drake, B. S. Mosiman and M. H. Greenberg, eds. 1998, Baen. Battlestation Book One. D. Drake and B. Fawcett, eds. Battlestation Series. 1992, Ace. ——— reprinted in Battlestations. D. Drake and B. Fawcett, eds. 2011, Prime Books. Battlestation: … Continue reading
Balefires
Contents of Balefires: A Land of Romance Arclight Awakening Best of Luck Black Iron Blood Debt Children of the Forest The Master of Demons Denkirch Firefight Lord of the Depths Men Like Us
Patriots
The new edition of Patriots, packaged as a YA trade paperback, is out (September 2016) from Baen. It has a new Tom Kidd cover with an airship (both Tom and I like airships). PATRIOTS was the idea of Tor’s publisher, … Continue reading
Other Times Than Peace
Contents: Lambs to the Slaughter Men Like Us The Day of Glory The Interrogation Team A Death in Peacetime Dreams in Amber Safe to Sea The Murder of Halley’s Comet The Hunting Ground The False Prophet A Grand Tour Other … Continue reading
The Forlorn Hope
THE FORLORN HOPE started in 1980 with a phone call from Susan Allison, who had just taken over as SF editor of Ace Books after Jim Baen left. Ace hired her away from Pocket Books, but earlier she’d been Jim’s … Continue reading
The Square Deal
THE SQUARE DEAL started when a friend noticed that many publishers had books based on games but that Tor did not. She sold Tom Doherty, Tor’s publisher, on the idea of books set in the Car Wars universe of Steve … Continue reading
Grimmer Than Hell
COMING HOME BY THE LONG WAY A few years ago I collected my humorous stories in All the Way to the Gallows.” In my introduction I admitted that I wasn’t best known for writing humor. This is what I’m best … Continue reading
Codex
Though this was published (by the Sidecar Preservation Society) in both hardcover and saddle-stapled editions, it’s actually a short story which I drafted in 1967 but didn’t bother to type into submission form. (My webmaster typed it for this edition, … Continue reading
The Reaches: Igniting the Reaches, Through the Breach & Fireships
INTRODUCTION: THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY I’m a very organized writer–insanely organized, one might say, and we’ll get back to that in a moment. I take extensive notes before I start plotting, and I do very detailed plots (usually in … Continue reading
Dagger
DAGGER was an important book for me in various odd ways. In the Fall of 1979 I ran into Bob Asprin when we were both boarding an airplane to return from a convention (probably World Fantasy Con in Providence, but … Continue reading
Redliners
A 20th anniversary edition of REDLINERS is out from Baen July 2016 with a new introduction. Redliners is possibly the best thing I’ve written. It’s certainly the most important thing, both to me personally and to the audience I particularly … Continue reading
Ranks of Bronze
RANKS OF BRONZE arose from two bits of knowledge I ran into while I was an undergraduate. I don’t know which came first, but I wouldn’t have written the story–and the later novel–without both occurring. I read all of Horace … Continue reading
Bridgehead
BRIDGEHEAD was my first attempt to write what I think of as mainstream SF: a novel about a scientific experiment without any tanks or legions or swordsmen or spies. The genesis of the plot was a friend telling me about … Continue reading
Birds of Prey
BIRDS OF PREY was the first novel I tried to write. It was a very long time before I succeeded, but I think in this case the wait was worth it. While I was still in law school I got … Continue reading
The Hunter Returns
The Hunter Returns. With J. Kjelgaard 1991, Riverdale, NY: Baen. Reprint with new Introduction, 2015, Riverdale, NY: Baen SLAUGHTERING EARLY HUMANS FOR FUN AND (A SLIGHT) PROFIT This essay describes how and why I wrote my parts of THE HUNTER … Continue reading
The Jungle
THE JUNGLE grew out of the series of Tor dos-a-dos double novels which I discuss in my comments on Surface Action. You can check the background there, so I won’t repeat myself. Tor had terminated that series, but my plan … Continue reading
Surface Action
SURFACE ACTION came about because Marty Greenberg was packaging a series of dos-a-dos short novels for Tor Books, pairing a classic with new work by a contemporary author. He suggested that I write a sequel to Clash By Night, written … Continue reading
Old Nathan
OLD NATHAN is a book I wrote for myself. There’ve been books that didn’t do as well as I’d hoped (The Sea Hag is a striking example), but I think Old Nathan is the only one I wrote in the … Continue reading
The Sea Hag
THE SEA HAG was one of my attempts to write a commercially successful book that was different from anything I’d done before. The closest analog to my plan was The Dying Earth series by Jack Vance: a world in which … Continue reading
Time Safari and Tyrannosaur
Contents of TIME SAFARI Calibration Run Time Safari Boundary Layer Afterword: The Sixty-Five Million Years Afterword In 1993 Tom Doherty got the notion of reissuing this volume with a new story containing elements which he specified to replace Calibration Run, … Continue reading
Northworld, Vengeance, and Justice
I wrote NORTHWORLD because Beth Fleisher, a wonderful editor, told me as I rose after we’d had breakfast at a convention that if I ever wanted to do something for a larger house than Baen Books, she at Ace would … Continue reading
Killer
KILLER holds a lot of memories for me, most of them bad. Sometimes things work out that way. August Derleth died in 1971. His small press, Arkham House, was the only market to which I’d sold fiction. F&SF published some … Continue reading
The Military Dimension and MARK II
I’ve written quite a lot of military SF. This collection (and its expanded reissue Mark II) weren’t intended to collect all of it (that would take a very big book, even for the short fiction) but rather to show the … Continue reading
Skyripper
SKYRIPPER was a more important book for me than I’d realized until this moment. In 1981 I was driving a bus for the Town of Chapel Hill, having decided that being a lawyer was killing me–and quitting the law business. … Continue reading
Vettius and His Friends
I started writing with heroic fantasies either explicitly set during the classical past or closely modeled on that past. Black Iron was the fourth story I sold and the first that I consider to be really publishable. These aren’t necessarily … Continue reading
Fortress
FORTRESS is the only solo book I’ve written when I didn’t want to write it. When Jim Baen left Tor Books to found his own publishing house, Baen Books, I intended to continue working for both men. (They’re both friends … Continue reading
All the Way to the Gallows
This is a collection of my humorous SF and fantasy. To my delight it sold very well. There’s really a lot of humor in my other fiction, but it tends to get lost in the other things that are going … Continue reading
From the Heart of Darkness
My original title for this collection was BALEFIRES. Jim Baen asked me to change it late in the process because a big-budget book of that title was due out shortly. I may use the title on the planned Fedogan & … Continue reading
Lacey and His Friends
I’ve had a lot of good book covers. I’ve never had a cover better than Steve Hickman’s for this volume. The three Lacey stories are harsher than anything else I’ve written. It’s probably not a coincidence that I wrote them … Continue reading
The Dragon Lord
THE DRAGON LORD was my first novel. There was a heroic fantasy boom in the latter ’70s. andy offutt (as he then styled himself) had a contract with Zebra Books to write novels about the Robert E. Howard character Cormac … Continue reading