Countdown to Armageddon / A Stranger in Paradise

Updated 7-29-2023. 

The book was republished by ReAnimus Press in December 2022. The latest Amazon links are: hardback, trade paperback, and Kindle. Below, original covers are shown.

A highlight of my youth was book racks lined with Ace Doubles: two short science-fiction titles bound back to back.

In the spirit of Ace Doubles, Wildside Books has begun doubling up -- and that brings me to the latest collection of my shorter fiction.

On one side, the short novel Countdown to Armageddon (originally serialized in Jim Baen's Universe):

Hezbollah has obtained an atomic bomb and a would-be martyr eager to deliver it -- and that's the good news. The bad news, unknown even to Hezbollah, is that their physicist has also found a way to take his new bomb back to a turning point in European history.

Harry Bowen, an American physicist, and Terrence Ambling, a British agent turned historian, are determined to stop Abdul Faisel and prevent the nullification of all Western civilization. Their mission can be accomplished, if at all, only in the darkest of the Dark Ages --

And there, too, time is running out

But wait! There's more ...

The flip side offers a collection headlined by "A Stranger in Paradise." These novelettes and short stories, running the thematic gamut from nanotech to the conjuring of demons to the ethics of terraforming distant planets, first appeared in Analog, Amazon Shorts, and Jim Baen's Universe.

("A Stranger in Paradise" also appeared in the anthology The Best of Jim Baen's Universe II.)

Update, July 15, 2010: Armageddon / Paradise, as it amuses me to abbreviate the title, is available from Amazon at Countdown to Armageddon / A Stranger in Paradise (Wildside Double #2). In the Kindle store, look separately for Countdown to Armageddon and A Stranger in Paradise.