Ten Years to Doomsday

"The air was crushed under the constant roar of exploding shells, the shrill racket of passing rockets, and the soft but heavy crackling hiss of the laser beams." Contact! The image in the battle cruiser's screens grew - and it was clear that this was a new kind of ship, a new race, the first new civilization the Federation had met in three hundred years. The crew's excitement mounted - the newcomers would be invited to join the Federation, the crew would all be heroes and be awarded enormous bonuses, and - The stranger opened fire with an impressive battery of weapons; the cruiser's defenses cut in automatically, and in a few seconds the unidentified ship was nothing but an expanding cloud of radiant gases. After a thousand years of peace in space, there was a war on. But who was the mysterious and deadly enemy? Michael Kurland grew up in New York City, attended Columbia University, spent four years in the Army, much of it in Europe, and now lives in California with his partner, novelist Linda Robertson, a dog, a cat, and an occasional visiting family of raccoons. He has been a teacher of obscure subjects to disinterested children, the editor of a magazine even more idiosyncratic than himself, a seeker of absent persons, a magical explainer, and guest lecturer at numerous unrelated events. Kurland has written a dozen or so science fiction novels, a brace of mysteries, and several books that fit into that tenuous genre known as “mainstream.” He has been nominated for an Edgar (twice) and for the American Book Award. His books have been translated into eleven other languages. His other novels with Venture Press are Psi Hunt and Button Bright.