Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers [Paperback]

Kage Baker (Author)

Book Description

Series: The Company Dossiers | Publication Date: October 1, 2004

This collection brings together the early Company stories in one volume for the first time with three previously unpublished works, including 'The Queen in Yellow', written exclusively for this compilation. In these tales sci-fi fans follow the secret activities of the Company's field agents - once human, now centuries-old time-travelling immortal cyborgs - as they attempt to retrieve history's lost treasures. Botanist Mendoza's search for the rare hallucinogenic Black Elysium grape in 1844 Spanish-held Santa Barbara, facilitator Joseph's dreamlike solicitation of the ailing Robert Louis Stevenson in 1879, and marine salvage specialist Kalugin's recovering of an invaluable Eugene Delacroix painting from a sunken yacht off the coast of Los Angeles in 1894 are included.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This excellent collection brings together 14 of Baker's short stories about "The Company," three of them unpublished. Select humans have been plucked from various epochs and turned into enhanced, immortal, time-traveling cyborgs, programmed to do the shadowy bidding of the profit-loving Company. Unable to fight their own programming, the best of them try to fulfill the Company's directives while being kind to the mortal "sheep" they live among ("Noble Mold" and "Studio Dick Drowns Near Malibu"). Their jobs and lives are complicated by warring Company factions ("Old Flat Top"), which certain mortals see as heavenly battles ("The Hotel at Harlan's Landing"). Also included are the first four tales about the mysterious, genetically enhanced Alec Checkerfield ("Smart Alec," "The Dust Enclosed Here," "Monster Story" and "The Likely Lad"), as well as two other stories ("The Literary Agent" and "The Wreck of the Gladstone") that obliquely pertain to his origins and influences. Baker shows greater range with these stories than she does in her novels (In the Garden of Eden, etc.), and has more fun with her characters, letting them play at being pirates, dig up mummies or interact with Shakespeare and Robert Louis Stevenson. Though the collection brings up troubling ethical questions about the nature of the author's future history (since Alec is referred to as Adonai, does that mean he is God?), Baker masterfully handles characters and plots. These stories rank among the finest recent work in the field.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

What could be better than a new novel of the Company? A collection of the Company's mysterious, powerful operatives' highly entertaining adventures--that's what. Plucked from their lives in times ranging from neolithic California to the twenty-fourth century, those cybernetically enhanced agents are dispatched to later eras to discover (i.e., steal) rare plants, art treasures, and literary masterpieces. In "Old Flat Top," an enterprising Cro-Magnon boy finds the hermit atop a mountain much older and less peaceful than anyone suspected. In "The Literary Agent," casually hip Joseph negotiates with feverish Robert Louis Stevenson to develop an adventure flick to be produced hundreds of years later. Particularly appealing in several stories is young Alex, born, or at least delivered, to wealthy, dissolute parents in the highly regimented twenty-fourth century. His brain isn't quite like other children's, and his gift for rewiring computer systems is astonishing. His liberating encounter with the dispirited hologram of Shakespeare in "The Dust Enclosed Here" will satisfy every lover of the bard. Funny, poignant, thought-provoking, altogether excellent stories. Roberta Johnson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Golden Gryphon Press (October 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1930846304
• ISBN-13: 978-1930846302
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #986,846 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Layers and Crevices..., September 14, 2002

By 

Carl Malmstrom (Monument, CO USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers (Hardcover)

I've been following Kage Baker's "Company" series of novels for a few years now, but it was only with the publication of this book that I discovered just how many "Company" short stories she has written as well. According to her own notes, she has written more than twenty. Fifteen of them are showcased here.

For those of you unfamiliar with this series, it tracks the lives of a number of immortal cyborgs working for a company from the twenty-fourth century that has found the solutions to both immortality and time travel and uses them to send agents through time to collect bits of history. The catch to this, though, is that recorded history cannot be changed, so the operatives must work in the shadows of history - collecting artifacts after ships are sunk, graves are sealed, etc. This introductory story is actually an excellent introduction to the plot and the dramatis personae of the series.

For those of you that are familiar with the "Company" series, the fifteen short stories in here cover most major characters we've seen so far - including Joseph, Lewis, Mendoza and her very mysterious lover - and manages to dig around in their stories enough to shed greater illumination on all the characters without making the collection necessary reading for those that are sticking only to the novels. It also details the childhood of Alec Checkerfield, a young mortal from the mid-24th Century who is undoubtedly another aspect of Nicholas/Edward, in four separate stories. Each is excellent, if slightly surreal, but they serve to raise more questions than they answer about him. Incidentally, for those of you curious, the breakdown for how often each character is featured in the collection is: 3 for Joseph, 3 for Mendoza (one featuring both of them), 1 for Lewis, 4 for Alec, 2 for Kalugin, 1 about Budu, 1 indeterminate and 1 introductory story telling a little about all the characters but not featuring any of them.

Each of these stories is a gem and I really like how they flesh out the "Company" universe more fully. If I have one complaint, it is that I wish more of her stories would feature places other than California or Britain and she'd get out and play around with other parts of the world more. However, this is minor given the level of detail that she knows about both. This is 'must-read' material for the established Kage Baker fan and a not-half-bad starting spot for the novice - although you may want to pick up "In The Garden of Iden" first if you're really curious.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Some fascinating history of "The Company", April 8, 2004

By 

David Roy (Vancouver, BC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers (Hardcover)

Fans of Kage Baker's "Company" novels may not realize that the series actually was first published in short story form. As she states in her introduction to "Noble Mold," this story was published in Asimov's magazine while In the Garden of Iden was still looking for a publisher. After The Graveyard Game was published, she decided to collect a bunch of Company short stories from Asimov's (and they always appeared in Asimov's) into a book. The result, along with three new stories and a new introduction, is Black Projects, White Knights. These stories range from the mundane to the bizarre, but all have that distinctive Baker touch that makes them readable.

We are first introduced to all of the characters that will be featured in the coming stories, under the cover of a spy into the Company's records bringing up dossiers on all of the major players in the series (and the stories as well). "The Hounds of Zeus" will eventually tie into the series itself (Baker has hinted as such), but for now it is a suitable summary of who everybody is. We then get into the stories, and the wild ride begins. As in most short story collections, there are some standouts and some weaker stories. Surprisingly, I found the stories starring Mendoza to be among the lesser works, though they were still interesting. She features in three of them ("Noble Mold," "Lemuria Will Rise!", and "Hanuman"), but none of them spring off the page. While the potential of these stories is surely there, I found the writing of the first two stories to be lacking (especially "Noble Mold, but it was her first story so it's excusable).

As usual, Joseph stars in the best stories, with "The Literary Agent" being the best of the bunch. In this one, Joseph interacts with Robert Louis Stevenson during his three-day stint on a mountain in California where he almost died. Joseph comes to see if he can get Stevenson to write a screenplay for him so that his "masters" can have an original work by him to film (it seems they've already adapted all of the books Stevenson has or will have written). Baker captures Hollywood perfectly, with Joseph submitting the screenplay ideas and then having them rejected, or accepted with some "slight changes." The story is a riot from beginning to end and I couldn't stop laughing through all of it. It's fast-paced and Baker captures the personalities perfectly.

An interesting addition to the Company mythos is a series of stories about Alec Checkerfield, a young boy living in a time near the "Silence" (2355, or the year that the Company is working toward, which nothing is known about what happens afterward). Checkerfield's stories show us how ugly the world has become, where an adult can't even hug a child in public without a license for fear of being taken away as a possible child molester. Alec is a young boy who doesn't know his place in the world. His parents have left him (though there's some doubt that he's even their child) and he's being raised by his "father's" servants. He has reprogrammed his electronic "child companion" so that he can break all of the social norms of current society. He's very intelligent, and he's going to be a force to be reckoned with someday. The book contains three stories about Alec at various stages of his growth, with the final one taking place when he's 16. Baker obviously has plans for him, but I have no idea what they could be. The stories themselves aren't that interesting other than in showing the future world, with the exception of "The Dust Enclosed Here." In this story, Alec meets a hologram of William Shakespeare in a museum. Shakespeare's plays have been forbidden for being too violent, but his sonnets are well liked and they have created a semi-sentient hologram of him to entertain the public. Alec comes in and gives old Will a lot more sentience then he bargained for. The interplay between the two of them crackles and the story is witty yet slightly frightening. It's another standout in the book.

Other stories give interesting insights into some of the characters we've seen in previous Company novels, giving some history to them and making them more complete (especially if you've read the stories before reading the books). While I didn't think any of these stories stood out among the ones already mentioned, I thought they were interesting, well-written, and had some good characterization. Baker is a great short story writer, and even the lesser efforts in this book are well worth reading. The new stories are about extremely minor characters, and thus aren't quite as interesting as the rest. The exception is "The Queen in Yellow," which is a rollicking adventure of Lewis, the Literature Preservationist and friend of Mendoza, and his adventures in an Egyptian archeological dig in 1914. There's a weird professor, an immortal woman controller who's not above using her wiles to get what she wants, and good old Lewis stuck in the middle. Having just read The Graveyard Game, I found it interesting to hear a bit about Lewis' past, and Baker again excels in the characterization department.

If you're a fan of the Company books, Black Projects, White Knights is a valuable addition to the whole story. You won't get any big insights into the ongoing plot, but you will get to see some of your favourite characters in some interesting situations, and you'll get to experience Kage Baker, the short story writer. It's well worth the time and investment.

David Roy

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars In Good Company, December 14, 2004

By 

David Hood (Wesley Chapel, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers (Paperback)

Before reading the Company novels, I was introduced to the idea through her short stories in the pages of Asmiov's. I feel that the shorter works are the strength of Baker and are better than the novels.

The idea of immortal cyborgs hiding in the shadows of history to plunder artifacts recorded as lost or destroyed is clever and provides the opportunity to place stories in a myriad of periods and cultures as well as dealing with famous and not so famous historical characters.

We not only get to see the two main characters, Joseph and Mendoza in these stories, but some more amusing operatives such as Kalugin and Lewin, providing more breadth on the operations of the company. In fact we get to see the early cyborgs, pre homo sapiens designed for enforcement rather than preservation or faciliation. A broad history of the company is painted in these short tales.

All the stories are quite good, as enjoyable in this collection as they were on the first read. The one caveat is that all together they are a bit much particularly if read in one sitting. Other than that I think the Company tales are first rate storytelling and Kage Baker a wonderful author.