Space Grunts: Full-Throttle Space Tales #3 (Paperback)

~ Dayton Ward (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Space Grunts is the third anthology of the Full-Throttle Space Tales series. Edited by Dayton Ward, Space Grunts contains 18 hard-hitting tales of soldiers in space, by established and rising-star authors. Dispatches from the front lines contained in this volume: "98 Hill" by Julie McGalliard: A young soldier far from home writes a letter to her mother, describing the overwhelming experience of fighting an enemy on a distant planet. "The Thing with Private Leon's Face" by David Boop: A mysterious entity takes on the form of a dead soldier, bringing with it a harsh message for humanity. "Blowback" by Derek Tyler Attico: A genetically-engineered subspecies of Humanity has finally had enough of being second class citizens. Time to send in the Marines! "Rush" by Jeff D. Jacques: In the aftermath of a devastating ground battle, a lone soldier discovers there's more to the enemy than meets the eye. "Price of Command" by Irene Radford: Continuing the adventures of Katie Talbet, younger sister of the O'Hara brothers from the Stargods Trilogy, when she is asked to betray the outlawed family she has just found and learned to love after a twenty-year separation. "Target Market" by James Swallow: Near-future war is big business, and big ratings! "Unchained" by Selina Rosen: Stashes was the planet of the damned; at least that's what it was called by the soldiers who got sent there...those who survived, anyway. "It's Not A Game" by Jean Johnson: For a soldier, racing through a forest is never a game. "Truth Metric" by Geoffrey Thorne: A commanding officer faces the unpleasant duty of notifying a parent about the death of their son, and explaining how and why he died. "Finders Keepers" by Scott Pearson: Unknown aliens attack the starship Alliance and render the entire crew unconscious...except for a lone Marine who finds herself trapped in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with a single intruder who has friends on the way. "Who Stand and Wait" by Bradley H. Sinor and Susan P. Sinor: A soldier returns home after a long deployment, only to find that things are most certainly not the way he left them. "An Assessment of the Incident at Camp Righteous" by Nayad A. Monroe: A theocracy plots damage control over a political disaster within a human-run prison camp on an occupied planet. "Flashback" by Anne Stringer and Jason McDowell: A soldier on the run for murder escapes Earth and joins a far-flung foreign legion. "Granny's Grunts" by Alan L. Lickiss: What happens when your daughter is captured by aliens? If you're a retired soldier whose past exploits are the stuff of legend, then you go round up your old squad and go get her yourself. "Shin-Gi-Tai" by Robin Wayne Bailey: See what a hardened warrior and her alien lover will do to stop a generations-long war which has all but destroyed both sides. "Across the Endless Sea" by John Coffren: The term "lifer" takes on a whole new meaning as one soldier volunteers for a decades-long stealth mission into enemy territory; the vanguard for a massive invasion...of Earth! "Widow's Weeds" by Kirsten Beyer: Colleen Conway is no longer the wife of a military officer. Now, she's a military widow, and she has a few things to say about that. "A Fresh Perspective" by Dayton Ward: An alien race comes calling, interested in whatever resources it can take from Earth, and unimpressed with any resistance which might be offered by anyone already living there.

Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: Flying Pen Press LLC (May 14, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0981895743
• ISBN-13: 978-0981895741
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #874,392 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Collection, May 28, 2009

By	Lord Fizwibit (Michigan) - See all my reviews

This is an outstanding collection of stories. I bought it for the story by Anne Stringer but had to read them all once I got started. Highly recommended.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Publisher's Insight, April 11, 2009

By	David A. Rozansky "Publisher, Flying Pen Press" (Denver, Colorado USA) - See all my reviews

Space Grunts is our third anthology in the Full-Throttle Space Tales series. The series presents collections of short stories of adventures in space or on extraterrestrial planets, and each anthology has a different theme.

The first two books in the series are:
Space Pirates, edited by David Lee Summers (www.amazon.com/dp/0981895700)
Space Sirens, edited by Carol Hightshoe (www.amazon.com/dp/0981895735)

We had a lot of fun with Space Grunts. In this invitation-only anthology, Dayton Ward received more than 100 short stories to choose from. The final cut brings a very lively and thoughtful selection of some of the best Military SF ideas around, including Dayton Ward's own story, "A Fresh Perspective".

We were quite fortunate to have Dayton Ward come on board the Full-Throttle Space Tales series. He makes the rounds in the SF world, and has met a lot of other SF authors through his Star Trek projects and his other novels. We want the Full-Throttle Space Tales series to feature rising talent as well as established SF authors, and Ward's pool of contacts includes some truly great writers who contributed who meet these criteria.

The nature of space exploration has always had a duplicity of intentions. Nations, their leaders and their space programs have always trumpeted that space development is a peaceful venture, yet the space race itself, and much of the reason for going into space, has been military in nature. It doesn't take much foresight to realize that war will expand into outer space, if we can't stop fighting among ourselves.

While space seems to be the current arena of the world's air forces, in every war there comes a point when the infantry must fight hand to hand to control the battlefield. And in space, there is a lot of battlefield. These are stories of those men and women who take that highest of high ground. Hoo-yah!

We can only begin to imagine what difficulties lie in the battlegrounds of outer space and alien worlds. Space Grunts presents 18 stories from authors who put their imaginations to the test on this deadly topic.

--David A. Rozansky
Publisher
Flying Pen Press

P.S. Please let us know what you think of Space Grunts by posting your honest review on this Amazon product page.

3 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars space grunts, May 12, 2009

By	Susan A. Ward "proud mom" (tampa,fl usa) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Dayton Ward is my son, so, even though I am not a Trek person, I buy his books to collect. I usually get one from him too, but the idea is to sell books, so I buy one.