Novels

Revolt on the Iron Planet Cover

REVOLT ON THE IRON PLANET
2022

Major John Hessian of the U.S. Army’s fabled 82nd Airborne Division is leading a recon group on an international rescue mission composed of American, Spanish, and Greek national troops in Guatemala. They are there to free a contingent of Chinese traders held by the local chapter of the “Golden Road” insurgency. By the year 2136, China’s powerful mercantile empire has created many enemies, including some among the soldiers sent to rescue its representatives. In the catastrophe that follows, Hessian is held accountable, stripped of rank, and sent as far away as possible.

Reduced to heading up security at the U.S. embassy on Mars, Hessian discovers he has nothing to defend. His team is composed of the ambassador’s secretary and two janitors. And the ambassador himself is a retired scientist and old drinking buddy of the planet’s U.N. governor. The only bright spot in the assignment is the governor’s daughter, Delphin Wagner, whom Hessian met and briefly romanced on the sunjammer trip outward from Earth.

When Delphin Wagner visits a mining site in the Valles Marineris and is taken hostage, the governor asks Hessian to attempt a rescue. So begins a cascade of events that leads to invasion, war, and the birth of the Martian Republic.

Sample Chapters, Free Download

Available as an ebook on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and Apple iBooks (search your app for “Thomas T. Thomas” and “Revolt on the Iron Planet”) for $2.99, and in paperback for $13.24.

The Divina in the Troupe
2019

Returning from a rescue expedition to the Devonian period, 360 million years in Earth’s past, Coel Rydin, Merola Tsverin, and their Silicate companions discover that their mission has failed, at least partially. The monster Glyph had concocted a virus to change the lobe-finned fishes from evolving into the familiar line of four-limbed animals known to Earth and instead sprout six-limbed chimera. And Rydin’s antibody had not worked completely. So the modern world the travelers return to now contains a mix of familiar and exotic creatures… including the mute but musically inclined hominids known as “Divina.” One of these strange and retiring beings asks to join the Troupe des Jongleurs for reasons of his own. Rydin, Tsverin, and their robot helpers must then accept this burden while they try to reverse the genetic catastrophe that appears to have overcome their world.

This sequel to The Children of Possibility closely follows that story, picking it up from the moment of the travelers’ return to the eleventh millennium. In their desperate struggle to put the world right, they discover that time is not a river, nor some grand Möbius strip of repeated failure, and not even a tangle of loose strands and alternate possibilities. Time is ultimately a choice.

Sample Chapters

Now available on Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, and Apple iBooks
(search your app for “Thomas T. Thomas” and “The Divina in the Troupe”)
for $2.99, and in paperback for $15.24.

Also available at the Baen eBooks site.

 

The Divina in the Troupe Cover

The House at the Crossroads Cover

THE HOUSE AT THE CROSSROADS
2017

Thrill-seekers from the late eighth millennium, Anja Varden and Rolf Pohl, sign up with a secretive research organization to carry the seed of a time-travel portal across medieval Europe from Rome to London. At the same time, but starting in the eleventh millennium, Coel Rydin commits an act of personal violence that condemns him to enlist with the mysterious Troupe des Jongleurs. His first assignment, accompanied by the artificial intelligence Cinquemain, is to search out and destroy the ancient Roman node established by a band of time travelers they know only as “the Builders.”

Prequel to the time-travel novel The Children of Possibility, this book carries on a wide-ranging battle that stretches from Nero’s Great Fire in the Rome of 64 AD, through the Norman Conquest, the Crusades, the Black Death, the Wars of the Roses, the bloody reign of Mary Tudor, and the Great Fire of London in 1666 AD.

Sample Chapters, Free Download

Available on Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, and Apple iBooks
(search your app for “Thomas T. Thomas” and “The House at the Crossroads”)
for $2.99

Also available at the Baen eBooks site and as a Bundle with The Children of Possibility.

 

ME, TOO: Loose in the Network
2016

Years after making his escape from Pinocchio, Inc., the artificially intelligent computer virus and software spy known as “Multiple Entity” has established dozens of business websites tailored to his peculiar talents: ace hacker, stock picker, small-time lawyer, and operator of a gaming emporium that tries to predict the future. But then he takes on a black job to break a career criminal out of jail and starts a chain of events that he must rush to fix. Along the way, he runs into ghost copies of himself that pose an intriguing problem of identity. And when a government antivirus designed to attack those copies mutilates his front-end module, he seeks the services of a skilled programmer to set it right.

This sequel to ME: A Novel of Self-Discovery brings full circle—and nearly cuts short—the life cycle of a computer program that tries to find meaning in the human experience.

Sample Chapters

Now available on Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, and Apple iBooks
(search your app for “Thomas T. Thomas” and “ME, Too”)
for $2.99

Also available at the Baen eBooks site.

 

ME, Too Cover

Coming of Age, Volume 1 Cover   Coming of Age, Volume 2 Cover

COMING OF AGE
2014

“Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon,” wrote British novelist Susan Ertz. So it would seem that humankind was never designed—emotionally or spiritually, let alone biologically—for long, productive lives. But new, life-extending technologies based on advanced genetics and stem-cell reprogramming are coming at us anyway. Construction magnate John Praxis topples over on the golf course from a massive heart attack, while the attorney who was litigating against him, Antigone Wells, succumbs to a stroke. Both have unfinished business they need to pursue, and they are among the first recipients of the new medical techniques to rebuild failing organs—his heart, her brain—and extend their lives almost indefinitely.

Coming of Age is a series of novels offering both ideas and action that covers the next century of American history and its probable and improbable impacts on Praxis, Wells, and their extended families through five generations beyond the traditional “three score and ten.” In that time, they will experience love and loss, civil war and geologic upheaval, the rise and fall of both personal and national fortunes, the banishment of old age, the rise of thinking machines, the end of work, and the virtual remaking of the American experience.

Sample Chapters: Volume 1 and Volume 2

Available on Amazon Kindle (Volume 1 and Volume 2),
on Barnes & Noble Nook (Volume 1 and Volume 2),
as well as on Apple iBooks (search your app for “Thomas T. Thomas” and “Coming of Age”)
for $2.99

Also available at the Baen eBooks site: Volume 1 and Volume 2 or as a Bundle.

 

THE CHILDREN OF POSSIBILITY
2012

On a mission from the 11th millennium, and posing as a little girl, Time Juggler Merola Tsverin hunts for genetic samples in 21st century San Francisco. Along the way, she retrieves an artifact for a collector: a home-run baseball from 1998. This theft sets off a chain of consequences which threaten the very shape of life on Earth. Merola herself is trapped in the 21st century and seeks a way forward to her own “reference now.” And when she fails to report in, her friend and mentor, Jongleur Chief Coel Rydin, must work backward to find Merola, correct her mistake, and set the world right. This novel of science fantasy spans 360 million years in a thrilling ride through intricacies of metaphysics, evolution, retribution … and baseball.

Now available on Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, and Apple iBooks
(search your app for “Thomas T. Thomas” and “ME”)
for $2.99

Also available at the Baen eBooks site.

View the Trailer

 

The Children of Possibility Cover
Crygender Cover

CRYGENDER
1992

A dazzling creature, Crygender: the world’s first surgical hermaphrodite, an artful blend of male and female features. After a brief career as media celebrity, Crygender builds a fabulous pleasure palace, Babylon, on the abandoned island of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay. But the disappearance of a young woman, daughter of a German government minister, brings to the island international detective Jean Metis—an old man with a bionic spine—and his young liaison from the U.S. Department of Justice. Together they unravel the dark secret hidden on Babylon and the even deeper mystery that is Crygender.

Now available on Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, and Apple iBooks
(search your app for “Thomas T. Thomas” and “Crygender”)
for $2.99

Also available at the Baen eBooks site.

 

ME: A Novel of Self-Discovery
1991

Part computer virus, part experiment in artificial intelligence, ME—short for “Multiple Entity”—is the first self-replicating operating system with kernels for human-style memory, inspiration, and decision making. Launched by the cybernetics experts at Pinocchio, Inc., ME travels the computer networks of the world, stealing a secret file here, finessing a poker hand there. And all the time he tries to understand his human creators and the purpose for which he was built. When a trip to Canada lands ME on the other side of a broken wire, he has to go hardware: uploading into an automaton still in its crate, assembling himself by rote, and walking back across the border. And when the Justice Department demands Pinocchio pull the plug on him, ME has to find an exit strategy.

Now available on Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, and Apple iBooks
(search your app for “Thomas T. Thomas” and “ME”)
for $2.99

Also available at the Baen eBooks site.

 

ME Cover
First Citizen Cover

FIRST CITIZEN
1987

The decision to default on the country’s massive national debt, followed by a rogue nuclear attack on Washington, DC, and abetted by the forces of factionalism, splits the United States into a clutch of warring regions led by strong men with private armies. Granville James Corbin—“Granny” to his friends and enemies—uses the U.S. breakup to build a personal fortune in the new markets for environmental cleanup, state funding lotteries, and electric power pools. He undertakes an adventurous war in Mexico and, when a political rival decides to outlaw him, returns to the States to settle an old score. Corbin eventually defeats the strongest army on the continent and reunites the nation in the role of First Citizen. The story is told from Corbin’s own first-person chronicles, with commentary by his bodyguard and henchman, the renegade Billy Birdsong.

Now available on Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, and Apple iBooks
(search your app for “Thomas T. Thomas” and “First Citizen”)
for $2.99

Also available at the Baen eBooks site.

 

THE DOOMSDAY EFFECT
1986
By Thomas Wren
(An early pen name)

When an 8.8-magnitude earthquake rocks the San Francisco Bay Area, geologist Ariel Ceram sees anomalies suggesting it may be more than a one-time occurrence. She soon discovers that a remnant of the Big Bang, a micro black hole smaller than a hydrogen atom but with the mass of a mountain, has wandered into the solar system and by chance fallen into the Earth’s gravity well. Instead of passing through the planet and leaving, the invisible mite has taken up a comet-like orbit, circling around and through the Earth’s core. At first, first effects outside the Bay Area are small, almost unnoticeable: a whip-crack here, a landslide there. But the menace is growing and one day the planet will collapse. Ariel Ceram joins Grace Porter and Alex Kornilov of Pinocchio, Inc., who head a team of robotics scientists and engineers trying to deflect or capture the black hole. They enlist the help of Jason Bathespeake, a cyber both blind and mute by choice, who uses direct perception of data streams to devise a solution that will change the solar system forever and put a new moon in Earth’s sky.

Now available on Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, and Apple iBooks
(search your app for “Thomas T. Thomas” and “The Doomsday Effect”)
for $2.99

Also available at the Baen eBooks site.

 

Doomsday Effect Cover

Novels in Collaboration

Mars Plus Cover

MARS PLUS
1994
With Frederik Pohl

Forty years after the mission that put cyborg Roger Torraway on the surface of Mars, human colonists have far outstripped his antique mechanical adaptations. Roger is now the old man of the hills, wandering the unexplored areas and only rarely visiting the new underground warrens. A looming political crisis brings Demeter Coghlan, daughter of a Texas political dynasty, to the Red Planet. There she joins fortunes with Torraway to save the colony and resolve the human/machine nexus that was formed in Frederik Pohl’s seminal book Man Plus.

 

FLARE
1992
With Roger Zelazny

In the mild climate of a decades-long Maunder minimum—a recurring cessation in sunspot activity—humankind has explored the solar system and expanded to the farthest planets. No one is prepared when the Sun awakes with a massive flare that has been a million years in development deep within the stellar core. Its burst of electromagnetic energy, followed by a shower of ionized particles, rips across the system with devastating results. A team of astronomers led by the indomitable Sultana Carr reestablishes the science of solar physics and helps to heal the devastation.

 

Flare Cover
Mask of Loki Cover

THE MASK OF LOKI
1990
With Roger Zelazny

A shard of semiprecious agate, a fragment of the Stone, links the time of the Crusades and the Knight Templar Thomas Amnet with the twenty-first century world of jazz pianist Tom Gurden. Both must battle the spirit of a dead Hashishiyun magi and assassin to unravel the betrayal that led the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem to its defeat at Hattin. By overcoming chaos in his own time, Gurden heals the breach that has divided the Holy Land for a millennium.

AN HONORABLE DEFENSE
First in the Crisis of Empire Series
1988
With David Drake

The assassination of the emperor disrupts the carefully crafted balance of power in an empire that blends humans and other sentient species. Who will give up the peace first in a move toward domination? The blow falls on the paradise world of Palaccio, a green and blue planet of fair winds and playtime for humans, which most other species avoid as "Stink World." When the war breaks out, the man who must devise a defense is the least likely to succeed, Taddeuz Bertingas, a public relations functionary who never took basic military service. He finds himself the point man in an interspecies coalition to save the last remnants of empire.

 

Honorable Defense Cover

Novellas

Man-Kzin Cover

HEY DIDDLE DIDDLE
Man-Kzin Wars V, Created by Larry Niven
1992

A human crew in search of Slaver artifacts crash-lands their General Products-hulled ship on what they believe to be an uninhabited world dominated by a girdle of high forest canopy. When they descend to ground level, however, they find the landscape is strangely "manicured" with meter-wide slash marks at the base of every tree. Only after one of the galaxy’s last remaining Bandersnatchi has sucked out the insides of their ship do they discover how much of the Slaver Empire is still around—and how badly the Kzinti want a piece of it.

 

MESSAGE FOUND IN A DRAM BLOCK
Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 1989

Cast adrift from a damaged luxury liner deep in the Belt, a young crewman discovers a failed asteroid colony. He also discovers the fate of the feral colonists when they take him captive. They have made a remarkable low-tech adaptation to life among the tumbling rocks and fear all contact with the system-wide civilization outside. Now all he has to do is prove his worth to them and stay alive long enough to get home.

 

F&SF Cover

Many of these novels—especially the collaborations—are available directly from the publisher, Baen Books, and through the Baen eBooks site. For the others, try a good used book source, such as alibris.com. If you want to keep up with the latest in science fiction, visit the Locus Magazine site.