The Sky People

"Stirling rocks the space race, fusing high-frontier adventure, the alternate history of a much cooler Cold War, and a band of lantern-jawed heroes who aren't afraid to hog-tie the occasional rampaging dinosaur." -- John Birmingham, author of the Axis of Time trilogy Marc Vitrac was born in the early 1960s, about the time the first interplanetary probes delivered the news that Mars and Venus were teeming with life, and the "Space Race" became the central preoccupation of the great powers of the world. Now, in 1988, Marc has been assigned to Jamestown, the U.S.-Commonwealth base on Venus. Set in a countryside swarming with sabertooth tigers and dinosaurs, Jamestown is home to a small band of American and allied scientist-adventurers. But there are flies in this ointment -- the EastBloc has its own base at Cosmograd, in the south, and relations are frosty. And attractive young geologist Cynthia Whitlock seems impervious to Marc's Cajun charm. Meanwhile, at the western end of the continent, Teesa of the Cloud Mountain People leads her tribe in a conflict with the Neanderthal-like beastmen who have seized her folk's sacred caves. Then, an EastBloc shuttle crashes nearby, and the beastmen acquire new knowledge...and AK-47s. Jamestown sends its long-range blimp to rescue the downed EastBloc cosmonauts, little suspecting that the answer to the jungle planet's mysteries may lie there, among tribal conflicts and traces of a power that made Earth's vaunted science seem as primitive as the tribesfolk's blowguns. And, as if that weren't enough, there's an enemy agent on board... S. M. Stirling is the author of numerous Sci-Fi and fantasy novels, including the popular Nantucket series that began with Island in the Sea of Time, and more recently, The Protector's War. A former lawyer and an amateur historian, he lives in the Southwest with his wife, Jan. Todd McLaren was involved in radio for more than 20 years in cities on both coasts. He left broadcasting for a full-time career in voiceovers, where he has been heard on more than 5,000 TV and radio commercials, as well as TV promos, narrations for documentaries, and films including Who Framed Roger Rabbit?