The Wandering Warriors

The Wandering Warriors

A Romp Through Time, Space, and Ancient Rome

Two award-winning writers take us on an alternate-history adventure—a 1940s barnstorming baseball team, led by retired baseball player and spy Moe Berg, is transported from rural Illinois to Ancient Rome, just after the death of Emperor Septimius Severus.

 The Romans—who actually played a game called “small ball”—put the captured team to work teaching baseball to the gladiators for a major Colosseum event…that turns into an over-the-top, life or death finale.

Baseball hijinks, a wild ride through Rome in a careening team bus, a hint of romance, and some viciously good hitting and fielding.

Will the Wandering Warriors make it home? Will the widowed empress escape the fate her evil son has in mind for her? Will the rattletrap team bus make it way through time and space (and Roman roads) back to Illinois?

Will Chicago White Sox owner Grace Comiskey show up to make an unlikely offer to the team’s best player?

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About the Book

Authors’ notes:

I love the mash-up of history and SF: the depth and resonance of the past, plus the inventiveness of speculative fiction is an unbeatable combo. And despite their violent and problematic elements, I’m deeply fascinated by the ancient Romans. Having written a trilogy in which a longer-lived Roman Empire mixes it up with the Iroquois, the Mississippian Culture of Cahokia, and even the Mongols of Genghis Khan in the wilds of thirteenth century North America, nothing seems too strange to me anymore, not even making gladiators trade their swords for baseball bats. Rick is a fine friend and fellow author whose interests and approach to writing meld with mine in a freakishly awesome way. From the moment we broached this admittedly offbeat idea, I knew we had to write it. And it came out even better than I’d hoped. — Alan Smale

I often use baseball as a storytelling tool. I come by this honestly, my father was a major-league player and coach, and a minor-league manager for many years, so I grew up in the game. I played it myself in high school, college, and then for many years on barnstorming semipro teams, driving around Illinois and Missouri to play ball in small Midwest towns. When a writer of Alan Smale’s caliber wanted to combine his expertise in high-level Roman history with my understanding of low-level baseball, it was an opportunity not to be missed. I greatly enjoyed every moment that went into this zany story’s creation.— Rick Wilber

Details
Authors: ,
Genres: Alternate History, Science Fiction
Tags: Audio Book Available, Available in Jacketed Hardcover
ASIN: 1680571249
ISBN: 9781680571240
Endorsements
“Wilber and Smale (are) two literary tricksters who present for your reading pleasure a fantastical romp featuring two cultures nobody but Rick and Alan had ever thought to let clash: barnstorming baseball players and Imperial Romans. You will believe in doubleheaders in the Coliseum. You will marvel at gladiators flailing at curve balls. And you will be tickled by the historical celebrities who take part in America’s … um … Rome’s Pastime. Fun is hereby decreed.”
– James Patrick Kelly, winner of the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards
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About the Author
Alan Smale

Alan Smale writes alternate and twisted history, historical fantasy, and occasional pure SF. His novella of a Roman invasion of ancient America, “A Clash of Eagles”, won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, and his series of novels set in the same universe, Clash of Eagles (2015), Eagle in Exile (2016), and Eagle and Empire (2017), is available from Penguin Random House/Del Rey. Alan has also sold over forty pieces of shorter fiction to Asimov’s, Realms of Fantasy, Abyss & Apex, and numerous other magazines and original anthologies, and his non-fiction science pieces about terraforming and killer asteroids have appeared in Lightspeed.

Alan grew up in Yorkshire, England, acquired degrees in Physics and Astrophysics from St. Edmund Hall, Oxford University, and moved to the US in his late twenties. He currently performs astronomical research into black holes and neutron stars at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, with over a hundred published academic papers, and serves as director of an astrophysical data archive. He also sings bass with high-energy vocal band The Chromatics, and is co-creator of their educational AstroCappella project, spreading astronomy through a cappella in schools across the country. The Chromatics have been Music Guests of Honor and regular performers at many SF conventions across the northeastern US, which gives Alan yet another excuse to hang out with fellow science fiction writers and other really cool people. Check out his website at http://www.alansmale.com.

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