Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers (The Company Series) »

Kage Baker is the author of The Anvil of the World, The Empress of Mars, and In the Garden of Iden. She lives in Pismo Beach, California.

Is it possible to interfere with history in a moral way, especially if profit is the primary motivation for doing so? Is it possible to sustain any ethical standards at all when handed what amounts to unlimited power? These and other shadowy questions are raised in this book, the unofficial history of Dr. Zeus, Inc.-known to its employees simply as the Company. This collection brings together the early Company stories in one volume for the first time. Also included are new stories, three previously unpublished, and one, "The Queen in Yellow," written exclusively for this book. Sci-fi fans will follow the secret activities of the Company's field agents-once human, now centuries-old time-traveling immortal cyborgs: Botanist Mendoza's search for the rare hallucinogenic Black Elysium grape in 1844 Spanish-held Santa Barbara, California; Facilitator Joseph's dreamlike solicitation of the ailing Robert Louis Stevenson in 1879; Marine Salvage Specialist Kalugin's recovering of an invaluable Eugène Delacroix painting from a sunken yacht off the coast of Los Angeles in 1894; and Literature Preservationist Lewis's retrieval of priceless literary artifacts, in 1914 Egypt, from the mummy case of Princess Sit-Hathor-Yunet.

Author Biography: Kage Baker is the author of In the Garden of Iden, Sky Coyote, Mendoza in Hollywood, and The Graveyard Game. She lives in Pismo Beach, California.

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This excellent collection brings together 14 of Baker's short stories about "The Company," three of them unpublished.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. (Sept.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.