The Company
Books in This Series 2
More by Kage Baker
On a dark evening in 1824, a lady is offered a ride home in the carriage of a dark and mysterious stranger and a boy is conceived, to the strains of Beethoven's brand-new setting to the Ode to Joy. Groomed from childhood to become a perfect British hero, young Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax proceeds uncertainly through public school, a career in the navy, mutiny and court-martial before discovering his true place in life. There is, in Whitehall, a comfortable and slightly shabby club called Redking's. Downstairs from Redking's, however, is concealed the London headquarters of the Gentlemen's Speculative Society... a centuries-old fraternity devoted to the development of what its members call Technologia. Their goal is to bring about a Utopian paradise of science, through the manipulation of men and governments. Edward, as one of their agents, sets off on an odyssey across 19th-century Europe, encountering on the way flying machines, self-propelled carriages, and an Underground Galvanic Railway... and learns that the Society, in its various disguises, is everywhere.
Cover art by J.K. Potter
This collection brings together the early Company stories in one volume for the first time with three previously unpublished works, including "The Queen in Yellow," written exclusively for this compilation. In these tales sci-fi fans follow the secret activities of the Company's field agents—once human, now centuries-old time-traveling immortal cyborgs—as they attempt to retrieve history's lost treasures. Botanist Mendoza's search for the rare hallucinogenic Black Elysium grape in 1844 Spanish-held Santa Barbara, facilitator Joseph's dreamlike solicitation of the ailing Robert Louis Stevenson in 1879, and marine salvage specialist Kalugin's recovering of an invaluable Eugène Delacroix painting from a sunken yacht off the coast of Los Angeles in 1894 are included.
Lady Beatrice was the proper British daughter of a proper British soldier, until tragedy struck and sent her home to walk the streets of early-Victorian London. But Lady Beatrice is no ordinary whore, and is soon recruited to join an underground establishment known as Nell Gwynne's. Nell Gwynne's is far more than simply the finest and most exclusive brothel in Whitehall; it is in fact the sister organization to the Gentlemen's Speculative Society, that 19th-century predecessor to a certain Company... and when a member of the Society goes missing on a peculiar assignment, it's up to Lady Beatrice and her sister harlots to investigate.
Kage Baker's stories and novels of the mysterious organization that controls time travel, The Company, have made her famous in SF. So has her talent for clever dialogue, and pointed social commentary with a light touch.
The Anvil of the World is her first fantasy novel, a journey across a fantastic landscape filled with bizarre creatures, human and otherwise. It is the tale of Smith, of the large extended family of Smiths, of the Children of the Sun. They are a race given to blood feuds, and Smith was formerly an extremely successful assassin. Now he has wearied of his work and is trying to retire in another country, to live an honest life in obscurity in spite of all those who have sworn to kill him.
His problems begin when he agrees to be the master of a caravan from the inland city of Troon to the seaside city of Salesh. The caravan is dogged with murder, magic, and the brooding image of the Master of the Mountain, a powerful demon, looking down from his mountain kingdom upon the greenlands and the travelers passing below. In Salesh, Smith becomes an innkeeper, but on the journey he befriended the young Lord Ermenwyr, a decadent demonic half-breed. Each time Ermenwyr turns up, he brings new trouble with him.
The outgrowth of stories Baker has been writing since childhood, as engaging as Tolkien and yet nothing like him, Smith's adventure is certainly the only fantasy on record with a white-uniformed nurse, gourmet cuisine, one hundred and forty-four glass butterflies, and a steamboat. This is a book filled with intrigue, romance, sudden violence, and moments of emotional impact, a cast of charming characters, and echoes of the fantasy tradition from Lord Dunsany and Fritz Leiber to Jack Vance and Roger Zelazny.