The First Heroes: New Tales of the Bronze Age [Paperback]

This book is a collection of fourteen stories of Bronze Age heroes, each written by a different author, and set in a different setting. Overall, I found this to be a fascinating book. So few books take the Bronze Age as a setting, and it is a wonderfully interesting time! The stories are great, with my favorites being The Gods of Chariots, A Hero for the Gods, and The Matter of the Ahhiyans.

This is a great book, one that I highly recommend to all history buffs, and all fans of great fantasy literature!

In case you are interested, the stories included are:

The Lost Pilgrim by Gene Wolfe - When a time traveler finds himself in a different age than intended, he little realizes the importance of this journey of Argonauts!

How the Bells Came from Yang to Hubei by Brenda Clough - In Zhou China, an apprentice metal artisan learns the gentle wisdom his master lives. Now, if they can just stay alive...

The Gods of Chariots by Judith Tarr - The Mesopotamian city of Uruk is in danger from barbarians, but it is said that to the north there lives a strange new god who fashions weapons of great power.

The Horse of Bronze by Harry Turtledove - When the tin stops arriving from the Tin Isle, Chreiron the centaur leads an expedition to find out what happened. It seems that there is a new race abroad in the world - man.

A Hero for the Gods by Josepha Sherman - Hittite soldier Hupasiya is just trying to keep his family alive, but to save his family he will have the save the gods themselves!

Blood Wolf by S.M. Stirling - In alternate history Nantucket, warrior Kreuhu Wolkwos is looking for fame and honor, but in this strange new world, he may have to use his head to gain it.

Ankhtifi the Brave is dying by Noreen Doyle - During the First Intermediate Period, after Egypt's Old Kingdom, many local lords sought to be proclaimed Pharaoh. But, one man stands true to the gods and the Pharaoh, Ankhtifi the Brave!

The God Voice by Katherine Kerr & Debra Doyle - Lawinia, wife of Aeneas (hero of the Aeneid) has a tale of her own, a tale that only the priestess of Dian can tell.

Orqo Afloat on the Willkamayu by Karen Jordan Allen - Two brothers, sons of Inka Wiraqocha, war over who will be king of the Inkas - but who will win, and what will be the cost?

The Myrmidons by Larry Hammer - A poem that tells of the origin of the Myrmidons.

Giliad by Gregory Feeley - The arrival of a new computer game sends Leslie and Trent into a look at fiction and reality and history.

The Sea Mother's Gift by Laura Frankos - The days are growing colder, and the people of Dett's Orkney island don't yet realize that disaster is staring them in the face. But, Dett is a man of vision...and a man of visions.

The Matter of the Ahhiyans by Lois Tilton - When the Hittite king get word of the Achaean attack on his subject Troy, he sends an emissary to report on the course of the war.

The Bog Sword by Poul Anderson - When a history professor journeys back in time to Bronze Age Denmark, he sees a pivotal time, when the Celts came to Europe bringing their iron weapons with them.

This book, with stories all set in the Bronze Age, will appeal to SF readers even though there's precious little SF about it. It is the authors themselves that are well-known to the genre. Co-Editor Harry Turtledove has an entry with an explanation for where the centaurs, fauns, and other mythological creatures went, which is one of the stronger stories in the book. Other big SF names are Gene Wolfe, with a time-traveler who finds himself aboard the Argo instead of the Mayflower; Judith Tarr, whose tale illustrates how a city's fortune can rise or fall based on its weapons rather than its deities; S.M. Stirling, with a short story from his Nantucket universe, where the modern island is transported back to the Bronze age to dominate trade and warfare; and Poul Anderson, closing the collection with another time-traveler who wants to study the Bronze Age but faces instead the rise of the Age of Iron.

Tarr has previously collaborated with Turtledove in their novel "Household Gods." Laura Frankos ("The Sea Mother's Gift," a purely historical tale of the Orkney Islanders) is married to him. Co-editor Noreen Doyle is an historian, and her Egyptian tale, based on an actual inscription, is also straight history.

All the stories are worth reading; there isn't a stinker in the collection. Doyle and Turtledove also included some useful introductory material before each story. This ought to be standard in books like these, where not every reader has a Ph.D. in that era, but in Turtledove's last stint as editor he neglected to give a setting for the stories in _Alternate Generals II_. I was pleased to see these necessary lead-ins when I finished their introduction to the book.

Best stories are Turtledove's "A Horse of Bronze," featuring Meditteranean Sea-faring centaurs who discover humans in the British Isles; "Blood Wolf" by Stirling, which made me want to read the Nantucket novels, and Frankos' "The Sea Mother's Gift," which was the most evocative and had the best sense of character and place. The story that failed did so in an interesting way: Gregory Feeley's "Giliad" seemed like it was the result of a hard disk erasure gone awry. I think what he was trying to do was give the sense of an incompletely erased clay tablet that he uses as a metaphor for his Bronze Age literary stand-in, but this story that takes place right before and after 9/11/01, in Manhattan, never seemed to catch on with me. There is also a confusing segment with a possibly gay couple who is never mentioned again, while the erudite modern family (including an eight-year-old daughter who talks more like a 15 year old) and the Sumerian girl intertwine throughout the story. This tale is thus literary experimentation, and I commend Feeley for the attempt but this needs the love and care of a stronger editor.

The contributors to this superb fourteen short story collection consist of a who's who of speculative fiction. The tales can easily be classified as fantasy (with a mythological feel) or historical with little or no fantasist elements. Personally this reviewer found the fantasy shorts more intriguing though the historical ones like that scribed by Judith Tarr are superbly written. Each contribution is original and creative and also included one of the last if not the final work by the legendary Poul Anderson who brings a wisp of sci fi to his entry. Fans of Homer, the mythos, or strong fantasy will appreciate this terrific compilation in which everyday people encounter the Gods and species like centaurs in the era of Odysseus and Achilles.

Harriet Klausner

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