Piper in the Night - Softcover

Dennis Short thought his tour of duty was over...but now he has stepped into another war. Short, a Navy medical corpsman stationed in Hawaii after his ordeal in Vietnam, is looking forward to his two-week excursion to the island of Kahoolawe. He’s there as the medic for a team of forward observers whose job is to coordinate the bombing, strafing, and shelling of the island’s massive target ranges. All he expects to do besides watching the fireworks is work on his tan and get in a little fishing and hunting on an exclusive, untamed preserve. But from the first day, he is plagued by an oppressive sense that he is being manipulated. Each night, he slips into a dreamlike world of half-human mythical creatures who tempt him, frighten him, force him to become part of their battles with one another. He thought Vietnam was the way to hell. But a new portal is opening wide for him on a supposed island paradise. “Nebula Award nominee Smeds should only enhance his reputation with this well-crafted dark fantasy set during the Vietnam War. Mixing distinctly diverse elements into a coherent story with success, Smeds has created one of the better fantasies to come out of the Vietnam experience.” --Publishers Weekly

Dave Smeds is the author of novels, short fiction, comic book scripts, and screenplays. His writing spans several sub-genres of science fiction and fantasy including sword-and-sorcery, hard sf, contemporary fantasy, superhero, martial arts, horror, and erotica. His novels include The Sorcery Within, The Schemes of Dragons, and X-Men: Law of the Jungle. Over a hundred of his stories have appeared in magazines such as Asimov’s Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Pulphouse, Penthouse Hot Talk, and anthologies such as Full Spectrum 4, Peter S. Beagle’s Immortal Unicorn, Return to Avalon, and over a dozen installments of the Sword & Sorceress series. Some of these works have been collected in the volumes Embracing the Starlight and Raiding the Hoard of Enchantment. Other Vietnam War-related fiction includes “Goats” from In the Field of Fire (Piper in the Night is the novel-length version of this tale), “Short Timer” from F&SF, which was a finalist for the Nebula Award, and “Survivor” from David Copperfield’s Tales of the Impossible, which was reprinted in Best New Horror 7.