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Time Monitor Gaspar James is sent to deal with a problem in 1943, where his former colleague Alma Lewin has gone renegade. He discovers Alma is attempting to destroy Nazi death camps, but using weapons from the future. Though humanitarian, this will effect the future that James is sworn to protect.

More than a century ago, Julia Amalfi escaped - with an A.I. as her only companion and a tiny cache of unborn humans - from a mind-devouring plague afflicting her home planet Earth. In those last days she watched as humanity succumbed, including her beloved Petro. Heartbroken and alone, she set out to the stars to find a safe haven and regenerate the human race. Now, the Lady of Midgard, the second mother of humanity, faces another, perhaps greater challenge: her people have turned on her, rebelled, demanded self-rule. And, to Julia's horror, they will soon welcome a contingent from Earth - representatives of the entities she so narrowly escaped so many years ago.

New Alternate History from a Master of the Form: Robert Conroy was an unalloyed master of alternate history. Now, J.R. Dunn completes one of his final novels.

LEE STRIKES BACK!

After a terrible setback at Gettysburg, General Robert E. Lee does not retreat across the Potomac and his ultimate surrender at Appomattox. Instead, he turns the tables on Union General George Meade with a vicious counterattack that sets the Union Army on its heels.

While Lee sets across Pennsylvania in a dazzling war of maneuver, a crazed actor closes in on President Abraham Lincoln. Standing in his way is Major Steve Thorne, a thoughtful lawyer-turned-soldier fighting for the Union and his own self-respect, and Cassandra Baird, a young woman whose courage is only surpassed by her determination to teach emancipated slaves to read and write, and so ensure their freedom.

Opposing them is Colonel Corey Wade, a brave Confederate officer who is just as determined to fight to the death for his honor and that of his state. And, in the end, the fate of a nation may come down to a freed slave named Hadrian, a man with an iron resolve never to return to bondage.

The time has come to strike a blow for liberty--or go down swinging!

This short story originally appeared on Sci Fiction, July 24, 2002. It can also be found in the anthologies Year's Best SF 8 (2003), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, and A.I.s (2004), edited by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann.

Outside a town in Montana fifty years from now, a rancher finds the nude body of a woman in the snow. Terribly mutilated. In plain sight, too, as if it was meant to be discovered. At the same time a computer intrusion occurred at the local bank - sloppy, as if the intruder didn't care if he was detected. The police see no connection... but in Washington one person does: Ross Bohlen, agent for COSSF, the Computer Subversion Strike Force. He thinks a chiphead is responsible. Bohlen's boss assured Congress and the press that the chipheads (cybernetically enhanced people) are a thing of the past - that they have all been killed, or went insane and killed themselves. Bohlen knows better.

In his debut novel, J. R. Dunn gives the Frankenstein story a twist that is both high tech and poetic, as he tells of three men - a madman drunk on power, a hunter weary of bloodshed, and a protector who can no longer protect - all players in a vast, violent, and corrupt game. A gripping, thought provoking thriller.