When Anthony Gray, investigative reporter, sets out to discover why so many homeless people have been going missing, he doesn't expect to be captured by aliens. Only his synesthesia prevents the aliens' mind-wipe from turning him into a living brain-slave. His new masters, unaware of his preserved capability for independant thought, install him into ever-more powerful warships, engaged in a war between four very different races. The war has been going on for generations - nobody remembers how long - or who started it, or why. Tony develops ever-increasing mastery of all sizes of battlecraft, from one-man scouts to super-dreadnoughts the size of a small city, and acquires brain implants which give him power his masters did not anticipate. Conducting the war has impoverished the home worlds and colonies of all the races, and they are desperate to bring it to a conclusion. Will one race win and subjugate the others? Will Earth, the source of the brain-slaves without which the war cannot be waged, be scorched from existence? Or will Tony Gray find another way out?
About the Author: Allen Wold was born in south-western Michigan. He began writing on an old portable typewriter when he was about eight. He finished high school in Tucson, Arizona, and graduated from Pomona College, in Claremont, California, where he met his wife, Diane. They married in 1972, and moved to North Carolina, where he became a full time writer. In 1986, he became a full time father, which occupied him completely for about three years. He and his family lived in England from 1995 to 1998. He has published nine novels (six of which have been re-issued by ReAnimus Press), several short stories (mostly for the Elf Quest anthologies), five non-fiction books on computers (he's completely self-taught, and it probably shows), and a number of articles, columns, reviews, and so forth, also concerning computers (written in language even he can understand). Under his own imprint, Ogden House, he has published Stroad's Cross; Sturgis; Dead Hand; his collected stories for Blood of Ten Chiefs, Freefoot; A Closet for a Dragon and Other Early Tales; and Cat Tales - Reminiscences. He is still working on a pseudo-Lovecraftian novel; a space-opera in six parts; and a pseudo-Victorian faerie story. Allen has been running his Writers' Workshop at sf conventions for more than thirty years. Several who have taken it have sold stories they started in the workshop, and a couple have even won awards. He also runs a plotting workshop, an interactive lecture, which is a lot of fun, and which people have found helpful. Allen is a member of SFWA.