Alternate history and time travel, where a barnstorming baseball team from the 1940s is brought back to third-century Rome to teach the Romans how to play baseball and, if they're lucky, live to tell the tale. The book holds two additional stories, both reprints, one by each author. "A Trade in Serpents", by Alan Smale, features an alternate-history version of Benjamin Franklin, and "Stephen to Cora to Joe, or, the Truth as I Know it", by Rick Wilber features a ghostly Stephen Crane arriving in an open boat to play modern day amateur baseball and dispense some wisdom to a disconsolate writer. Contents: * The Wandering Warriors (2018) / novella by Alan Smale and Rick Wilber; a 1940s barnstorming baseball team, led by retired baseball player and spy Moe Berg, is transported from rural Illinois to Ancient Rome, just after the death of Emperor Septimius Severus. * A Trade in Serpents (2007) / short story by Alan Smale; an alternate-history version of Benjamin Franklin. * Stephen to Cora to Joe, or, the Truth As I Know It / novelette by Rick Wilber (variant of Stephen to Cora to Joe, or, the Truth As I Know It, or, Shifty Paradigms: The Use of Literary Icons and Sports Motifs in Speculative Fiction 2000): a ghostly Stephen Crane arriving in an open boat to play modern day amateur baseball and dispense some wisdom to a disconsolate writer. .
Author
Alan Smale is a professional astronomer, but his writing tastes have always veered more towards alternate and twisted history, fantasy, and horror. His novella of Romans in ancient America, "A Clash of Eagles" in Panverse Two, won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, and the first book in a trilogy set in the same universe, CLASH OF EAGLES, appeared in 2015 from Del Rey in the US and Titan Books in the UK and Europe. The series continues with EAGLE IN EXILE (March 2016) and will conclude with EAGLE AND EMPIRE (2017). Alan has sold 40 short stories to magazines including Asimov's, Realms of Fantasy, Abyss & Apex, Paradox, and Scape, and original anthologies Panverse One and Two, Apollo's Daughters, Book of Dead Things, and Writers of the Future #13. Alan grew up in England, and has degrees in Physics and Astrophysics from Oxford University. He serves as director of an astrophysical archive, and performs research on black hole binaries at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Alan also sings bass with well-known vocal band The Chromatics, and is co-creator of their educational AstroCappella project.
