Through Wednesday, September 9 we present the Kage Baker Bundle featuring ePub books of historical time-travel science fiction novels and stories in the “Company” series by Kage Baker (1952-2010) published by Simon & Schuster. The Company is the Zeus Corporation, a 24th-Century enterprise whose immortal cyborg agents canvas all of human history to preserve the cultural artifacts, extinct animals and plants, and treasures that would otherwise be lost – partly for their enduring cultural value, but mostly for profit. Three agents – Botanist Mendoza, Facilitator Joseph, and Literature Specialist Lewis – uncover a conspiracy within the Company that stretches through recorded history and touches on their own past. The trail leads to AD 2355 and the Silence, an event after which no Company agent has ever been able to travel. And beyond the Silence waits Dr. Zeus.
Kage Baker was an artist, actor, and director at the Living History Centre in Novato, California. Baker’s novels and stories in her long-running “Company” saga were nominated for Hugo and World Fantasy awards, and won a Nebula and the Theodore Sturgeon Award. The Company stories are by turns funny and deeply felt, and celebrated for their historical accuracy, romance, and tantalizing mysteries.
Born in Hollywood, Baker spent many years as a theater actor and taught Elizabethan English as a second language. This experience influenced her writing: In her entry in the Science Fiction Encyclopedia, John Clute highlights Baker’s “almost vaudeville-like scattiness in how verbal and other registers infiltrate her tales, with an antic effect that requires a good ear to perform (and to appreciate), plus a strong comedic vein, especially in earlier volumes of the sequence.”
Kage’s sister, Kathleen Bartholomew, recounted the origin of the Company in a 2013 interview with Stefan Raets on his Far Beyond Reality blog: “One morning in the Spring of 1987 or so, we were having a leisurely Saturday breakfast in our house in the Hollywood Hills. […] I read aloud a story about some plant that had been considered extinct and recently discovered to be alive and well. Things like that fascinated us both – artifacts, plants, animals, entire cities are always being rediscovered somewhere peculiar; I kept a collection of articles on them, just because it was so weird and interesting. And after listening to this one story – about a small plant recently re-discovered on the slopes of Mt. Diablo in Northern California – Kage looked up and said: ‘This kind of thing happens all the time. Paintings, music, animals, old books – and they always get found in odd, safe places, intact and thriving. Somebody must be doing this on purpose!’
“Said I: ‘Why and how would someone do this so weirdly and sneakily?’
“And Kage said: ‘With secret technology. And special agents, sworn to silence. For money – lots and lots of money.’ Her eyes glazed over, staring into the amazing world inside her own head, and she said: ‘And they are called Dr. Zeus, Incorporated.’ And in that moment, in the spring sunlight, with the parrot rampaging through Kage’s Wheaties and milk dripping from her spoon – the Company was born. Just. Like. That.
“Initially, Kage was just going to declare it was impossible to change History. But she didn’t like the inflexibility of that. Also, she wanted to actually have a system that was understandable – at least once you accept the idea at all.
“That was when she came up with the concept that history cannot be changed – but that it can only be observed not to change in History that has been recorded. Unrecorded History is still all unrealized potential. She based that on relativity – that what happens is dependent on observation; and also on Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle – that the unobserved remains in a limbo of potentiality. The corollary to observed and recorded History was the Event Shadows: some events are so immense, little else gets observed at all. And in those Shadows, all manner of temporal cheats and chicanery can be perpetrated.”
The other important worldbuilding element in the Company saga is the Silence. Agents range across thousands of years of history, but no one can go further in the future than the year 2355. Beyond that time, nothing is known. Does the date mark an immortal cyborg rebellion, as mortals within the Company fear? Or do the mortal masters of the Company exterminate the cyborgs they no longer need? Read the series to find out.
This big new Kage Baker Bundle gives you 13 novels and story collections – Baker’s complete nine-book Company saga and several spinoff novels that extend the setting’s lore. Pay just US$5.95 to get all three complete science fiction ebooks in our Kage Baker Sampler (retail value $30) as DRM-free ePubs, including the first two Company novels (In the Garden of Iden and Sky Coyote) along with a free-standing collection of Company short stories, Black Projects, White Knights.
And if you pay more than the threshold (average) price, which is set at $24.95 to start, you’ll level up and also get our entire Company Collection with ten more titles worth an additional $100 – the rest of the Company Saga, including Mendoza in Hollywood, The Graveyard Game, The Life of the World to Come, The Children of the Company, The Machine’s Child, Gods and Pawns (a story collection best read after The Machine’s Child), and The Sons of Heaven – along with several spinoff novels based on Company lore and characters: The Empress of Mars, Not Less than Gods, and Nell Gwynne’s On Land and At Sea.
[Note: Many of our offers are hosted on DriveThruRPG or DriveThruFiction, but these Kage Baker ebooks aren’t available on DriveThru. Download your files from your Wizard’s Cabinet on the Bundle site.]
This all-new Kage Baker fiction offer enters the Silence (AD 2355) Wednesday, September 9.
https://bundleofholding.com/presents/KageBaker
The Company saga – recommended reading order
Start with the first novel in the saga, In the Garden of Iden (1997). The rest of the main sequence (Amazon affiliate links):
- 2. Sky Coyote (1999)
- 3. Mendoza in Hollywood (2000)
- 4. The Graveyard Game (2001)
- 5. The Life of the World to Come (2004)
- 6. Children of the Company (2005)
- 7. The Machine’s Child (2006)
- -. Gods and Pawns (2007), a story collection best read after The Machine’s Child
- 8. The Sons of Heaven (2007)
You can enjoy the short stories in Black Projects, White Knights (2002) at any point after the first novel. Read the story collection Gods and Pawns after The Machine’s Child. Read the spinoff novels whenever you like.
