Product Description

An historic landmark work, depicting war as it is and soon will be-the shape of war to come.

Featuring new short novels by:

Larry Bond, who explores the wild frontier of space warfare, where American forces fight a tenacious enemy which threatens every free nation on Earth.

Dale Brown, taking us into the seldom-seen world of the military review board, and shows us how the future career of an EB-52 Megafortress pilot can depend on a man he's never met.

And David Hagberg, who brings us another Kirk McGarvey adventure, in which the C.I.A. director becomes entangled in the rising tensions between China and Taiwan. When a revolutionary leader is rescued from a Chinese prison, the Chinese government pushes the United States to the brink of war, and McGarvey has to make a choice with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1260296 in Books
• Published on: 2002-01-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 416 pages

Amazon.com Review
Will the next war be fought in cyberspace? Stephen Coonts, author of the watershed military novel, Flight of the Intruder, offers this collection of 11 21st-century novellas for fans of contemporary and near-future military fiction. Technology is the binding element of Combat, and fans of Tom Clancy's high-tech military espionage thrillers will find much to love, from ultra-smart weapons to the technical infrastructure of the armed forces of the future. Don't expect hard core science fiction; the villains are of the more realistic variety: terrorists, rogue governments, and outlaw technology. Some of these stories are encumbered with a level of detail only the serious enthusiast will enjoy. (Dale Brown's "Leadership Material" has whole passages describing regs and paperwork that will bore all but the most ardent fans of the genre.) Highlights include Harold W. Coyle's fast-paced "Cyberknights," the most likely candidate from this collection to become a big-budget feature film. --Brendan LaSalle

From Publishers Weekly
Editor Coonts (Flight of the Intruder, etc.) has gathered an impressive group of techno-thriller authors for this testosterone-laden anthology. Ten original short novels by Dale Brown, Larry Bond, Harold Coyle, R.J. Pineiro, David Hagberg, Dean Ing and others, plus one by Coonts himself, feature aerial combat over the Gulf of Oman, a super-secret space cannon, nuclear brinkmanship and a bunch of retired pilots in a jet dogfight over California. Occasionally heavy on the technology and gore, these John-and-Jane-Wayne-meet-Star-Wars tales offer a chilling glimpse into warfare in the 21st century. The most successful focus not on weird military technology, but on the men and women who must actually fight. Coonts's own story, "Al Jihad," pits a retired Marine sniper and a mysterious female pilot against terrorists in the Sahara Desert with a delightful final plot twist. James Cobb's "Cav" suggests that even in the year 2035, modern warfare will still rely on the courage and resourcefulness of the ordinary infantryman. In "There Is No War in Melnica," Ralph Peters offers a frightening and gruesome look at the ethnic slaughter in Kosovo as seen through the horrified eyes of a kidnapped U.S. Army officer. Best of all is Ing's tightly wrapped tale, "Inside Job," which is a masterful detective mystery with a private eye, a bounty hunter and an FBI agent all investigating a peculiar cargo ship and a missing sailor in San Francisco. (Jan. 2)Forecast: Anthologies of original novellas have a checkered sales record, but if the publisher emphasizes the superstar lineup and properly targets the book to the pro-military crowd, the book should engage bestseller lists, particularly down the road in paperback.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
War is as inevitable in this new century as it was in the past. Coonts, author of the successful "Jake Grafton" series of technothrillers, has collected ten new novellas from authors whose specialty is the military of today and the near future: Dale Brown, Harold Coyle, Ralph Peters, Dean Ing, Coonts, and Larry Bond, among others. The novellas cover many aspects of war in the near future, including the "traditional" land, sea, and air conflicts, adding war in space, terrorism, and cyberwar. As in any anthology, readers will have their favorites. Bond's entry is reason to wish he wrote more novels instead of designing computer games. While Combat will appeal to a particular audience, it is a thought-provoking, plausible, and exciting look at the "interesting times" the proverbial ancient Chinese curse says we are condemned to live through. For larger fiction collections. Robert Conroy, Warren, MI
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

A Great Read
This was a really good buy. I have read all of Coonts books along with Clancy (except his Net Force), Brown, & Coyle. This is a great book for when you want to get down and dirty with the action within a short period. Each short is creatively done and reflects different views on combat and its effects on people and machines.

This is also a great way to learn about up and coming authors in this particular field.

A Brillant Collection
This book is a great collection of short novels that illustrate the wars of the future against terrorists, in cyberspace, and in orbit. The stories are to the point, action pacted, and sadly, were not made into full novels themselves. If you are sick of Clancy and other authors that are too busy discussing politics to write a good novel, than this book is for you. All of the futuristic stories are excellent, and will introduce you to the best in the business (if you don't know them already).

Something for everyone
This book has something for everyone. I was very pleased with the forward, and the stories that followed were terrific. If you like military fiction and are interested in where things might be headed, order this book. I'm not one to give complete praise, and there were one or two stories that even though I read them, they weren't my cup of tea. But that is what makes an anthology great, there's always something in there for you.

I will note that most of these stories almost scream out to be expanded into full length novels. I would certainly buy any book that was expanded from my favorites in this anthology. This is the kind of stuff that keeps people like me buying books.