First To Fight (Paperback)

I enjoyed every story although some were light weight fluff, their inclusion here little more than an advertisement for the author's full length novel. Point of Decision is the best example of this. The story (about Marines rescuing the occupants of a U.S. embassy) was adequate but wasn't anything original or gripping. The author of UNODIR doesn't dance around his feelings on the Clinton presidency. The characters spend a good deal of time bashing the "current administration" which given the apparent time frame is a thinly veiled reference to Clinton. Which I have no problem with, it just seems a little heavy handed.

While I enjoyed the story about the A-10 pilot, In The Shadow Of The Hunter, it was mainly because I served in Desert Storm and had spent a big part of my Air Force career supporting the A-10s. As for the story itself, the author left me wishing he would check his thesaurus to find a synonym for the word bile. I also found the hero's inner conflict thing a little annoying.

Hearts and Minds started out as a straight forward, run of the mill action story but the ending took me completely by surprise and blew me away.

Harry Turtledove's story was well written, exciting and also had a good surprise twist at the end. There were many clues through the story that only made sense at the end. William Dietz's story was very entertaining but out of place in this collection. I also liked the feel of The 17th Day by Stephen Coonts although the ending was a little flat.

All in all I was kept entertained, which is about all you can ask for with this type of book.

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Set furthest in the past is Stephen Coonts' "The 17th Day". That's the day statistics say our WWI aviator hero will not survive. "Drag Race" by James H. Cobb is set in the fifties, and the author claims its combination of airborne training accident and a hot rod is based on a real incident. James Ferro, author of the HOGS series about A-10As in the Gulf War, gives us a surprisingly moody, psychological piece, "In the Hunter's Shadow". It's about a Warthog pilot looking for his first kill.

Several tales are set in near futures. "UNODIR" by H. Jay Riker is a strong tale. In it, a sub commander disobeys orders to abandon a SEAL team reconnoitering Chinese forces around oil platforms in the South China Sea. The grim "Hearts and Minds" by John Helfers has an American mercenary returning to Vietnam after serving there in the second Vietnam War. He's a soldier in a covert war against drugs and gets involved in local intrigues after his comrades are killed. James H. Cobb has a second story, "Point of Decision" (part of his Amanda Garrett series). On a mission to evacuate a beseiged American embassy in Africa, Lieutenant Stone Quillain has to decide whether to also rescue a hated figure of the recently deposed government or let him and his family be killed. The problem is Washington hasn't given him any orders either way.

"The Man Who Got Khruschev" by Jim DeFelice is set in the 60s and 90s but has a science fictional feel to it, particularly reminiscent of Philip K. Dick's fiction. A retiring college professor begins to recover his identity as a CIA operative sent to kill Khruschev in retaliation for JFK's murder.

S.M. Stirling turns in a surprisingly bad story, "Flyboy". It's about industrial espionage aimed at stealing a technology that allows fighter planes to be controlled via thoughts relayed by an implanted chip. Enjoyable but not really fitting in with the collection's military theme or settings is William C. Deitz's "The Bodyguard and the Client Who Wouldn't Die". It's hero, Max Maxon from Deitz's BODYGUARD, is charged with the strange task of making sure his client stays dead.

The Turtledove story originally seems to be the simple, harrowing tale of a German soldier fleeing Russian troops on the Eastern Front of WWII. However, it slowly turns into something else, and Turtledove manages the transition without seeming gimmicky. Whether it's a trip sideways in time or a trip into our future I'm not sure.

With the exception of the Stirling story, all the stories are enjoyable and worth reading. A fair number are memorable.

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