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Swords and Saddles
Begin by entering “The Rift.” Answering a distress call from a colonized planet, a combat team finds themselves ambushed. They manage to scrabble their way to a remote research facility in the countryside, joining a group of schoolchildren that have holed up with the researchers -- three groups united in fear that their lives will last only as long as they can avoid discovery by the aliens that have come to their planet. When the aliens do come, it becomes clear that despite all the years of research, the humans’ understanding of the aliens is woefully incomplete.“Swords and Saddles” is one of several alternate history stories that Jack Campbell has written. When lightning strikes Captain Ulysses Benton and his US Cavalry Fifth Regiment, they recover to find an ancient structure in the desert that they’ve never seen before -- and writing in a language none of them recognize. When the next find themselves skirmishing with soldiers wearing armor more appropriate to Roman centurions than 1870s Kansas, it becomes clear that wherever it is they are, it isn’t Kansas. But where are they, then? And how do they make their way home?The Lost Fleet isn’t the only Jack Campbell series full of outer space intrigue. “Failure to Obey”is a novella in his Paul Sinclair series. When Lieutenant Jen Shen saves the day after a terrorist attack on a space station, she gets a medal, but Ivan Sharpe, a fellow officer and Paul’s former master-at-arms, gets a court martial. In a classic court martial scene that rivals the best in American literature, Paul has to work behind the scenes to save Ivan’s military career.
175 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 12, 2013
35 people are currently reading
269 people want to read
About the author
Jack Campbell
113 books3,036 followersJack Campbell is a pseudonym for American science fiction author John G. Hemry.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
John G. Hemry is an American author of military science fiction novels. Drawing on his experience as a retired United States Navy officer, he has written the Stark's War and Paul Sinclair series. Under the name Jack Campbell, he has written four volumes of the Lost Fleet series, and on his website names two more forthcoming volumes. He has also written over a dozen short stories, many published in Analog magazine, and a number of non-fiction works.
John G Hemry is a retired United States Navy officer. His father, Jack M. Hemry, also served in the navy and as John points out was a mustang. John grew up living in several places including Pensacola, San Diego, and Midway Island.
John graduated from Lyons High School in Lyons in 1974 then attended the US Naval Academy (Class of '78) where he was labeled 'the un-midshipman' by his roommates.
He lives in Maryland with his wife and three kids. His two eldest children are diagnosed as autistic and suffer from Neuro immune dysfunction syndrome (NIDS), an auto-immune ailment which causes their illness, but are progressing under treatment.
John is a member of the SFWA Musketeers whose motto reads: 'The Pen is Mightier Than the Sword, but the Wise Person Carries Both'.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
John G. Hemry is an American author of military science fiction novels. Drawing on his experience as a retired United States Navy officer, he has written the Stark's War and Paul Sinclair series. Under the name Jack Campbell, he has written four volumes of the Lost Fleet series, and on his website names two more forthcoming volumes. He has also written over a dozen short stories, many published in Analog magazine, and a number of non-fiction works.
John G Hemry is a retired United States Navy officer. His father, Jack M. Hemry, also served in the navy and as John points out was a mustang. John grew up living in several places including Pensacola, San Diego, and Midway Island.
John graduated from Lyons High School in Lyons in 1974 then attended the US Naval Academy (Class of '78) where he was labeled 'the un-midshipman' by his roommates.
He lives in Maryland with his wife and three kids. His two eldest children are diagnosed as autistic and suffer from Neuro immune dysfunction syndrome (NIDS), an auto-immune ailment which causes their illness, but are progressing under treatment.
John is a member of the SFWA Musketeers whose motto reads: 'The Pen is Mightier Than the Sword, but the Wise Person Carries Both'.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
March 8, 2020
1.8⭐ Rounded up
Not one of Campbell's best; 3 fairly pedestrian novellas. The first story is a scifi retelling of the battle of Rork's Drift (called " The Rift," get it?), with aliens replacing Zulus, to nobody's benefit. Second is your basic interdimensional displacement story, with a U.S. cavalry troop shifted to alternate, Conan-ish Kansas. The third is a very mediocre court martial drama, one of Campbell's preachiest stories yet (and that's saying a lot). Overall Rating: Boring.
Not one of Campbell's best; 3 fairly pedestrian novellas. The first story is a scifi retelling of the battle of Rork's Drift (called " The Rift," get it?), with aliens replacing Zulus, to nobody's benefit. Second is your basic interdimensional displacement story, with a U.S. cavalry troop shifted to alternate, Conan-ish Kansas. The third is a very mediocre court martial drama, one of Campbell's preachiest stories yet (and that's saying a lot). Overall Rating: Boring.
September 1, 2017
When I was in high school (that would have been the 1960s) and before I was a reader of short stories. As I've gotten older I've steered away from short stories. They always seem to leave me with the feeling I tried to make a meal of an appetizer. Well, this book is made up of short stories/novellas.
On the dark side...well they are short stories on the bright side they are good short stories. You'll get to visit some of the writing you may have enjoyed before from Mr. Campbell...but you'll probably want the stories to go on. The stories all seem to set up stories that demand "more".
Good luck...read at your own risk.
Enjoy.
On the dark side...well they are short stories on the bright side they are good short stories. You'll get to visit some of the writing you may have enjoyed before from Mr. Campbell...but you'll probably want the stories to go on. The stories all seem to set up stories that demand "more".
Good luck...read at your own risk.
Enjoy.
January 31, 2022
An anthology of three unrelated Campbell/Hemry stories.
“Greeting death with smiles.”
“The Rift” retells the 1879 Battle of Rorke’s Drift in South Africa as science fiction. Excellent. If only for this story, read this. How do we get the idea we can communicate with aliens when we can not communicate among ourselves? Indeed. Campbell/Hemry also skewers academic orthodoxy as an impediment to learning … and survival. (Campbell demonstrates he knows nothing about milk cattle.)
“The orthodox, prevailing view in my field is that myths and religions are just window-dressing, not really fundamental to world-views and not regarded by cultures as serious explanations for how the universe works.” “Where did anyone get that idea?”
“Swords and Saddles” another variation of the lost army unit story. Been done—and done better—many times.
“We’re not in Kansas, that’s for certain.”
“Failure to Obey” is weakest. Trial drama, not a favorite. Tie-in to other Paul Sinclair stories, which I haven’t read. Opens with a little setup action, then shifts to the court room. Yawn. In a classic court martial scene that rivals the best in American literature, Paul has to work behind the scenes to save Ivan’s military career,” from the blurb is a blatant lie to suck in fans of Sinclair.
“In the final analysis we need to ask ourselves what we want defending us – machines which kill without hesitation on order, or humans who sometimes hesitate, sometimes think, sometimes decide that the order they’ve received may be unlawful, may be wrong.”
“Greeting death with smiles.”
“The Rift” retells the 1879 Battle of Rorke’s Drift in South Africa as science fiction. Excellent. If only for this story, read this. How do we get the idea we can communicate with aliens when we can not communicate among ourselves? Indeed. Campbell/Hemry also skewers academic orthodoxy as an impediment to learning … and survival. (Campbell demonstrates he knows nothing about milk cattle.)
“The orthodox, prevailing view in my field is that myths and religions are just window-dressing, not really fundamental to world-views and not regarded by cultures as serious explanations for how the universe works.” “Where did anyone get that idea?”
“Swords and Saddles” another variation of the lost army unit story. Been done—and done better—many times.
“We’re not in Kansas, that’s for certain.”
“Failure to Obey” is weakest. Trial drama, not a favorite. Tie-in to other Paul Sinclair stories, which I haven’t read. Opens with a little setup action, then shifts to the court room. Yawn. In a classic court martial scene that rivals the best in American literature, Paul has to work behind the scenes to save Ivan’s military career,” from the blurb is a blatant lie to suck in fans of Sinclair.
“In the final analysis we need to ask ourselves what we want defending us – machines which kill without hesitation on order, or humans who sometimes hesitate, sometimes think, sometimes decide that the order they’ve received may be unlawful, may be wrong.”
August 31, 2020
Three stories, three different settings, three entertaining experiences which work as one shots - and two of which would be great starting points for entirely new series (the third isn't because it already is part of the Sinclair stories).
September 19, 2017
This is a collection of three longer-than-short science fiction stories (does that make sense?), and these are pretty good. I usually don't read that many short stories, but Campbell is a science fiction writer I like, and I've read his space opera series called The Lost Fleet and decided to pick this compilation up based on how much I liked the Lost Fleet series: I wasn't disappointed as these are perfect for reading, for example, after work when you are wanting to relax and finish something vs. waiting for the next day (usually in suspense) to pick the book up and read.
If you enjoy a good science fiction tale without all of the goofy and strange aliens, and are looking for a collection of shorter reads for your commute or after work vs. investing hours in a novel, I'd recommend this one. At $4.99, science fiction lovers (and Jack Campbell fans) should receive more than $4.99 of value.
If you enjoy a good science fiction tale without all of the goofy and strange aliens, and are looking for a collection of shorter reads for your commute or after work vs. investing hours in a novel, I'd recommend this one. At $4.99, science fiction lovers (and Jack Campbell fans) should receive more than $4.99 of value.
May 18, 2020
I am not a fan of short stories- If they are good they can make a book and if they are bad they are bad. So imagine my surprise when this book proved me wrong. The first story, "The Rift" takes place on an alien world where humans find a race humanoid "noble savages". The crux of this story, as the introduction explains, is that fiction tends to treat communication between species as easy once a common language is discovered, in spite of humans regularly failing to understand each other with much more than language in common. This story tells the tale of a idiomatic misunderstanding, its horrific fall out and eventual discovery. This is virtually a perfect short story.
Next is "Swords and Saddles" which follows an American cavalry troop through a rift and into another world. In this world a major land bridge exist between Asia and North America, meaning that many of the Asian migrations that ended in Europe went east instead. This results in a world where empires have risen and fallen in western North America, but there was no Roman Empire, France, England, etc. Also, lacking the concentration of population in Europe that occurred in our world, technology has failed to progress. This means that the cavalry arrives in a world without stirrups, let alone gun powder.
The cavalry encounters a large city-state under attack and is itself attacked. The cavalry's easy route of its attackers breaks the siege and they are welcomed into a city that has need of their technology and fighting ability. Frankly, I wish the author would take this great premise and turn it into a series to rival (or surpass) "Destroyermen" by Taylor Anderson.
"Failure to Obey" is a fascinating story with a fascinating back story. The author has served in the military in a capacity that familiarized him with terrorism. However, the author never felt free to write about terrorism for fear of engendering the wrong kind of thinking. That is until he came up with a terrorist attack on a fictional space station. With that as motive the author developed a story in his "JAG in space" series. The first third of this story involves the actual terrorist attack on a naval space station. The last two thirds are a court room drama involving the prosecution of one of the defenders for failing to obey an order during the attack. I was a lawyer for 20 years and court room dramas tend to annoy me with their ridiculous handling of something I know well. That is not the case here. While the author keeps the court room drama artificially short and sweet, he does so for the benefit of the reader and the story. To date this is the only court room drama story I have every encountered that I can recommend to others.
Bottom line: A must read for any Jack Campbell fans and pretty darn good read for everyone else.
Next is "Swords and Saddles" which follows an American cavalry troop through a rift and into another world. In this world a major land bridge exist between Asia and North America, meaning that many of the Asian migrations that ended in Europe went east instead. This results in a world where empires have risen and fallen in western North America, but there was no Roman Empire, France, England, etc. Also, lacking the concentration of population in Europe that occurred in our world, technology has failed to progress. This means that the cavalry arrives in a world without stirrups, let alone gun powder.
The cavalry encounters a large city-state under attack and is itself attacked. The cavalry's easy route of its attackers breaks the siege and they are welcomed into a city that has need of their technology and fighting ability. Frankly, I wish the author would take this great premise and turn it into a series to rival (or surpass) "Destroyermen" by Taylor Anderson.
"Failure to Obey" is a fascinating story with a fascinating back story. The author has served in the military in a capacity that familiarized him with terrorism. However, the author never felt free to write about terrorism for fear of engendering the wrong kind of thinking. That is until he came up with a terrorist attack on a fictional space station. With that as motive the author developed a story in his "JAG in space" series. The first third of this story involves the actual terrorist attack on a naval space station. The last two thirds are a court room drama involving the prosecution of one of the defenders for failing to obey an order during the attack. I was a lawyer for 20 years and court room dramas tend to annoy me with their ridiculous handling of something I know well. That is not the case here. While the author keeps the court room drama artificially short and sweet, he does so for the benefit of the reader and the story. To date this is the only court room drama story I have every encountered that I can recommend to others.
Bottom line: A must read for any Jack Campbell fans and pretty darn good read for everyone else.
January 17, 2017
A combination of three short stories. The first is about complacent humans not taking the alien inhabitants seriously enough. While the riddle is "how did they managed to provoke the aliens into a massacre" the thought that crossed my mind was "What are they even doing colonizing a planet that already has people on it?". The second is the title story, as a post-Civil War cavalry company finds themselves ISOTed into an Iron Age alternate universe and get to meet to the locals. Really it's just the first part of an as yet unwritten Turtledove type of novel novel. The third one is the real prize, though, a long-awaited continuation of Hemry/Campbell's space lawyer series starring his love interest and the lawyer he went up against to defend her. I'm giving it four stars for that one.
November 9, 2023
This was an entertaining and varied selection. Be advised though, there is nothing subtle about Jack Campbell's writing - plot lines can be seen miles away and if you don't understand the points trying to be made, don't worry, the characters will spell them out in their dialogue.
That said, we went from alien contact with both military and anthropological overtones, to time travel with the US Cavalry, to a military court-martial on a space station. The first story in particular was pretty well laid out and provoked some thought as to the misunderstandings that can occur between dissimilar cultures. No right or wrong, just no common frame of reference.
Overall, this was a nice range of stories and well worth the $1.99 sale price I got it for. Pick it up off the shelf if you see it on sale!
That said, we went from alien contact with both military and anthropological overtones, to time travel with the US Cavalry, to a military court-martial on a space station. The first story in particular was pretty well laid out and provoked some thought as to the misunderstandings that can occur between dissimilar cultures. No right or wrong, just no common frame of reference.
Overall, this was a nice range of stories and well worth the $1.99 sale price I got it for. Pick it up off the shelf if you see it on sale!
May 7, 2023
I bought this when I saw that it included a JAG in Space story. I didn't know John Hemry (aka Jack Campbell) had written this one.
This book has three stories: "The Rift" is set on another planet with an intelligent indigenous species which unexpectedly attacks the human settlers, "Swords and Saddles" is about a U.S. Civil War cavalry unit that finds itself transferred to an alternate Kansas, and "Failure to Obey" is the court-martial story. I would rate the first 3.5 stars, the second 3 stars, and the third 4 stars. Rounded up the book rating to 4.
This book has three stories: "The Rift" is set on another planet with an intelligent indigenous species which unexpectedly attacks the human settlers, "Swords and Saddles" is about a U.S. Civil War cavalry unit that finds itself transferred to an alternate Kansas, and "Failure to Obey" is the court-martial story. I would rate the first 3.5 stars, the second 3 stars, and the third 4 stars. Rounded up the book rating to 4.
June 20, 2022
Every story is very good! "Swords and Saddles" is my favorite in this book. I lived on the Great Plains near Kansas some years ago, so I was nice reading about that type terrain in the story. Campbell managed to impart a nice sense of history to the reader. Each story had good characterization. Needless to say I recommend this book.
September 28, 2023
This is three novella length stories. They all have a military cast and otherwise are quite different. I enjoy Hemry/Campbell quite a bit and find his writing sometimes like good stories of the mid to late 20th century, although often with better character development. Good read if not Campbell's best.
November 26, 2017
Amazon is adding items to my "CURRENTLY READING" list without asking. That's wrong and a violation of my privacy.
AMAZON, I am going to post this statement on every GOODREADs post until you stop.
AMAZON, I am going to post this statement on every GOODREADs post until you stop.
December 14, 2018
Great yarns
Campbell again weaves together a few great stories. The second a nice time/temporal shift ala 1632. The last a good legal yarn that any squid or grunt can relate to. A great read.
Campbell again weaves together a few great stories. The second a nice time/temporal shift ala 1632. The last a good legal yarn that any squid or grunt can relate to. A great read.
April 25, 2019
I loved the 3 stories! The Rift is about an encounter with aliens; Swords and Saddles involves time travelling; and Failure to Obey involves someone facing a court martial. Entertaining and thought-provoking!
June 19, 2023
This author can tell a story! In this case, three of them. Everything I have read of his has been gripping, detailed, and filled with real characters. But never over done. Nothing that bogs down the story.
January 29, 2024
Campbell’s earliest and most interesting
These three short stories are some of Campbell’s earliest and most interesting reads. For a Blackshoe, he is great and one of my favorite authors!
These three short stories are some of Campbell’s earliest and most interesting reads. For a Blackshoe, he is great and one of my favorite authors!
June 28, 2017
A very enjoyable collection. :)
September 20, 2017
The author is new to me but I enjoyed these stories. Think I'll try the JAG in space stories
November 29, 2017
I was happy to see the JAG in Space characters getting a little visibility.
May 25, 2019
Great collection of shorts
July 8, 2021
He writes a great novel but I was surprised as what good short stories he pens as well. Kudos
March 12, 2024
Enjoyable collection of three short stories. I especially liked "Failure to Obey," another Paul Sinclair JAG in Space story (in which Paul Sinclair doesn't actually make an appearance).
March 19, 2025
What a wonderful book. The second story was my absolute favorite - he could have turned that into a full book, or even a series of books, and I would’ve devoured every bit of it. But all of the stories were good and interesting. He’s such a good writer!
October 8, 2025
Interesting thoughtful read. I enjoyed the charactors and the plot. It wasn't what I expected; but in the context of the each book, I believe it was logical and I was content with it.
February 12, 2026
Three short stories that will make you think. Entertaining.
February 26, 2013
I enjoyed the book which is a very eclectic mix of stories from colony stories to alternate universe stories. Nice mix with 2 of the stories worthy of further exploration I think.
Read this in a single day so an easy read with good characters you will like to see more of.
Read this in a single day so an easy read with good characters you will like to see more of.
July 22, 2013
Interesting SS, though I was more into the last one and space JAG bridge to the next novel.
June 14, 2015
I like Jack Campbell. This collection of short stories is lively, thoughtful, and well-written. Excited for his next book.
March 8, 2015
A couple of solid stories but also reminded me of all the reasons I don't like short stories.
April 6, 2017
I like Campbell books and this was another good one.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews