Erden, the Galaxy’s MishmashErden is one of the many Earth like planets in the Milky Way galaxy that mysterious space-time eddies buffet. Over the millenniums those eddies have ensnared humans from Earth along with life forms from other planets in the galaxy and deposited them on Erden. Few of various captured species survived the eddy’s interstellar transit and materialization on Erden, but enough had to populate the planet with a mélange of life and several waring empires. The Spur tells the story of a Prussian Empire army engineer involved in building a frontier railroad on Erden as a bitter war for supremacy using nineteenth century technology rages between the not quite human Ichneumons and humans.