Take the Shilling
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---Analog, on The Confederated Worlds series
The Confederated Worlds implanted in his brain the skills to make him a soldier.
He had to learn for himself how to survive interstellar war.
Tomas Neumann seeks escape from his backwater planet and overbearing mother, and a mentor to replace his long-dead father. "Taking the shilling"---enlisting in the Confederated Worlds military---promises both.
But despite the soldier's skills implanted in his brain, combat against fellow humans, especially ones who should have welcomed him as a liberator, threaten to destroy him, in body and in spirit.
Grieving for lost comrades, demoralized by harrowing combat, can Tomas learn what he needs to survive? Because soon, with the fates of thousands of his fellow soldiers in the balance, he will face his war's ultimate challenge.
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Raymund Eich is a science fiction and fantasy writer whose middle American upbringing is a launchpad for journeys to the ends of the universe.
His most popular works are military science fiction series The Confederated Worlds (novels Take the Shilling, Operation Iago, and A Bodyguard of Lies) and the Stone Chalmers series of science fiction espionage adventures (novels The Progress of Mankind, The Greater Glory of God, To All High Emprise Consecrated, and In Public Convocation Assembled).
He has over ten other published book-length works and more than forty published short stories. His short fiction has appeared in Analog, Odyssey, Boundary Shock Quarterly, and the anthology Surviving Tomorrow, and has earned honorable mentions and a semi-finalist award in the Writers of the Future contest. His works are available worldwide in ebook, trade paperback, and audiobook editions.
After circling the world by age five, he grew up in the Ozark Mountains of southwest Missouri. He earned a B.A. and a Ph.D., both in biochemistry, from Rice University. Though he’s no longer a working scientist, hundreds of papers cite his graduate research.
In addition to his writing career, he works in patent law, won a national quiz bowl championship, is a husband and father, and affirms Robert Heinlein's dictum that specialization is for insects.
He lives in Houston with his wife, son, and daughter. His last name has one syllable and is pronounced “eye-sh.” He can be found online at https://raymundeich.com.
