<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

One of the most popular military SF series ever written, David Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers is a collection of short stories, novellas, and short novels detailing the exploits of a regiment of high-tech mercenaries led by the brilliant and ruthless Colonel Alois Hammer. Set in a far-future interstellar society where struggling colony worlds find it more economical to hire soldiers of fortune than maintain standing armies of their own, the Slammers were originally recruited on Friesland, a wealthy former colony that could afford to purchase the best technology money could buy.

Originally created as an auxiliary force by the Friesland military to put down a rebellion on the poor agricultural colony world of Melponome, the Slammers used their superior troops and weapons (including advanced hovertanks and powergun-armed combat cars) to ruthlessly put down the revolt. In return, the surviving soldiers of Hammer’s regiment were to receive full Friesland citizenship at the end of hostilities. But after the rebellion was crushed, the Friesland government refused to honor its agreement and sent elements of its own army to disarm Hammer’s force. Colonel Hammer and his battle-hardened troops destroyed the Friesland attackers in a 13-minute battle at Melponome’s starport, and from that moment forward Hammer’s Slammers renounced their ties to Friesland and became a mercenary regiment, offering their services to the highest bidder.

Spoiler Warning: Plot details and/or information about the ending follow. If you wish to enjoy the work first, stop reading here and return at another time.

Thirty years and countless battles later, the Slammers returned to Friesland when the world was caught in a rebellion of its own. Hammer was hired by a member of the government, one Counselor Theissman, who intended to seize total control of the planet. Though the Slammers did succeed in crushing the Friesland army, Theissman died under mysterious circumstances just before assuming his dictatorship. Colonel Hammer stepped into the resultant power vacuum and was declared President instead. From that moment forward Hammer’s Slammers were out of the mercenary business, becoming the 1st Brigade of the Friesland Defense Force.

Organizationally, Hammer’s mercenary regiment of tanks, armored personnel carriers and jeeps closely mirrors the structure of the US Army’s 11th Armored Cavalry Brigade, a force that author David Drake served with in Vietnam. Other aspects of Drake’s wartime service inform the various stories in Drake’s series, particularly illustrating the conflicts between low-tech, often agrarian cultures and high-tech, foreign military forces fighting ostensibly on their behalf.

Hammer’s Slammers, the first book in the series, was originally published in 1979. Other books in the series include the collections At Any Price and The Warrior, and the novels Rolling Hot and Paying the Piper. The complete series is being reprinted in three volumes by Night Shade Books, beginning in late 2005.