Athena Series Book 1: Demos

It is the 25th Century and Earth is ruled by a democracy, the ‘Demos’, so total that every sane adult can vote on any policy that the Council of Athens puts forward. But pure democracy brings its own evils.



Earth’s Federation is at war with the Jovian League; led by Mars with its genetically enhanced soldiers, the ‘Modies’. The war is going badly and the Demos needs a hero to defend it.

Ex-Strategos Theo Lycidides is a man without a mission. Disgraced and Censored by the Demos, he is an outcast, denied access to the social and intellectual life blood provided by the Net via Implant Technology. Until, that is, the Demos requires his very special skills once again.



Brought back; first as a Spy and then as a Strategos; Theo can defeat all the Demos’ enemies, both foreign and domestic. But can he protect the Demos from itself?

Athena Series Book 2: Crusade

The war has ended in defeat for Earth’s Federation and the victorious League has demanded the Federation dismantle its defences to meet the infamous ‘Instrument of Surrender'.



The war might be over in Sol System but the League’s greatest Strategos, Gylippus, means to ignite a new conflict; with the Congress of Starfaring Species.



Commander Xeno Fonnes has been cast ‘on the Beach’ by the end of the Jovian war.



With no place for ex warriors on a defeated Earth, Xeno and his companions must turn mercenary and join Gylippus and the Hammer of Mars in a 'Crusade' against the Congress at the behest of his employer, Kyrus; Warlord of the Carian Clans.

Athena Series Book 3: Hegemony

Strategos Xeno Fonnes has led humanity's most famous mercenary company, the 'Hammer of Mars', back to human space from the heart of the Congress. The Hammer and its commander need time to rest and recover but their new employer Philip of Maccia has other plans.



Xeno is ordered back to war; first in the Transit against his arch enemy Lysander and then in the Fringe Systems to halt the advance of a resurgent Congress.



But Maccian ambitions ignite the fear and envy of the great powers of Sol System and the tide of war spreads throughout human space. Will Xeno and the Hammer be swamped this tide, or will he be able to rise with it and finally unify mankind.

The Historical Template for the Athena Series

The Athena Series is a Space Opera on an epic scale. So it needs an 'Historical Template' that is equally epic. The story line for the first books in this series is set in the 25th Century but the underlying stories are based loosely on the very real history of the 4th and 5th centuries BCE in ancient Greece.



As will be clear to anyone reading the books, it is not only the author’s imagined future that holds Classical Greek history dear. From boyhood he has taken a keen amateur interest in the events of the Peloponnesian War and the larger Greek struggle against Persia that forms the backdrop to it. If the League is Sparta, the Federation/Union Athens and the Ring Republic Thebes, then the Congress must be Achaemenid Persia and the Hegemony, Macedon. And if the powers of the future have historical parallels then so do the books’ heroes and villains. Some like Lysander are almost direct, others like Lycidides himself, are amalgams of other Greek Strategoi; perhaps of Thucydides and Theramenes in his case. Still others like Gylippus out grow their historical namesake and fulfil a larger than life role in the new Universe. Alex Baides of course, represents that most mercurial and enigmatic of the Athenian Strategoi; Alcibiades.



In terms of the individual books the histories forming a very loose basis for their plot lines are respectively:



Demos on the last few years of the Peloponnesian war



Crusade on the events described in Xenophon’s Anabasis



Hegemony on the latter years of the reign of Philip II of Macedon



Clan; an alternative history. What if Philip had not been succeeded by his son, but by a contemporary of Alexander; Ptolemy for example.



Athena Series Book 4: Clan

Strategos Xeno Fonnes is the Regent of Maccia. Absolute ruler of humanity's most powerful polity until his infant ward Caranus comes of age. But Caranus' father, Philip of Maccia, was assassinated and four years old or not, his father's old enemies want Caranus dead as well.



Xeno must fight on many fronts, covert as well as military, to protect Caranus, his Carian Clan allies and his own young family.



As Xeno discovers to his cost, sometimes the greatest threats come from within. Over confidence can be as dangerous as your bitterest enemies or your most treacherous ally.