Retread Shop

by T. Jackson King

Overview

Retread Shop--an Alien-controlled galactic bazaar of unimaginable wealth, rigid caste systems, violent battles and ancient cutthroat rivalries. Young Billy McGuire, its only human and an orphan, is unwanted, scorned, and forced to steal for his living. But now he has a patron, a mysterious Alien trader and a new ambition--to become the Shop's first human Merchant no matter what the odds! On that path to becoming a merchant Billy finds a friend in the panda bear Melisay, a mentor in the plant-anemone Zilkie, a master trader in the matriarch Ding do-wort, some mobile plants that have secrets they might share, and a whale-like creature who runs a Trading Guild that is multi-species and which may just accept him as a Trading student. If, that is, Billy can survive the guild's Pathway of Challenges! If he can survive starships blowing up, laser attacks, battles with deadly robots, and messianic Aliens! And if he can survive the Alien killers of his parents.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940148574248
Publisher:	Wilder Publications Inc.
Publication date:	12/28/2012
Sold by:	Draft2Digital
Format:	eBook
File size:	464 KB

About the Author

T. Jackson King (Tom) is a professional archaeologist and journalist. He writes hard science fiction, anthropological scifi, dark fantasy/horror and contemporary fantasy/magic realism--but that didn't begin until he was 38.

Before then, college years spent in Paris and in Tokyo led Tom into antiwar activism, hanging out with some Japanese hippies and learning how often governments lie to their citizens. The latter lesson led him and a college buddy to publish the Shinjuku Sutra English language underground tabloid in Japan in 1967. That was followed by helping shut down the UT Knoxville campus in 1968 and a bus trip to Washington D.C. for the Second March on Washington where thousands demanded an end to the Vietnam War.

Temporary sanity returned when Tom worked in a radiocarbon lab at UC Riverside and earned an MA degree in archaeology from UCLA. His interests in ancient history, ancient cultures and journalism got him several government agency jobs that paid the bills, led him to roam the raw landscape of the Western United States, and helped him raise three kids.

A funny thing happened on the way to normality. By the time he was 38 and doing federal arky work in Colorado, Tom's first novel STAR TRADERS was a stage play in his head that wouldn't go away. So he wrote it down. It got rejected. His next novel was published as RETREAD SHOP (Warner Books, 1988). It was off to the writing races and Tom's many voyages of imaginative discovery have led to 23 published novels, a book of poetry, and a conviction that when humans reach the stars, we will find them crowded with space-going aliens. We will be the New Kids On The Block. This theme appears in much of Tom's short fiction and novel writing.

Tom lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. His other writings can be viewed at http://www.tjacksonking.com.

Editorial Reviews

The rules of trade held together a multitude of alien races in peaceful, if sometimes cutthroat rivalry on the planet known as the ``Retread Shop'' until a human orphan began his climb up the mercantile ladder and unwittingly threatened the delicate balance of power. Engaging alien characters, a likeable protagonist, and a vividly realized world make King's first sf novel a good purchase for sf collections. JC

Library Journal