Mike Moscoe Books In Order

Publication Order of Lost Millennium Books

Chronological Order of Lost Millennium Books

Publication Order of Jump Universe Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of BattleTech: Mechwarrior Dark Age Books

Publication Order of Kris Longknife Collections

Publication Order of Rita Longknife: Iteeche War Books

Publication Order of Longknifes Books

Publication Order of Mike Shepherd Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Mike Shepherd Short Story Collections

Publication Order of Vicky Peterwald Books

Chronological Order of Vicky Peterwald Books

Publication Order of Kris Longknife Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Mike Moscoe is an American science fiction author. He was born in Philadelphia in 1947 to a Navy family. As a child, Mike used to travel a lot. He left Philadelphia at the age of 3 days. He later managed to avoid Philadelphia until when he got drafted. Growing up in a Navy family, he lived just around everywhere that you could park the aircraft carrier. As such, he missed very little of the country. After finishing high school, education had given him an early introduction to the nature of change and American geography which he used to start his writing career.

Now that he is retired, Mike Moscoe is concentrating more on his writing projects. Besides being trained in International Relations, Mike also studied history, salary administration, counseling and theology. In retirement, he is still looking forward to studying of human glory and folly.

Mike currently lives in Vancouver, Washington together with his wife Ellen, mother-in-law and all the visiting grandchildren. He enjoys writing, reading, watching his grandkids for story ideas and constantly upgrading his computer – all that are never ending.

The first series that he wrote was titled Lost Millennium with the first book being published in 1996. Let’s take a closer look at the first two books in the series.

First Dawn

The book talks about first time travelers; the guinea pigs in a certain experiment that can’t fail. From a future that’s ravaged by plague, they should travel thousands of years into the past towards the dawn of civilization. Among the tribes of primitive hunters, these travelers will trace a very fatal chain of events and in turn alter history so as to save humanity.

Science Fiction mostly requires the suspension of disbelief for one major thing and if it’s good science fiction, then the rest of the storyline flows from there. The book does that extremely well. Told in the third person perspective, it clearly follows our future humans Jack and Launa as they navigate.

The premise here is that some time within the future humanity is completely and utterly screwed to an extent that the only hope will be sending a team back in the past so as to fix things. They decide that they must go back, all the way up to 4000 BC so as to set humanity on a very different path as it were in the beginning.

It is a very fascinating idea, going far back in time to remake history completely. The main idea is that there was a certain conflict between peaceful people of the plains and Kurgan horsemen who conquered them. The conflict drove everything which followed in the story. The place is close to Danube river The choice of the place ignores most parts of the world where civilization arise (Africa, India, the Americas and China) and suggests that this conflict in middle of Europe is the most significant in all human history.

The team consists of one woman (Launa), one man (Jack), three dogs and two horses. This is a relatively long shot but that’s given within the premises. The main mission is to hastily put together and then implement in desperate times. The team brings supplies with them using horses. However, the important commodity here is knowledge.

The rest of the storyline is kind of historical fantasy. With a few occasional flashes ‘back into the future’ where commanders who sent them are hunkered down in the bunker, the book mainly focuses on Kurgan horsemen’s culture and the farmers that they’ve come to save. They then make friends with the tribe and dig in slowly to learn the language and also gain their trust.

The hunters gather using their matrilineal structure. The goddess worship are Romanized and horsemen are equally villainized. The setting is all very black and white in contrary to the realistic understanding of the human nature.

Second Fire

The year in this book is 4,000 B.C. In order to save the People from extinction, Captain Jack Walking Bear and Lt. Launa O’Brian must lead the people down a different path of war. The survival of this peaceful and wise tribe is the only civilization’s hope to erase the many years of brutality lying ahead of the human race.

In the second book of the Lost Millennium series, we rejoin Captain Jack Walking Bear and Lt. Launa O’Brian living amongst People of the Badger. Although the epilogue of the previous book seemed to indicate that they accomplished their main goal, the fight is no yet over. The introduction jumps back into the future that they were sent from. The sequel of this book gets more brutal as compared to the first novel and more time is being spent on the people’s culture.

Jack and Launa continue training the recruits from People of the Badger who will fight in the upcoming wave of the horsemen. Nonetheless, their efforts are most often thwarted by the peaceful nature of people that they actually want to preserve. Besides the tactical problems associated with training and resisting any invasion, they also have to wage a PR campaign.

Much of this book is spent on the daily life of “Old Europeans” as Launa O’Brian tends to call them. The book talks about politics, religion, festivals, sex and several other issues within the society.

When one of the Wiseman (Kaul) decides to go to the horsemen in search of peace, he is mutilated and tortured before Jack and Laura rescue him along with Killala, the captive woman. The brutality sets people on a very different path. Even though they didn’t believe Jack and Launa before, they start becoming a united army after that incident.

As this war rages on, constantly changing people as war normally does, Jack and Launa start questioning how they will win against the horsemen without having to become one of them. In the end, although it was initially claimed in the first to be a one way trip, a gate opens which allows Jack and Launa to return back to the future. Having been successful, the two end up in a completely different future.

The world here is more peaceful but a bit far from being perfect. In the very last line, Jack wonders whether they will have to go back and the try again. This will certainly leave you waiting for the next sequel.