Mark L Van Name Books In Order

One Jump Ahead

Jon Moore: A nanotech enhanced warrior who wants nothing more than a quiet life and a way back to his strange home world. Lobo: An AI enhanced Predator Class Assault Vehicle, a mobile fortress equipped for any environment from the seabed to interstellar space. TWO WOLVES IN A GALAXY OF LARGER PREDATORS!

Jon Moore wanted only to relax on the pristine planet of Macken but Macken was the secret battleground of two megacorporations, both determined to control the local jump gate and the riches of an undeveloped world. Moore was too valuable a tool not to be used, whether or not he was willing. What the corporations didn’t realize was that Moore had a mind of his own and a conscience that wouldn’t let him quit until he’d righted the wrong they’d tricked him into making. And Moore had Lobo or just possibly Lobo had Jon Moore, because this Assault Vehicle had a mind of its own, too.

Finding allies and enemies among terrorist groups and elite mercenaries, gun runners and the only kind of government possible on a frontier short on rules and long on riches, Jon and Lobo fight to a climax with a corporate army that can’t afford to leave any witnesses. Exotic settings, fast action, real tech, mechanically enhanced animals and a beautiful woman who’s as deadly as a cobra!

One Jump Ahead: the first novel in the Jon & Lobo series

Slanted Jack

Mark L Van Name’s first book in the Jon and Lobo series demolished all the already high marketing projections. In Slanted Jack he’s vaulting that stunning success with a novel that bobs and weaves, takes you on a headlong race through a strange but believable future, and never slows down.

The job looks simple enough: Jon Moore, the nanotech enhanced, world weary, soldier of fortune, agrees to help a con man, a friend from a part of his past he d rather forget, protect a very special young boy. The deal doesn t stay simple, as each move Jon and Lobo make results in more danger and more enemies. The situation grows even more complicated when a beautiful woman with an unclear agenda joins them in their quest.

The best con man Jon s ever known, a ruthless gang boss, a heavily armed group of religious fanatics, and an interstellar government out to clean up a dangerous frontier world rush together toward an explosive climax and Jon and Lobo are caught in the middle.

They’re willing to do anything to save the life of the boy

But there may not be anything even they can do!

Slanted Jack: the second novel in the Jon & Lobo series.

Overthrowing Heaven

It began as a favor to a woman trying to get away from abusive husband.

Jon Moore grew up in a prison laboratory. When he escaped with nothing but his body’s nanotech enhancements and more anger than even a long lifetime could wash away, an entire planet died behind him. Memories of the things he’d done still haunted him; because of them, he often ended up helping those in need.

His kindnesses frequently didn’t work out well. This one really didn’t work out well. It hurled Jon and Lobo, the intelligent assault vehicle and Jon’s only friend, down an accelerating, ever more dangerous spiral involving:

Private armies and government covert ops teams

A courtesan who always seems a step ahead of him

Rival superpowers that define Good in terms of their own advantage and Ethics as whatever doesn’t get in the way of their Good

And a brilliant, amoral scientist to whom human beings are just more experimental animals and who might be Lobo’s creator.

Jon and Lobo take the reader on a headlong rush through armed enemies and untrustworthy allies and encounter what just might be the worst danger their partnership will face: the truth.

Children No More

No child should ever be a soldier. Jon Moore knew that better than most, having learned to fight to survive before he’d hit puberty. So when a former comrade, Alissa Lim, asks for his help in rescuing a group of children pressed into service by rebels on a planet no one cares to save, he agrees. Only later does he realize he’s signed up to do far more than he’d ever imagined. Jon’s commitment hurtles him and Lobo, the hyper intelligent assault vehicle who is his only real friend, into confrontations with the horrors the children have experienced and with a dark chapter from his past. The mission grows ever more complicated as they deal with: ? An assault on a rebel fortress deep in the jungle? A government whose full agenda is never clear? A woman Jon once loved and who still loves him but who will sacrifice anything for her cause? The best con man they’ve ever known? And, toughest of all, their own demons, as we learn for the first time what happened after his home planet’s government yanked Jon’s sister out of his life Jon and Lobo rush straight into the darkness at the heart of humanity to save a group of child soldiers and then face an even tougher challenge: When we’ve trained our children to kill, what do we do with them when the fighting is over?

No Going Back

Jon and Lobo are back and enemies on all sides are out to get them. Haunted by memories of children he could not save, Jon Moore becomes so increasingly self destructive that even his best friend, the hyper intelligent Predator Class Assault Vehicle, Lobo, is worried. So when Jon receives both a job offer and a message from a woman from his distant past, he and Lobo leap at the welcome diversions. That the job is illegal is the least of their problems. They re happy to retrieve stolen artifacts from Jon’s quarantined home world, and their fee is high even for a job so highly illegal. The forces protecting their targets are formidable, and the assault team that s chasing them is even more dangerous but Jon and Lobo are used to that. The scientist Jon and Lobo need for the mission has an agenda of her own, but they ve faced that problem before. This time, though, the knowledge that they and the others seek spells doom for Jon. Racing from planet to planet, Jon and Lobo come at last to a world so inhospitable that its statues and monuments outnumber its living inhabitants. Desperate and out of options, they encounter their deadliest challenges yet and must make life changing decisions from which there truly is No Going BackAbout Mark L. Van Name: Just when I was thinking science fiction might be over, Mark Van Name proves that there are still smart, exciting, emotional sci fi stories to be told. Orson Scott Card on Mark Van Name s One Jump Ahead He s going to be the guy to beat in the race to the top of SFdom. John Ringo, best selling creator of the Posleen War seriesAbout the Jon and Lobo series: P owered by breakneck pacing and military nuanced action and adventure…
Van Name’s focus on character development…
makes for a much more cerebral and enriching read. Publishers Weekly an undeniable page turner highly entertaining. Publishers Weekly on Mark L. Van Name s Slanted Jack Many twists and turns outstanding action. Midwest Book Review on Mark L. Van Name s One Jump Ahead

Transhuman

The rate of technological development today is exploding. Such diverse technologies as computing, communications, genetics, biology, and nanotechnology are rapidly pushing humanity to a new singularity, a point at which all the rules change and everything we assume about what it means to be human may no longer apply. Leading science fiction writers such as Wil McCarthy, Esther Friesner, James P. Hogan, Hugo winner David D. Levine, Dave Freer, Wen Spencer, Mark L. Van Name, and others explore this strangest of new frontiers. From a criminal given a last chance at life in a very new kind of existence to a man struggling to claim his own humanity, from battles in the depths of very strange spaces to an amazing new version of keeping up with the Joneses, the stories in Transhuman take you where no human has gone before but where many of us might one day go.