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Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Amazing Stories, September 1987 and is included in the collection Strange Trades (2001).

Roland: He was born to an evil heritage of black magic and bastardy. Battling his own dark nature, Roland was determined to serve in Charlemagne's handpicked regiments.

Lord Ganelon: Hungry for power, this bloodthirsty lord vowed to destory Roland. And he was but one of the young knight's foes. For Roland was blessed by courage and magic--and chosen for the greatest of glories.

Durandal--the dark sword, cruel instrument of death and affliction. Once she served Roland, and made him invincible on the battlefield. But now Roland is supposed dead. And in a land torn by bloodshed, many a man seeks Durandal's killing force for himself.

Hautville--a name despised throughout the land, for from it sprang evil Lord Ganelon. Now from Hauteville comes a black inhuman sorcery, ancient and unholy. From the magic is born treason in the highest circles of Charlemagne's court--and from treason is hatched a plot...

Eleven years before Jules Verne took his readers to the Moon, 40 years before Wells devised the Time Machine, nearly a century before Tolkien published Lord Of The Rings, Charles Defontenay wrote the imaginary history of an entire star system located in the far off constellation of Cassiopeia.

Long before science fiction writers dreamed of interstellar travels, alien races and the colonization of other planets, in 1854, on the eve of the Crimean War, Charles Defontenay penned the first modern "space opera".

STAR is a treasure chest of alien lore, the history of a world and its varied species, their rise and fall, triumphs and failures. It includes samples of their literature, arts and moral codes. Above all, it is a visionary work without precedent in the history of science fiction.

Star describes the discovery in the Himalayas of a stone that has fallen from the sky. After opening it, it turns out to contain a metal box where the narrator finds some paper manuscripts. After two years of study, he managed to decipher them and finds out that they describe the alien societies of various humanoid races living in the constellation of Cassiopeia.