Operation Chaos (novel)

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Operation Chaos is a 1971

After the end of the war (an Allied victory as in our World War II, but US forces remain in occupation of former enemy lands for much longer) the two of them continue and deepen their liaison and have various additional adventures (which were originally published as a series of independent stories). Among other things they stop an elemental summoned as a student prank which had gone amok, confront a succubus/incubus on their honeymoon, and enter the hell dimension to save their daughter (who has been kidnapped and taken there, with a changeling left in her crib in her place).

While in Hell the protagonists are at a loss to understand the identity of a moustached man with a strange armband who speaks with a strong Germanic accent, and why the most powerful demons tremble at the sight of him, or why he uses the "ancient and honorable symbol of the fylfot". Their alternative history never had a Nazi Germany.

Another part of the book features a magical analogue to the

In his werewolf form, Matuchek does not suffer many of the liabilities of a werewolf of folklore. He remains himself while turning into a wolf, and is able to fully use his four-leg incarnation to fight various enemies; and in this magical world, there is no social stigma attached to lycanthropy. Dependence on the moon is lightly tossed aside with a comment that the necessary components of moonlight (specific frequencies of

The couple's daughter, Valeria Matuchek, appears as a minor character in Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest—where she is a self-assured young woman, exploring by herself the various timelines. In a mysterious "Inn Between the Worlds" she meets with Prince Rupert of the Rhine, the main character of Midsummer Tempest, as well as meeting Holger Carlsen, the protagonist of Three Hearts and Three Lions and helping him in his own quest.

Magazine publication

• "Operation Afreet", in
  The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
  , September 1956
• "Operation Salamander", in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1957
• "Operation Incubus",^[2] in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1959
• "Operation Changeling" (serial), in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May–June 1969

See also

• Robert Heinlein
• The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump, a similar fantasy world by Harry Turtledove