Leo Frankowski, author of the popular Conrad Stargard series, postulates a future in which the former Yugoslavia is still torn by civil war between Serbs and Croats. But now they've taken their endless conflict to space, and wars between minority factions are fought by starving workers symbiotically bonded with Mark XIX Main Battle Tanks. These sentient tanks provide for all their human pilots' needs (and we do mean all their needs).

Our hero, Mickolai Derdowski, is a Polish Kashubian who chooses to be inducted into the Croat branch of the army and bonded with a sexy female tank in lieu of being reduced to his organic components and used as fertilizer in the hydroponic vats. The real forces behind the war are the Tokyo Mining and Manufacturing Company, which makes money off the hapless Kashubians unfortunate enough to have colonized a brutal, barren metallic hunk of a planet, and the Wealthy Nations Group, which squeezes water from turnips all over the galaxy.

Like most military SF, the lighthearted Boy and His Tank is full of guns, girls, and galactic adventure, and Frankowski throws in a surprise ending that will make you either laugh or cry. --Adam Fisher

From Publishers Weekly
Centuries in the future, on the distant and dirt-poor planet of New Kashubia, young Mickolai Derdowski is sentenced to death for getting his girlfriend, Kasia, pregnant. His only alternative is to become a mercenary, a human backup for the artificial intelligence and virtual reality capabilities of a Mark XIX tank. After training in the VR "Dream World" (and falling in love with Agnieshka, the female personality of his tank), Mickolai is sent to fight Serbs on the planet of New Yugoslavia. There he meets Kasia again, persuades a division of Serbian tanks to change sides, undergoes a crash course in military science and winds up a victorious commanding general. But in Agnieshka's VR world, nothing is what it seems, and Mickolai (and the reader) must wait until the end of his mission to discover what has really happened. Filled with coincidences and expository lumps, this novel's action scenes are too short, while its sex scenes are too numerous. Frankowski (Conrad's Quest for Rubber) has done better than this disappointing mix of extravagances and implausibilities. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The planet New Kashubia started out as a gas giant, but when its sun went dupernova, lighter elements were blasted into space. All that was left was a ball of heavy metals, heated to 8,000 degrees. As it colled, tungsten solidified first at the survace, and layers of other metals continued down to a ball of mercury at the center. The sun meanwhile evolved into a pulsar with a deadly beam of radiation that baked the planet's survace. The New Kashubians lived inside the planet, in tunnels drilled in a thousand foot thick layer of solid gold.

Still without carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, or even dirt, the colonists were the poorest people in the universe.

But when they combined virtual reality with tank warfare, giving their warriors symbiosis with their intelligent tanks, neither war nor the galaxy would ever be the same. Not to mention sex...

FROM THE CRITICS

Starlog

A Boy and His Tank is a literate military adventure laced with political allegory—and a great deal of fun.

Publishers Weekly

Centuries in the future, on the distant and dirt-poor planet of New Kashubia, young Mickolai Derdowski is sentenced to death for getting his girlfriend, Kasia, pregnant. His only alternative is to become a mercenary, a human backup for the artificial intelligence and virtual reality capabilities of a Mark XIX tank. After training in the VR "Dream World" (and falling in love with Agnieshka, the female personality of his tank), Mickolai is sent to fight Serbs on the planet of New Yugoslavia. There he meets Kasia again, persuades a division of Serbian tanks to change sides, undergoes a crash course in military science and winds up a victorious commanding general. But in Agnieshka's VR world, nothing is what it seems, and Mickolai (and the reader) must wait until the end of his mission to discover what has really happened. Filled with coincidences and expository lumps, this novel's action scenes are too short, while its sex scenes are too numerous. Frankowski (Conrad's Quest for Rubber) has done better than this disappointing mix of extravagances and implausibilities.

Carolyn Cushman - Locus

...[T]he action is gripping, and there are plenty of novel twists and ironic moments.

Don D'Ammassa - Science Fiction Chronicle

[A] likable adventure story designed to appeal to general readers as well as those drawn specifically to military science fiction.

Kirkus Reviews

By the 22nd century, the Wealthy Nations Group relieves overpopulation by persuading ethnic or religious minority groups to colonize planets of their own. Poland's Kashubians accept a barren planet of solid metal, which they lease to the Japanese for mining-but then they're forced to inhabit the tunnels excavated by the miners. And since everything has to be imported, the New Kashubians live in economic slavery on starvation diets, with the sexes segregated so the population cannot increase. Finally they nationalize the mines, kick off the Japanese, and discover stockpiles of advanced weapons. Naturally, they grab these and sign mercenary contracts with planet New Yugoslavia, where the usual factions are still itching to start wars. Young Kashubian engineer Mickolai Derdowski, condemned for a trivial offense, is offered either execution or training as the human partner of an intelligent Mark XIX Main Battle Tank; Mickolai's beloved, Kasia, suffers a similar fate. Mickolai's tank calls herself Agnieshka, and communicates directly with his brain through a virtual reality, named Dream World. After training, the two are shipped to New Yugoslavia to fight for the Croats against the Serbs. Mickolai survives numerous campaigns, enjoys plenty of R&R in Dream World, undergoes officer training, wins more battles, and eventually is decanted from his tank-only to learn that all of this has taken place in Dream World. In actuality, he's built an underground road system on New Yugoslavia while both Croats and Serbs have been fed spectacular, soothing lies about huge, bloodthirsty battles.

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