The Wizardry Consulted

Consult or die! Back after too long an absence, Programmer and Systems Analyst Extraordinaire Wiz Zumwalt, The Man Who Tamed Magic, returns - and the Dragons have him! All here will no doubt recall that the magic kingdom to which Wiz was sorcerously summoned back in 1988 was in a terrible state (as well as being a terrible state). It was a full-scale war between mere mortal humanity and all the fell creatures of darkness and chaos - and the creatures were winning! Slowly but surely, the realm of "tame" magics and honest sorcerers was contracting under the onslaught. What to do, what to do? Enter Wiz Zumwalt, who within a remarkably short time had recognized that the incredibly difficult task of spell-casting as practiced in the magic kingdom was exactly the same as trying to write computer code in machine language. From that realization it was but a hop, skip, and magical jump to turning the magic kingdom in the kind of world that humans like, the kind with humans on top. But that was then and this is now. Wiz has been kidnapped by a dragon. His ransom demand if not wealth but salvation for dragonkind in this new human-friendly - but not dragon-friendly - universe. What to do, what to do? (from the back cover of the Baen Books first edition)