Defending Byzantium

I finished re-reading the Belisarius Saga last night (couldn't fall asleep when I laid down, so why not?). 

These books, if you have not read them, are awesome. 

First, you start with the assumption that humanity has survived wars, and created weapons terrible enough that the race has had to completely change itself to survive (the example cited was a bioweapon that attacked--and destroyed--DNA).    Then you move to the assumption that the race has also flung itself into the stars, and has adapted itself to whatever environment they found themselves in, and that one faction sees all of this as polluted monstrosity.  Then imagine what would happen if this faction worked to send a computer back through time to the seventh century to possess autistic little girls in a monarchy in a small kingdom in India, to prevent the pollution from happening by destroying any ideas of progress based in merit rather than racial purity. 

Sounds like fun, doesn't it?  Not. 

Another segment of humanity has given much to send back one member of post-DNA humanity: a small crystal that has the entirety of the future, both pre- and post-meddling.  And that crystal has orders to find a specific person, but has no idea how to begin. 

It manages anyway.  And then the fun starts. 

Now, imagine a general with knowledge of tactics from future wars, and given knowledge of how to create one of the simplest of future weapons: gunpowder. 

In the first book, An Oblique Approach (no longer on the free side of Baen's website, but the second book in the series is), we follow the hero, Roman general Belisarius, as he sets plans and plots in motion to ensure humanity's freedom to develop in whatever direction it wants and needs to.  The full scope of his plans set into motion in this first book isn't fully seen until the fifth and sixth books of the series. 

The plot of the entire series is magnificent, and the development of both character and setting are wonderfully thorough.  I highly recommend the books.