Battle at the Forks captures contrasts and crosses Rubicon Rivers in this newest installment of the Ifscapes series. Where does the humiliating Roman defeat at the Caudine Forks part ways with the victories of alternative empires in other universes and timelines? Which direction did the humans take themselves and their future when they fled the galaxy's oldest haunts? And in a more pedestrian environment, what does the man on the moon order from an urban Earthling food truck even as he's making history? In this volume of Ifscapes : - explore city life with the real man on the moon - follow along with the annals of a fallen empire's greatest victories - watch a massive space battle unfold without a single blow - discover if Leadership did an adequate job of neural persuasion - unravel outer space secrets from deep below the surface of the ocean - track down the elusive race known as humans Lunar tourism, near-apocalyptic and dystopian outcomes, space colonization, cybernetic networks and robots, and clever extraterrestrial invasion ruses meet at the corner of Greek tragedy, enigmatic archaeological artifacts, crash landings, mysterious creatures, interplanetary politics, and ancient space battles in this short story collection of science fiction meta-myth and alternate historical fiction. Spectacular moments deciding imperial fates? Ingenious individual intrigues changing the course of solar systems? The many crossroads of history, historical fiction, alternate history, possible worlds, and would-have-been worlds split in the antiquity of the ancient future still to come in Ifscapes, Volume 9: Battle at the Forks .