Dragons of Springplace — Robert Reed

In the title story of this first-rate science fiction collection, a renegade misfit conquers the dragons and renews the threat of nuclear chaos aboard Springplace, a man-made repository for old reactor cores, dirty plutonium, and dismantled bombs. Another story is a sprawling intergalactic epic that takes place aboard a starship. Salvaged and commandeered by humans, the massive generation starship becomes the setting for a titanic struggle between two alien entities who engage in a monumental battle for survival. The tale �"Chrysalis” explores not just an alien milieu but the nature of man himself when another ancient starship lands and investigates an icy unknown planet inhabited by humans millions of years earlier.