C.J. CHERRYH

Their names were Lancelot, Elaine, Percivale, Gawain, Modred, Lynette and Vivien, but they were not characters from legend.  They were made people, clone servants designed to suit the fancy of their opulent owner, the Lady Dela Kim.  And they worked aboard the Maid, an anachronistic fantasy of a spaceship, decorated with swords, heraldic banners, old-looking beams masking the structural joinings, and lamps that mimicked live flame.

They lived in a kind of dream, and had no idea of their origins, their prototypes in those old, old story tapes of romance, chivalry, heroism and betrayal.

Until a wandering instability, a knot in time, a ripple in the between sucked them into a spatial no-man's-land from where there seemed to be no escape.  And they were left alone, with the borrowed personas of their ancient namesakes, to face a crisis those venerable spirits were never designed to master!

- A DAW BOOKS ORIGINAL -

CUCKOO'S EGG

They named him Thorn.  They told him he was of their people, although he was so different.  He was ugly in their eyes, strange, sleek-skinned instead of furred, clawless, different.  Yet he was of their power class: judge-warriors, the elite, the fighters, the defenders.

Thorn knew that his difference was somehow very important - but not important enough to prevent murderous conspiracies against him, against his protector, against his caste, and perhaps against the peace of the world.  But when the crunch came, when Thorn finally learned what his true role in life was to be, that on him might hang the future of two worlds, then he had to stand alone to justify his very existence.

A Science Fiction Book Club Selection.