Science Fiction Western

Watch out - the Earth just fell into a dark sun's orbit! Or maybe you'd rather visit a theme park called Hell? These are just two of the strange and unnerving tales you'll find in this collection of great science fiction and fantasy stories.

Nox is a wanted man. While searching for a criminal, the fabled Coilhunter wanders into a tribal village massacre. He didn't do it, but that doesn't matter. The clues point to him, and he's made a lot of enemies over the years. Many would happily see the tables turned. His pleas of innocence fall on deaf ears. No sooner does he try to find the real killers than posters go up across the Wild North - posters with his face and his name. He isn't the only bounty hunter out there. Dozens assemble to cash him in.

A cowboy is just a man with guts and a horse. Connor Mills is only trying to earn some summer money for school by working the Green River Drift cattle drive in Wyoming. The Fates have something else in mind for him. Thrust into a dark realm both familiar and eerily twisted, Connor finds himself at the center of a struggle between goblin tycoons, corrupt wolf-kin lawmen, and a town full of people who’ve had all the hope wrung out of them.

This incisive history upends the complacency that confines anti-Judaism to the ideological extremes in the Western tradition. With deep learning and elegance, David Nirenberg shows how foundational anti-Judaism is to the history of the West. Questions of how we are Jewish and, more critically, how and why we are not have been churning within the Western imagination throughout its history. Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans; Christians and Muslims of every period; even the secularists of modernity have used Judaism in constructing their visions of the world.

A princess to save. A god to kill. With 20 million lives on the line, Alex will do whatever it takes to reach the city of Baidushi. No matter how many obstacles his foes put in his way. With his fangtian ji now as sharp and bitter as heaven’s tears.... He will cut through them all. Even after his enemies do the unthinkable. Destroying his ability to reincarnate, as did every other soul, his countless lives now reduced to one. So be it. Now Alex would hold nothing back.

Alex had sacrificed everything for the sake of his friends. He had traded his future for a chance to cripple a divine tyrant hell-bent on destroying everything he held dear, paying the ultimate price for the sake of everyone he loved. Now, he had a second chance. A chance to start over, free from the malice and machinations of all his foes. A chance to live out the isekai fantasy of a peaceful life that he had always yearned for, in the distant desert city he could just make out, across the desert sands.

Nox, the Coilhunter, wakes up in unfamiliar territory, victim of a deranged man who claims he's from another world, and who's building an army of slaves to help him get back there. The eccentric bounty hunter must face off the wild of the desert and the wild in men, all the while trying to piece together what happened from his fractured memory.

In the summer of 2257, the asteroid Wormwood was closing in to strike Earth a glancing blow. Even a glancing blow would be catastrophic. Earth's governments and militaries united to try to shift Wormwood's path. Earth launched every nuclear missile she had and succeeded in changing its path, just enough to miss her surface. In doing so, shards from the asteroid, caused by the nuclear blasts, struck the earth.

Luke was an unremarkable student of agriculture at a prestigious college on Mars. He was undecided about whether to continue his education or ask his longtime girlfriend to marry him. That was, until she betrayed him and tossed away all they were. In a panic, he called his professor and took the farthest job opportunity he possibly could. Before he knew it, Luke was back on Earth, nestled in the high farmland of northern Montana, standing before the Golden Fields Ranch. He just never expected the dear friend his professor told him about to be a Totrelin, a Minotaur-like alien species.

Alex survives a Silver Alchemist’s best efforts to destroy him, but not without paying a terrible price. He soon finds himself stripped of all aid, allies, and resources, with all hands turned against him. Even worse, if Alex can’t make it to the capital city while dodging all the perils and traps his enemies place in his path, millions of innocents, including the first girl to ever touch his heart, will perish in terror and flame.

The wanderer Red Kian has ruled Skai as Regent, but now it is time for him to step down. War clouds are gathering. Maedun sorcerers have taken the continent, and Saesnesi raiders are pillaging the islands. But Kian has three sons. One is a prince of Skai blood, one is a wizard touched by Tyadda fire, and one is a dreamer who longs to unite the Celi against their enemies. Who will inherit the rune blade known as Kingmaker? Who will have the power to confront the Black Riders who bring darkness like a cloak to cover the land?

The Wild North is full of nasty places, but there are some places you just don't go. One of them is that scrapyard desert known as the Rust Valley. The bounty hunter Nox made a promise to himself that he'd never be caught dead there. Yet when a couple of kids end up wandering inside that metal maze, he finds himself with no other choice. He decks himself out in his finest armor. He'll need it. That land is where the rust-covered Clockwork Commune live, and if they don't scavenge the metal off you, they'll scavenge the flesh instead.

US Marshal James Creed has known loss, starting from the untimely death of his wife and daughter in a sudden fire. His work, chasing down and arresting outlaws across the Wild West, is all he has left to live for. Then one day, in 1876, the infamous killer Corwin Blake catches Creed by surprise and guns him down. Creed awakes after a mysterious young woman resurrects him in a basement laboratory beneath a brothel. Half alive, Creed feels torn between his need for justice and his desire to fall back into the peace of death. Creed's instincts drive him to protect the city of Santa Cruz, California, from the outlaws it harbors while searching for Blake.

Meet William Frederick Cody, a recently liberated merman-turned-cyborg who sets off in the semi-arid (okay, desert) climate of Traxia seeking the trusty horse he’s ordered. Instead, he’s saddled with a mischievous donkey. The donkey unseats him at the first opportunity, forcing this merman to travel on foot through the desert under the burning alien sun.

Paul McAllister, an aging military retiree, wants nothing more at this point in his life than to put the wars, cancer, and death of his wife behind him as he numbly glides into his final years doing the only thing he still enjoys – selling weapons and his services as a gunsmith on the gun show circuit of the American southwest. Driving down the road in the Mesilla Valley of southern New Mexico, sandwiched in the few hundred yards between the Robledo Mountains to the West and the Rio Grande to the East, Paul loses consciousness while returning home from a gun show.

In 1885, President Grover Cleveland commissioned a special group of agents to investigate paranormal activities plaguing the nation. Unwilling to accept failure, he granted each the authority to operate outside the law. His directive was simple. No rules. No excuses. Just get it done. Remy Kincaid, the son of a pugilist and sharpshooter, is recruited with the promise of discovering those responsible for his father’s abduction. With the help of his cynical steed, Fable, he heads to the town of Wharton, Texas, to investigate the disappearance of several young children.

Dr. Lauren Harper joins her mother, Dr. Rebecca Harper Buchanan in the 1800's, after more than twenty years of separation. It can only be a short visit. Lauren has her modern family and fiancé to consider. But the portal which brought Lauren to Rebecca and the 1800s is damaged by the storm and torrential rain that nearly killed Lauren when she arrived. Both women depend on Sam Buchanan to reconstruct the portal pool.

A deal goes bad...and Van Delano is left to die in the desert. But most folk say he’s been cursed with a double-barreled shotgun of mulishness. So, when his first attempt at bargaining for his kidnapped sister’s freedom lands him with a dead horse, a bullet in his leg, and miles of desert between him and the nearest town, he’s not about to give up. He’ll fight and claw, cheat and steal, even kill, if he has to.

Imagine: a fantasy world, but not one based on medieval/Dark Ages European culture and myth, but rather on the tropes of the spaghetti Western and Chinese Wuxia. Add steampunk elements. Mix well.

Luke has vowed to avenge his father and protect Sagebrush from the drifters in the Dead Lands. Kaia lives in the mountains, safe from the murderous soshos who roam the desert below. But when her cousin goes missing, she is determined to find him, no matter the danger. In a world ravaged by sand and storms, Luke and Kaia’s lives collide in a whirlwind of treachery, passion, and fear. Can enemies sworn to vengeance set aside their hatred, or are they doomed to perish like the world around them?