Weird World War IV

NEW STORIES OF FUTURE WARFARE FROM THE HOTTEST NAMES IN SCIENCE FICTION, FANTASY, AND HORROR

TALES OF THE WAR BEYOND THE NEXT

What if there were a war after Armageddon? How would the survivors emerging from World War III's radioactive slag heaps fight in this conflict? Would they wage it with sticks and stones . . . and sorcery? Or would they use more refined weapons, elevating lawfare to an art and unleashing bureaucratic nightmares worse than death? Would they struggle against themselves or inter-dimensional invaders? What horrors from the desolate darkness might slither into the light? Wipe away the ashes of civilization and peer into a pit of atomic glass to witness the haunting visions of World War IV from today's greatest minds in science fiction, fantasy, and horror.

Contributors include:
Jonathan Maberry
Steven Barnes
D.J. Butler
Brad R. Torgersen
Martin L. Shoemaker
T.C. McCarthy
Eric James Stone
Stephen Lawson
Freddy Costello and Michael Z. Williamson
Laird Barron
Nick Mamatas
Brian Trent
Erica L. Satifka
Kevin Andrew Murphy
Maurice Broaddus and Rodney Carlstrom
David VonAllmen
Deborah A. Wolf
Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Julie Frost
Weston Ochse
John Langan

About Weird World War IV:
"Editor Hazlett follows Weird World War III by looking even further into the future at the war after the next big one. As such, these 21 skirmishes are not straight extrapolations of present-day politics but veer into alternate timelines in which dinosaurs invade to escape their own troubles ("Reflections in Lizard-Time" by Brian Trent) or artificial intelligences reshape humans into new species suitable for the poisoned Earth ("Mea Kaua" by Stephen Lawson). Cosmic horrors are summoned by combatants in "Deep Trouble" by Jonathan Mayberry and beaten back by "elder beasts" from African myths in "The Door of Return" by Maurice Broaddus and Rodney Carlstrom. Not every story quite fits the theme of a war to follow the next war, but all feature postapocalyptic settings where conflict brews. The best, like "Wave Forms" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman and John Langan's Arthurian "Future and Once," keep the battle to come a tantalizing tease. The broad ideological range here--"The Eureka Alternative" by Brad Torgersen blames the apocalypse on wokeness, while Weston Ochse's "A Day in the Life of a Suicide Geomancer" critiques the MAGA crowd--means not every story will be for every military SF reader, but the sheer weirdness of many of these pieces is a testament to the genre's creativity and verve." --Publishers Weekly

"Although this might seem to be a limited theme, the various authors have risen to the challenge, and produced a wide variety of fiction incorporating science fiction and fantasy concepts into tales of struggles that do not always take place on battlefields." --Tangent

Author: Sean Patrick Hazlett
Publisher: Baen
Published: 03/01/2022
Pages: 352
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 9.13h x 6.06w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9781982125967

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 01/03/2022

About the Author
Sean Patrick Hazlett is an Army veteran, speculative fiction writer and editor, and finance executive in the San Francisco Bay area. He holds an AB in history and BS in electrical engineering from Stanford University, and a master's degree in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. As a cavalry officer serving in the elite 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, he trained various Army and Marine Corps units for war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sean is a 2017 winner of the Writers of the Future Contest. More than forty of his short stories have appeared in publications such as The Year's Best Military and Adventure SF, Year's Best Hardcore Horror, Terraform, Galaxy's Edge, Writers of the Future, Grimdark Magazine, Vastarien, and Abyss & Apex, among others. He is an active member of the Horror Writers Association and Codex Writers' Group. Hazlett's award-winning short story "Adramelech" appeared in the Wall Street Journal best-selling anthology Writers of the Future: Volume 33.