The Odds Are Against Us - Oren Litwin, ed.

When victory seems impossible……Heroism is the only option. To survive on the battlefield, you must go far beyond what you ever imagined possible. From a Marine in Vietnam trying to get back home, to Roman soldiers facing an Iceni rebellion; from cynical mercenaries in the harsh Chadian desert, to a Yazidi girl fighting for her freedom; from Soviet conscripts trying to survive war in Afghanistan, to American bomber pilots lost at sea. Experience the triumph of the human spirit even in the face of death. Includes eight short stories of military fiction from from skilled authors, some of whom are veterans themselves.

I backed the Kickstarter for this anthology, and now that it's been published and I've read it, I'm glad I did. It's an excellent collection of military fiction, some with contemporary settings, some historical. I've always liked war stories, and these are very well done. My favorites are "A Place More Kind Than Home" by Ron Farina, a tale of a Marine coming home from Vietnam that does a perfect job of capturing the mid-Sixties era; "Titus, My Brother" by Frank Scalise, about Roman soldiers of the IXth Legion in Britain; and Jim Wilsky's "Dead Reckoning", which alternates between the present day and a flight of American bombers on a training mission shortly after World War II. You may guess the twist in Wilsky's story, but it's so well written and poignant that doesn't matter. All the other stories are very good, too, and one of them might by your favorite if you read THE ODDS ARE AGAINST US, which I recommend if you enjoy military fiction.

Forgotten Books: A Date Which Will Live in Infamy - Brian M. Thomsen and Martin H. Greenberg, eds.

Since today is Pearl Harbor Day, it seems appropriate to write about this anthology of alternate history stories that came out in 2001. Its full title is A DATE WHICH WILL LIVE IN INFAMY: AN ANTHOLOGY OF PEARL HARBOR STORIES THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN. I was a regular in Marty Greenberg's anthologies then, since I was writing a couple of novel series for his Tekno-Books, including the World War II series THE LAST GOOD WAR. So I was a natural to be included in this book. For my story, "The East Wind Caper", I brought back Nicholas Lake, a private detective character I'd used one time in a story for MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE many years earlier. In this one, I had him doing business in Honolulu and gave him an assistant/sidekick, a Hawaiian nightclub comic, and played the whole thing pretty much fast and lightweight. I haven't read the story in years, but I recall that one of Lake's cases somehow allowed him to prevent the attack on Pearl Harbor. I hope it holds up, but like I said, it's been a long time since I read it . . .

As for the other stories, it's been even longer since I read them, but I remember I thought it was a really good bunch of yarns. You'd expect that with authors such as Ed Gorman, Brendan DuBois, William C. Dietz, Barrett Tillman, and William H. Keith Jr. There are also several essays about Pearl Harbor by Brian M. Thomsen (who edited the book along with Greenberg), William R. Forstchen, Paul M. Thomsen, and Allen Kupfer. If you're interested in alternate history and/or World War II, it's a book well worth hunting up.

A Kickstarter of Interest: The Odds Are Against Us: A Military Fiction Anthology

My friend Jim Wilsky is going to have a story in a new anthology of military fiction called THE ODDS ARE AGAINST US, and the publisher is looking for more stories as well as funding through a Kickstarter project. This isn't really a market for military science fiction, although near-future (in the next decade) SF is acceptable. You can read about the Kickstarter here, and if you're interested in writing a story for the book, you can find all that information here. I'm backing this project and look forward to reading the book.

Sweothi City - Larry Correia

I've been wanting to read some of Larry Correia's work (he writes a couple of fantasy series, Monster Hunter International and Grimnoir). I stop by his blog from time to time and usually enjoy it. But his books are just too big. With the limited time I have for reading, I can't tackle books that are 600 pages long. Someday, when I have more time . . .

So I was glad when a story of his was posted on-line. At almost 10,000 words, "Sweothi City" is more of a novelette than a short story, and it gave me a chance to sample Correia's writing, which I found very entertaining.

In addition to his fantasy series, Correia also writes contemporary military adventure novels in collaboration with Mike Kupari. Two of these books have been published so far, DEAD SIX and SWORDS OF EXODUS. "Sweothi City" is a prequel to those novels and fills in some of the background of one of the main characters from the books. It's the story of how the survivors of a mercenary company escape from a city under attack by bloodthirsty rebels in an African nation in the mid-Nineties. That's really the extent of the plot, but what makes this story worth reading is Correia's excellent writing. There's a tremendous amount of action packed into the relatively short length, but it's all compelling and easy to follow.

Correia also provides some welcome touches of dark humor among the carnage, along with a pragmatic and ruthless but still likable protagonist and narrator whose intriguing back-story is fleshed out in a couple of skillful flashbacks. I raced through this one and was left wanting to read more. I may have to rethink my policy on long novels after all . . . 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Navy Stories, April 1929

Of course, there were pulps for almost every interest, for example NAVY STORIES. The lead novel in this issue is by Captain George Fielding Eliot, one of a number of pulp authors to use their military rank in that post-World War I era. Eliot wrote some mainstream, hardback novels with naval settings later on, but he's probably best remembered today, if he's remembered at all, as the author of the first Dan Fowler novel in the pulp G-MEN. This issue also includes stories by a couple of authors best known for their Westerns, Allan R. Bosworth and Gladwell Richardson, as well as others whose names aren't familiar to me. I'm interested in military fiction, so I might read an issue of NAVY STORIES, but I doubt if it would ever be one of my favorites.