Science Fiction Western

The apocalypse happened, but no one knows how. What’s left is a barren world ruled by a high-powered caste of bookies, The Odds. Scurrying around underneath is our hero, Eldridge - a big-hearted, bumbling drifter with an estranged family he loves dearly. He’s deep in debt and deathly sick, so he places a bet predicting the day he’ll die. If he wins, he can go to his grave knowing that his family will be safe, but when he returns to his hometown to collect, he gets some bad news: He’s going to live. So it’s on to plan B.

From the dusty Great Depression to the far future to the Wild West to the era of big-fin automobiles, soda shops, and double features, as well as dark journey on an icy ocean full of ravenous sharks and a fantastic shipwreck that leads its survivors into a nightmarish Lovecraftian world of monsters and mystery, Joe R. Lansdale returns with a pack of stories for your consumption and enjoyment.

Reginald Worthington is a vindictive man. He blames US Marshal Mason Sadler for the death of his only child, the former Mrs. Sadler. Now Worthington wants revenge. Enlisting the services of a highly skilled team of cutthroats, he dispatches them to Tombstone with orders to kill Sadler and anyone he cares about, especially Belle Dubois, the Bird Cage Theater Madame and the love of his life who just happens to be the new Mrs. Sadler. Not leaving the Marshal's demise to chance, Worthington also engages the talents of the Professor and his latest invention.

The time: the 1840s. The place: California during the gold rush. As the white settlers begin penetrating the remote mountain canyons, they discover an ancient race, the Tenanken, who date back at least 60,000 years. Some members retain the genetic memories of their distant past, while others project mystical visions of comfort and joy. All flee the coming of the white man, and appear to be doomed to extinction. Only the genius Pegre finds a possible solution: integrate and intermarry with their distant white "cousins", the Hinchai, and form a new entity.

In the years after the American Civil War, the West is wild, and the East is run by the robber barons battling each other for power and money. The range is untamed and blood-soaked, and the cities are dazzling tributes to culture and questionable scientific development. Outlaws roam free on the frontiers, and crooked lawmen and Pinkertons compete with lawless bounty hunters for the prices on their heads. Tess Mercury and her posse are the best damn bounty hunters in the West.

It's 1877 and Russians forces occupy the Pacific Northwest. They are advancing into California. New weapons have proven ineffective or dangerously unstable. The one man who can help has disappeared into Apache Country, hunting ghosts. A healer and a former sheriff lead a band into the heart of the invasion to determine what makes the Russian forces so unstoppable while a young inventor attempts to unleash the power of the lightning wolves.

Der Raumhafen auf dem Planeten Alvarado ist ein Sprungbrett zu vielen Randplaneten. Entsprechend gut laufen die Geschäfte. Seit Jahren schon streiten zwei Familien um die Kontrolle über diesen Umschlagplatz, und mittlerweile wird die Fehde mit harten Bandagen geführt. In diesen Kleinkrieg geraten John Donovan und seine Crew, als sie nichts weiter als ein paar Rinder verkaufen wollen.

As night manager of Santa Cruz's quirkiest coffeehouse, Marzi McCarty makes a mean espresso, but her first love is making comics. Her claim to fame: The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl, a cowpunk neo-western yarn. Striding through an urban frontier peopled by Marzi's wild imagination, Rangergirl doles out her own brand of justice. But lately Marzi's imagination seems to be altering her reality.

Manche bezeichnen sie als Verbrecher, andere als Helden der Randplaneten. Sie selbst nennen sich Frontiersmen: Furchtlose Männer und Frauen, die Fracht und Flüchtlinge dorthin schmuggeln, wo der Weltraum noch frei und wild ist. John Donovan ist einer von ihnen und chronisch knapp bei Kasse, sodass er auch riskante Jobs übernimmt. Etwa einen Passagiertransport zur rauen Koloniewelt Heaven's Gate.

Once the world was beautiful and full of people. Cities filled the landscape and buildings reached the sky. But now, after The Wandering, very few portions of the old world remain, and more of the surviving fragments of a glorious past disappear every day.

After forty years of wreaking havoc across the galaxy, the outlaw Nine Lives—AKA Former General Gabriella Ortiz—has finally run out of lives. Shot down into a backwater at the system’s edge, she is rescued by Deputy Air Marshall Havemercy Grey. Hav is a true soul, trying to uphold what is right in the heedless wastes. Hav is determined to see justice done. And Hav could sure use that twenty-million bounty … But escorting the most dangerous fugitive in the system across the stars is no easy task.

Esteemed bounty hunter Charlie Archer isn’t looking for that one last majestic ride into the sunset. He’d much prefer to spend his days hitting the bars and blackjack tables, and his evenings mourning the loss of his family. But when a representative from the United States government comes knocking on the door with an opportunity too good to turn down, well...looks like Charlie will be jumping into that saddle for one last hunt—track down the bastard Francis Burner, murderer of his wife and child.

Bloody Sarah has been through hell, broken in mind and body, left with nothing but a fiery passion to try to right wrongs and rid the world of the kind of people who had abused her. A few months prior, Sarah Redman had had power and influence as a National Guard major. Her entire world changed when the convoy she led was attacked and taken by the outlaw leader, Crazy Joe. The degradation she experienced at the hands of Crazy Joe broke her.

Investigator James Creed has finally settled into life in San Francisco with his found family, the Brotherhood of the Golden Cog. Though he misses his adult daughter, he has a criminal leader to track down—an outlaw who murders innocents, enslaves the downtrodden, and uses machines to alter the bodies and minds of his many victims.

Stranded in the Red Vastness with only a week to get home, Braddock vows to travel thousands of miles, bond with two sprites, and save the meadow. But even if he can beat the looming deadline of spring court, how can he defeat Hortensia, multiple armies hunting the Lost Treasure, and the final rise of the mighty Sidians?

The year is 1869, and the West is still wild. Izzy is the greatest sharpshooter on Earth. She's hell bent on tracking down a mysterious robber baron who has been gobbling up the railroads. She will find out that there is more to this robber baron and the world around her than she could ever imagine. He will find out that she is...more than a gunslinger.

She needs a fresh start. Out of options, the curvy woman applies to an interstellar mail-order bride agency. She’s sent to a rough planet on the edge of the galaxy knowing very little about the mysterious, horned alien warrior to whom she’s promised. Quickly she discovers the marriage contract is not to one but two dominating, muscular warriors. Even more surprising is the undeniable pull she feels toward her “husbands.”

For anthropology graduate student Sam Delgado, headed to the wilds of Wyoming, this is his last chance to save his graduate career. He and his urban classmates see this as the adventure of a lifetime: They are going to horse-pack in the wilderness to map and test a high-altitude archaeological site. Until a cyber-attack collapses the American banking system, and an already fractured nation descends into anarchy and chaos.

After retiring from outlawing, Jedidiah Huckleberry Smith just wanted to be left alone in Wyoming with his guns and regrets. But then he discovered an entrance to a lost world, a place full of grand adventure, as well as spectacular dangers from both prehistoric dinosaurs and a race of savage apes intent on conquest. Now, a new fort has been established on the other side, and a strange civilization of humans and dinosaurs have been located. The people are descendants from another time, long trapped in prehistory, and with them, a fragile alliance is created.

Guns of the Waste Land recasts the legends of King Arthur as an American Western. Set in the late 19th century outside the West Texas town of Bretton, the second volume continues the story of four men devoted in their own ways to Sheriff Ardiss Drake. Percy Murratt awakens to find himself safely in Bretton under Drake's protection and able to learn of his absentee father. Meanwhile, Reverend Merle Tallison struggles to find God in the midst a world seemingly devoid of decency and goodwill.