Weird World War IV

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