Fiction River: Recycled Pulp: Fiction River: An Original Anthology Magazine, #15

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith

The old becomes new again as fifteen talented authors go back to the lurid pulp titles of yesteryear through today’s rich, nuanced storytelling. Enjoy original tales featuring rebel angels fighting a heavenly enforcement squad, a cop whose life might depend on ordering the right deli sandwich, and a wizard who has just three days to pay off the loan on his tower or lose his very soul. Whatever your taste in stories, Recycled Pulp is sure to have something that will amaze, surprise, and delight you.

“…a unique collection 15 tales worthy of the Fiction River name. … Don’t miss Recycled Pulp for a great set of unique and fast-paced tales of the imagination!”

—Astro Guyz

Table of Contents

“The Revolt of the Philosophers of Fomalhaut” by Phaedra Weldon

“Marvelous Contrivances of the Heart” by Cat Rambo

“The Flower of the Tabernacle” by Annie Reed

“Lost in the Tarnished Cube” by Thomas K. Carpenter

“Crypt of the Metal Ghouls” by Angela Penrose

“The Imperfect Otter Empire” by Dayle A. Dermatis

“The Unknowable Mansion of the Night” by Sandra M. Odell

“The Portal of Wrong Love” by Dean Wesley Smith

“Sacred Poet from the Future” by Kelly Cairo

“Swamp of the Prehistoric Clan” by Christy Fifield

“The Magnificent Citadel” by Rebecca M. Senese

“Night of the Dancing Champions” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

“The Delicatessen from Beyond the Monolith” by Lisa Silverthorne

“Prism of the Crab Gods” by Kelly Washington

“The Gleaming Crater” by Thea Hutcheson

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Sep 29, 2015
• ISBN: 9781519956668

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

USA Today bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov’s Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award. Publications from The Chicago Tribune to Booklist have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award. She writes goofy romance novels as award-winner Kristine Grayson, romantic suspense as Kristine Dexter, and futuristic sf as Kris DeLake.  She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series Fiction River, published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith, and edits at least two anthologies in the series per year on her own. To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com and sign up for her newsletter. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com). She lives and occasionally sleeps in Oregon.

Book preview

Foreword

Great Stories in Pulp Clothing

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

The Thrilling Tale of One Man’s Quest for the Perfect Anthology!

I just finished my line edit of Fiction River: Recycled Pulp and I have to say here, for the record, I’m incredibly impressed. I was in the room at the workshop where John Helfers bought these stories. I remember how much he loved each and every one of them, and I remember the high quality of the ones I read. (Some were submitted through other means.)

However, it wasn’t until I started into the volume that I understood the monumental task John had set for himself.

You see, as he explains in more detail in the introduction, he gave the writers pulp titles and asked them to write modern stories with no other restrictions. So in this volume, you’ll find mainstream stories cuddled up to romance, cozy mystery stories hanging out with their noir cousins, fantasy in all its guises and a touch of science fiction.

It takes amazing editing skill to add unity to such diverse bits of fiction. In fact, halfway through the volume, I said to the other series editor, Dean Wesley Smith, that the heart and soul of the volume is John’s editing. Without John’s deft touch, the idea wouldn’t have worked at all.

Yet with his introduction and story lead-ins, John has given us the secret editing handshake. He tied the entire anthology together, not just by the strength of his will, but with judicious story placement and a clear vision of exactly what he wanted.

He wanted award-quality stories that hide beneath their pulp titles and one-line tags. And boy, oh, boy, did he get them.

For the past few issues now, I’ve said that the best part of Fiction River is its unpredictable nature. I stand by that. In fact, I think Recycled Pulp proves the point.

Take the journey John has laid out for you. In fact, take the journey in the order he suggests. Because the stories flow beautifully, one into the other.

You’ll laugh, you’ll tremble, and you’ll find one or two stories that will break your heart.

Onward, now. Head down the path. Wonderful stories await.

—Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Lincoln City, Oregon

April 9, 2015

Introduction

Everything Old is New Again

John Helfers

Welcome to Recycled Pulp, the fifteenth regular volume of Fiction River, the anthology magazine series created by the fertile minds of Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith. I’m your volume host and editor John Helfers, here to take you on a little trip down memory lane…back to the glorious heyday of the pulp magazines.

Okay, before we go any further, I have a confession to make—I have absolutely no real historical memories of the pulp magazines, as that entire era happened well before I was born. I have seen plenty of those yellowed, dog-eared digests in my time, however, whether I was searching through them to find just the right story for many Martin H. Greenberg anthologies, or simply reading them for my own pleasure (it was very easy to get sidetracked while doing the former).

The heyday of the pulps (so-called because the magazines were printed on rough, cheap paper, often with untrimmed edges) ran from the late 19th to the middle of the 20th century. Beginning in 1896 with a retooled version of Argosy Magazine, edited and printed by Frank Munsey as an alternative to the twenty-five cent slick magazines of the time, his version, filled with exciting, action-packed stories, was an immediate hit, and by 1903 was selling 500,000 copies a month.

Along with Argosy, Adventure, Blue Book, and Short Stories are collectively described by some pulp historians as The Big Four. Other well-known titles of this period were Amazing Stories, Black Mask, Dime Detective, Flying Aces, Horror Stories, Love Story Magazine, Marvel Tales, Oriental Stories, Planet Stories, Spicy Detective, Startling Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Unknown, Weird Tales and Western Story Magazine.

Many rising or famous authors of the time wrote for the pulps, including Upton Sinclair, Zane Grey, Albert Payson Terhune, Gertrude Barrows Bennett and former dime novelist William Wallace Cook, not to mention pulp writers such as Lester Dent, H. Rider Haggard, Norvell Page, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Talbot Mundy, and Abraham Merritt.

And what stories they told! Readers thrilled to the fantasy adventures of Khlit the Cossack, a wandering swordsman, in tales such as The Masterpiece of Death and The Mighty Manslayer. And of course, little needs to be said about Khlit’s much more famous sword-and-sorcery competition, Conan the Barbarian.

Or if thrilling superhero noir stories were more your speed, you had The Avenger, who began his fight against the forces of evil in Justice, Inc. and went on to star in such adventures as The Frosted Death and Cargo of Doom. There was also the more famous Shadow, who knew what evil lurked in the hearts of men, and often shot them down in stories such as Death from Nowhere and The Creeping Death and later starred in full-length novels such as The Shadow Strikes. Not to mention The Spider, called The Master of Men, who fought crime with blazing .45s in such novel-length adventures as Wings of the Black Death and Citadel of Hell.

Or, perhaps you prefer rockets and ray guns; no problem, the pulps had you covered there, too. From Buck Rogers to Captain Future, Doc Savage to John Carter of Mars, the pulps could take a populace hungry for adventures through space and time to strange planets populated by unearthly creatures, beautiful princesses, and hostile aliens.

And these were just the tip of the pulp juggernaut. Just about every genre (and subgenre) was covered; airplane stories, combat stories, sailing stories, railroad stories, westerns, high adventure, sexy (or as sexy as it got in the 1920s and ’30s) detective stories, the list goes on and on…

But where was I? Oh yes, the title of this volume is Recycled Pulp, and the concept stemmed from the previous year’s anthology workshop at WMG Publishing, Kris and Dean’s business headquarters. There, in the shadows, a group of editors joined together to plot literary domination… Er, sorry—once you get into the pulp style, it can be difficult to get back out.

Anyway, Dean is a huge fan of the pulps, and has one of the largest complete collections of many of the various magazines in existence. The main room where we hold the workshop is also decorated with movie posters and blow-ups of covers of old magazines like The Spider, complete with lurid story titles such as The Corpse Collectors and Empire of Doom.

One day, I was admiring the covers and discussing with Dean how those magazines often got filled, often by the editors commissioning stories on the basis of a title alone that would be assigned to a writer to complete. I suggested we should do like the pulp editors did back in the old days, give the attending authors a title, and let them come up with the story to suit it.

Fast-forward to late 2013, and it was time to come up with my theme for the volume you’re holding right now. The idea of having writers write stories to order still appealed to me, but I was looking for something more. That’s when the idea of ‘recycling’ pulp tropes hit me.

The concept was simple: I would liberate old pulp titles and reassign them to the current crowd of authors. However, the twist would be that the new story could not contain any pulp elements. They could write in any other genre they wished, but no pulp tropes.

However, my lovely and intelligent spouse Kerrie Hughes (editor of Fiction River titles Hex in the City, Alchemy & Steam, and Haunted) suggested I take it a step further and create all new pulp short story titles for the writers to choose from. And with the help of the Pulp Sci Fi Title-O-Tron at www.thrilling-tales.webomator.com, I soon had more than enough titles to use.

However, I didn’t want the writers picking which ones they got to write; after all, the pulp writers of yesteryear often didn’t get a choice, so why should these good folks (we editors are a heartless, devious lot, after all)? But I wasn’t that heartless as to give them just one title. Instead, I had them choose three numbers from 1 to 250, and they got the titles that corresponded to their selections. They had to pick one of those three and give me a story, again, recycling the title of the story into any other genre.

And boy, did they! The selected writers in this volume more than rose to the challenge, and the results are more diverse than I ever expected. Included within these pages are several varieties of fantasy; light by Tom Carpenter, urban by Rebecca M. Senese, Phaedra Weldon, and Lisa Silverthorne, and darkly epic by Thea Hutcheson. Science fiction is well represented too, from a bleak, dystopian tale with a hint of hope by Sandra Odell to a post-apocalyptic adventure by Angela Penrose to a time-traveling story by Kelly Cairo. Then there is what I call the more mainstream stories, including two touching tales about older folks from Christy Fifield and Kristine Kathryn Rusch, as well as a quietly devastating mystery by Annie Reed. And last but not least, there are the unclassifiable stories, which include a Twilight Zone-esque tale by Cat Rambo, a charming story of purpose lost and found with the help of some charming animals at the zoo by Dayle A. Dermatis, one of Dean Wesley Smith’s always fun superhero stories featuring Poker Boy, and one of the most heartbreaking stories I have ever read about a boy and his pets by Kelly Washington.

But I’ve rambled on long enough here, and don’t wish to spoil the fun I hope you have enjoying the clever, touching, wonderful tales these assembled authors came up with…that all started with recycling pulp.

—John Helfers

Green Bay, Wisconsin

April 10, 2015

Introduction to The Revolt of the Philosophers of Fomalhaut

Phaedra Weldon grew up on southern ghost stories told while eating marshmallows around campfires, or on the back of pickup trucks in the middle of cornfields on chilly October nights. She worked as a graphic artist for more than twenty years in the publishing and sign industries until she became a full-time writer in 2009. She currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Asked to provide a few thoughts on what inspired her to write this tale, she replied, When I sat down to figure out what in the hell I was gonna do with this title, the first impression was the story should be science fiction, so I immediately tossed that out and decided it was gonna be a fantasy story, and urban as well, since that’s my favorite genre. Oh, and I wanted children in jeopardy and angels. Six hours later I had my story, and my beta reader devoured it in less than fifteen minutes, with the comment, ‘This was not what I thought it would be. It’s better!’

That sounds exactly like the Phaedra I know: gleeful, irrepressible, and able to create a damn good yarn out of just about anything she’s given. Her bio above doesn’t do her body of work justice, however: besides writing excellent short stories and novels set in the Shadowrun RPG universe, you should also check out her novel-length urban fantasy, including the Zoe Martinique series, The Eldritch Files, and The Grimoire Chronicles. But before you dive into those, take a walk on the wild side of rebelling angels and an afterlife in peril, brought to you as only Phaedra Weldon can…

The Revolt of the Philosophers of Fomalhaut

Phaedra Weldon

The angels descended from on high, not to save…but to kill!

She was seven years old. A cherub of a child, with soft pale, dewy skin. Dark curls created a halo of sorts around her face, and her large, brown eyes looked up at me with trust and astonishment. To her mind, I was an angel, there to fight away her bad dreams.

In truth, I was there to kill her.

I…didn’t want to.

One would ask why a Philosopher would be sent from the First Choir of Heaven to destroy the body and soul of an innocent.

I know I asked.

And then was painfully punished.

So, I stood before her, in her tiny bedroom. Her My Little Pony sheets smiled up at me from where she sat. Pink netting hung from a crown bolted to the ceiling and fanned out to either side of her bed. She was a princess, facing an evil dragon.

Only…

There was no Prince Charming.

Just me.

What’s yer name? she asked. Her southern drawl played well with the lightness of her voice. She rubbed an eye in sleep before showing me her snaggletooth grin.

Aaron, I said, and knelt down beside her. We were even then. She and I. Face to face.

Are you a girl or a boy?

I laughed. It was such an innocent question. To her, it would be impossible to distinguish gender. For me…it was never something I thought twice about.

When I didn’t answer, she continued talking. My brother’s a boy, but he likes boys. Daddy kicked him out of the house. He’s pretty, like you are.

He is?

Yeah, she said and put her hands in her lap. Do you want some milk and cookies?

I felt so ashamed. No. But…

Again there was the hesitation, the questioning that was forbidden among the brotherhood of Philosophers. The rumors of a revolt had been around for a century. But it was always something I kept at a distance, a bit of gossip. It always came with the second rumor that God was dead. Given the kind of orders we were being given these past decades—I had to wonder.

The devastation of entire villages by plague...

The creation of earthquakes, hurricanes, and tornadoes…

And now, the outright murder of children—was it a wonder I doubted?

But a Philosopher never doubts. We never question. We were the elite of the elite, the right hand of God.

The enforcers of his will.

But how can the destruction of a child, of a seven-year-old girl, be justified?

What is it? You look sad. You sure you don’t want a cookie?

I shook my head. I’m sure. But I need you to lay back down and close your eyes.

Are you going to be gone when I wake up?

When I wake up… Yes I’ll be gone.

She did as she was told, and lay on her side facing me. She placed her palms together as if in prayer and tucked them under the side of her face. I saw the glint of her eyes. I pray to God every night. I have a lot of friends that don’t do that. But I do. God loves me. And he showed me an angel! She smiled at me.

Don’t hesitate, Aaron. Do as you are told.

Raz’s voice echoed in my mind. A constant drone given to us when we are bestowed God’s Halo. Raz is the voice of God, the instrument of obedience. Raz is neither male or female, angel or human…but I see Raz as female, and above all…evil. It is an opinion I keep to myself.

Close your eyes.

She does as I tell her, but she smiles.

I hold up my hand.

The hand of judgment.

The power of a Philosopher.

Why? My question comes unbidden, but deserved. It reverberates along the Halo to Raz.

There is a moment of silence.

Because you were told to.

But that was not enough.

If you don’t kill her, I will finish the job myself and make you Fall, Aaron.

Falling was an old threat, something we’re threatened with every day. Falling meant being stripped of our Philosopher powers, stripped of being everything we are, and tossed naked and bleeding to the Earth. Not many of us survive, and those who do don’t live long. To Fall is to die, with no eternal ever after.

But it was the first part that surprised me. Raz’s declaration that she would do the job himself. Raz never left her perch above the world in Fomalhaut. Raz never got her hands dirty. I narrowed my eyes at the child. What is it about this one, this singular little girl, that would bring a creature out of her place of power?

I stared at my hand. Could I do this? Could I smite—

The door to the child’s room burst open. I turned to see a blur of motion, black leather and the bright gleam of metal. Something orange flashed in the semi-darkness, but there was no sound. I felt a sting in my chest as a force shoved me back against the window I had entered through. I lost my footing and fell out the opening.

I tried to right my fall, but I couldn’t unfurl my wings. Pain lanced from my back as I tumbled to the street below.

***

I couldn’t remember the last time I woke from darkness. Philosophers don’t sleep unless wounded or punished. I hadn’t completed my orders, so I assumed I’d been punished. But I wasn’t in a pit, nor was I in the dungeons of Fomalhaut.

He’s awake. The voice was female.

She came into my line of sight. She was human, with short dark hair, dark lips, and a small heart drawn under her left eye. She wore a leather jacket and t-shirt, and her teeth were perfectly straight and white. Nice to see you again, Airy.

And then I knew her. But it wasn’t possible. Only one other had ever called me Airy. Delilah?

She touched my nose. I hadn’t seen Delilah in eight years. I tried to reach out to her, to touch her, to see if she was real, but I couldn’t move. I was tied to a bed of some kind, bound by chains at my wrists and ankles. I tested them and discovered I couldn’t break them. Not as easily as I should have been able to.

Stop moving, Airy, Delilah said. "Given enough time, you’ll break the chains. Not many alloys can hold a Philosopher, except iron. And it’s so hard to find pure iron these days. These chains have enough to keep you here until we’ve talked."

Iron.

Iron was our bane. The ore of the Earth that tied us to it. Iron was part of our Halo as well. I watched Delilah as she sat on the bed next to me, but I knew we weren’t alone. Who else is here?

You can’t see them, can you?

I turned my head to the right and the left, lifted it up to see. But there was only Delilah. No.

That’s because he’s been hidden. Same as the child. The Philosophers won’t be able to hurt her. Especially Raziel.

I refocused on her, but never stopped testing the chains. I did notice the bandage around my chest. You shot me.

Yes.

Iron bullet?

Alloy. It was enough to stop you, stun you, wound you. She shrugged. But your kind heal fast.

"My kind? You are a Philosopher too, Delilah."

Was. Until Raz cast me out. I Fell, Airy. You knew that, didn’t you?

I didn’t. I stared at her, and her own expression mirrored mine. She spoke before I could. You really didn’t know.

I didn’t. Raz and the others said you were taken by Others. That you were attacked during a mission.

She put a hand to my face. Her skin was cold. And you believed them.

Why wouldn’t I? I searched her face again. Why did you Fall? Are you Other now? Were you Recruited?

I wasn’t Recruited, Airy. I did what you were about to do—I questioned an order. Raz sent me in to slaughter an entire schoolroom of children, and I couldn’t do it. I refused. And I… she shifted on the bed. "I destroyed the Philosopher they sent after me. I killed Euin."

I yanked at my chains. No…that’s not possible. Raz said you and Euin were destroyed by Others.

Airy, she said as she put her hand on my chest. "There’s not a lot of time, and you’re just going to have to listen to me. Listen and learn, and make your decision. We’ve hidden this room from the Philosopher’s Eyes for now. But once we leave, you’ll be discovered by Raz. You’ll have to make a choice."

When I opened my mouth to speak, she put a finger to my lips. Listen first, Airy. We were always told to obey Raz, to carry out the missions and never question them. But like you, I began to question why we were destroying innocents. We no longer went after the guilty. She looked at someone I couldn’t see or hear then back to me. "The Revolt you always hear about isn’t what it sounds like. Revolt doesn’t mean disobedience, it means awakening. It’s what happens to Philosophers when we step into a human shell. I know…it’s forbidden. And I always wondered why. Yes, it kills the soul inside, which is a sin, but what is it we’re already doing? Killing innocents. But those Philosophers who take human form discovered their vision cleared. They can see Philosophers, Airy. And they can hear the truth in the Halo.

Raz, and whoever he works for, knows if we take human bodies, we’ll know the truth. That’s why he uses excuses to make us Fall, because once we Fall, she said before she swallowed. We can’t Revolt, Airy. We can’t slip into a human shell once we Fall. I Fell, so this shape you see is my true form as a human. And I am little more than a human like this. I have the same weaknesses as them. She pulled her jacket collar aside to reveal a scar around her neck. This is where the Halo burned as it dissolved, Airy. This is the mark they look for when they come for us.

I stared at the puckered skin. Who? When who comes for you?

She gave me a weak smile. You.

And suddenly I saw the little girl, the child in the bed with the My Little Pony sheets. And I knew… She’s your daughter.

Delilah nodded. "Yes. The children you’re sent to destroy are our children, Airy. Wonderful, special children with bright minds. And the ability to see…"

I swallowed. That’s why she could see me.

"Yes. These children can spot a Philosopher. You can’t hide among us as normal folk from them. And that makes Raz and his boss very nervous. They don’t want these children to live, so they send you on missions to kill them. And always, without fail, Philosophers question that order because deep down, we know these children are a part of us."

I wasn’t trying to break free anymore. All I could do was stare at her in shock. I didn’t want to believe any of it, but I could understand. I remembered the loathing I’d felt at killing that child. The horror that my hand would take an innocent.

Delilah’s daughter.

Now you really have to listen to me, Airy. You’re getting stronger, and I don’t know if you’ll try and kill me once Raz controls your Halo again. She put her hand on my chest again. "If Raz makes you Fall, you’ll be cast out like me. You won’t be able to fight him,