Operation Arcana
About this audiobook
This thrilling anthology features high fantasy, contemporary and urban fantasy, and fantasy action and adventure all set in a military vein by top authors in the genre, including Jonathan Maberry, Tobias Buckell, Elizabeth Moon, Tanya Huff, Glen Cook, Simon R. Green, Seanan McGuire, and Linda Nagata.
In the realms of fantasy, the battlefield is where heroism comes alive, magic is unleashed, and legends are made and unmade. From the War of the Ring, Tolkien’s epic battle of good versus evil, to the Battle of the Blackwater, George R. R. Martin’s grim portrait of the horror and futility of war, these fantastical conflicts reflect our highest hopes and darkest fears, bringing us mesmerizing visions of silver spears shining in the sun and vast hordes of savage beasts who threaten to destroy all that we hold dear. Now acclaimed editor John Joseph Adams is sounding the battle cry and sixteen of today’s top authors are reporting for duty, spinning never-before-published, spellbinding tales of military fantasy, including a Black Company story from Glen Cook, a Paksenarrion story from Elizabeth Moon, and a Shadow Ops story by Myke Cole. Within these pages you’ll also find World War I trenches cloaked in poison gas and sorcery, modern-day elite special forces battling hosts of the damned, and steampunk soldiers fighting for their lives in a world torn apart by powers that defy imagination. Featuring both grizzled veterans and fresh young recruits alike—including Tanya Huff, Simon R. Green, Carrie Vaughn, Jonathan Maberry, and Seanan McGuire—Operation Arcana is a must for any military buff or fantasy fan. You’ll never look at war the same way again.
List of all contributors:
Elizabeth Moon Tobias Buckell & David Klecha Myke Cole Jonathan Maberry Genevieve Valentine Django Wexler Yoon Ha Lee Weston OchseAri Marmell Tanya Huff Carrie Vaughn T. C. McCarthy Glen Cook Simon R. Green Seanan McGuireLinda Nagata
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About the author
JOHN JOSEPH ADAMS is the series editor of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy and is the editor of more than thirty anthologies, such as Wastelands, The Living Dead, and The Dystopia Triptych. He is also the editor the Hugo Award-winning Lightspeed, and is also publisher of Lightspeed as well as its sister-magazines Nightmare and Fantasy. For five years he was the editor of the John Joseph Adams Books novel imprint for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Jonathan Maberry is a New York Times bestselling and five-time Bram Stoker Award–winning author, anthology editor, comic book writer, executive producer, and writing teacher. He is the creator of V Wars (Netflix) and Rot & Ruin (Alcon Entertainment). His books have been sold to more than two dozen countries. To learn more about Jonathan, visit him online at www.jonathanmaberry.
Elizabeth Moon, a former marine, is the author of many novels, including the Vatta’s War and Vatta’s Peace series and the Deed of Paksenarrion, as well as the Nebula Award winner The Speed of Dark and Remnant Population, a Hugo Award finalist. After earning a degree in history from Rice University, she went on to obtain a degree in biology from the University of Texas, Austin.
Myke Cole is a security contractor, government civilian, and military officer. In addition to writing military sci-fi novels, his career has run the gamut from counterterrorism to cyberwarfare to federal law enforcement. He’s done three tours in Iraq and was recalled to serve during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Tanya Huff spent three years in the Canadian Naval Reserve then earned a degree in radio and television arts from Ryerson Polytechnical Institute. She is the author of numerous short stories and more than twenty novels, including the bestselling Blood books, the Smoke series, and the Keeper’s Chronicles. She has been the guest of honor at numerous American and Canadian conventions, and her work has been nominated for several awards, including winning the Aurora Award for Best Novel. She lives in Ontario, Canada.
Tobias Buckell is the New York Times bestselling author of The Tangled Lands, Crystal Rain, and Halo: The Cole Protocol. His other novels and more than fifty short stories have been translated into seventeen languages. Bucknell has been nominated for the Hugo, the Nebula, the Prometheus, and the Campbell Award for Best New Author. He lives with his family in Ohio.
Genevieve Valentine ’s first novel, Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, won the 2012 Crawford Award and was nominated for the Nebula. Her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Journal of Mythic Arts, Lightspeed, and elsewhere; and have been nominated for the World Fantasy Award and the Shirley Jackson Award. Her appetite for bad movies is insatiable, a tragedy she tracks on her blog.
Django Wexler graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh with degrees in creative writing and computer science, and worked for the university in artificial intelligence research. Eventually he migrated to Microsoft in Seattle, where he now lives with two cats and a teetering mountain of books. When not writing, he wrangles computers, paints tiny soldiers, and plays games of all sorts.
Yoon Ha Lee is the author of several critically acclaimed short stories and Locus Award–winning novels of the Machineries of Empire trilogy. He draws inspiration from a variety of sources, e.g. Korean history and mythology, fairy tales, higher mathematics, classic moral dilemmas, and genre fiction.
Weston Ochse won the Bram Stoker Award for First Novel with Scarecrow Gods and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for Appalachian Galapagos. He is a retired Army intelligence officer and works for the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Ari Marmell writes novels, short stories, feature scripts, role-playing games, and video games—all of which he enjoyed in lieu of schoolwork when growing up. He is the author of the Mick Oberon gangland-fantasy-detective series, the Widdershins YA fantasy series, The Goblin Corps, and many others.
Carrie Vaughn's work includes the Philip K. Dick Award winning novel Bannerless, the New York Times Bestselling Kitty Norville urban fantasy series, over twenty novels and upwards of 100 short stories, two of which have been finalists for the Hugo Award. An Air Force brat, she survived her nomadic childhood and managed to put down roots in Boulder, Colorado. Visit her at www.carrievaughn.com.
T. C. McCarthy earned a PhD from the University of Georgia before embarking on a career that gave him a unique perspective as a science fiction author. From his time as a patent examiner in complex biotechnology to his tenure with the CIA, he has studied and analyzed foreign militaries and weapons systems. He was at the CIA on September 11 and was still there when US forces invaded Afghanistan and Iraq.
Glen Cook is the author of dozens of novels of fantasy and science fiction, including The Black Company series, The Garrett Files, and The Tyranny of the Night. Cook was born in 1944 in New York City. He attended the Clarion Writers Workshop in 1970, where he met his wife, Carol. He lives in St. Louis, Missouri.
Simon Green is the author of more than sixty science fiction, fantasy, and mystery novels in numerous series. His work also appears in the anthology Weird Detectives, along with Jim Butcher, Neil Gaiman, and Patricia Briggs, among others. His books have sold more than three million copies worldwide and have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
SEANAN McGUIRE is the author of the Hugo, Nebula, Alex, and Locus Award–winning Wayward Children series; the October Daye series; the InCryptid series; the delightfully dark Middlegame; and other works. She also writes comics for Marvel, darker fiction as Mira Grant, and younger fiction as A. Deborah Baker. Seanan lives in Seattle with her cats, a vast collection of creepy dolls, horror movies, and sufficient books to qualify her as a fire hazard. She won the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and in 2013 became the first person to appear five times on the same Hugo ballot.
Linda Nagata is the author of high-tech science fiction, including the near-future thriller, The Last Good Man, and the Red trilogy, an intersection of artificial intelligence and military fiction. The first book in the trilogy, First Light, was named as a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2015. She has won the Nebula and is a two-time winner of the Locus award. Her work has also been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, John W. Campbell Memorial, and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial awards. Linda has lived most of her life in Hawaii, where she's been a writer, a mom, a programmer of database-driven websites, and an independent publisher. She lives with her husband in their long-time home on the island of Maui.
Paul Boehmer attended his first Shakespearean play while in high school; he knew then that he was destined to become the classically trained actor he is today. Graduating with a master's degree, Paul was cast as Hamlet by the very stage actor who inspired his career path. A nod from the Universe he'd chosen aright! Paul has worked on Broadway and extensively in regional theater. Coinciding with another of his passions, sci-fi, Paul has been cast in various roles in many episodes of Star Trek. Paul's love of literature and learning led him by nature to his work as a narrator for audiobooks, his latest endeavour. Paul is married to the love of his life, Offir, and they live in Los Angeles with their two midnight-rambling tomcats, Dread and David.
Gabrielle de Cuir is a Grammy-nominated and Audie Award-winning producer whose narration credits include the voice of Valentine in Orson Scott Card’s Ender novels, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan, and Natalie Angier’s Woman, for which she was awarded AudioFile magazine’s Golden Earphones Award. She lives in Los Angeles where she also directs theatre and presently has several projects in various stages of development for film.
Richard Gilliland is a veteran television and film actor.
Sunil Malhotra is an actor and voice artist. His film credits include Dude, Where’s the Party?, Call Center, 24, ER, Cold Case, and The West Wing. On stage, he has performed on Broadway and at East West Players. He has also worked as a writer, producer, and director, and his audiobook narrations have won three AudioFile Earphones Awards.
Arthur Morey has recorded over two hundred audiobooks in history, fiction, science, business, and religion, earning a number of AudioFile Earphones Awards and two Audie Award nominations. He was an editor at two publishers and has taught writing at Northwestern University. His plays and songs have been produced in New York, Chicago, and Milan, where he has also performed. Arthur attended Harvard and the University of Chicago.
Stefan Rudnicki is an award winning audiobook narrator, director and producer. He was born in Poland and now resides in Studio City, California. He has narrated more than three hundred audiobooks and has participated in over a thousand as a writer, producer, or director. He is a recipient of multiple Audie Awards and AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as a Grammy Award, a Bram Stoker Award, and a Ray Bradbury Award. He received AudioFile’s award for 2008 Best Voice in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Along with a cast of other narrators, Rudnicki has read a number of Orson Scott Card's best-selling science fiction novels. He worked extensively with many other science fiction authors, including David Weber and Ben Bova. In reviewing the twentieth anniversary edition audiobook of Card’s Ender's Game, Publishers Weekly stated, "Rudnicki, with his lulling, sonorous voice, does a fine job articulating Ender's inner struggle between the kind, peaceful boy he wants to be and the savage, violent actions he is frequently forced to take." Rudnicki is also a stage actor and director.
