Delta Green: Alien Intelligence

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Summary: Unforgettable Horror on a personal and cosmic scale.
Review: A stunning collection of short stories drawing upon the Mythos created by H.P. Lovecraft and updated for the 90's and beyond. The stories are all tight, the characters complex and the horror is writ large on a personal scale and on a scale beyond human comprehension. Highly enjoyable!!

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Summary: The most important Cthulhu fiction since Lovecraft himself.
Review: Cthulhu comes of age. Ignore the fact that this book is linked to an RPG - it doesn't matter. It contains some of the best Lovecraftian short stories of the last fifty years. The mythos is brought up to date with punchy, well-crafted modern short stories and all the tension and atmosphere you could hope for. The stories by John Tynes, Bob Kruger and Greg Stolze are a particular pleasure. I cannot recommend this book highly enough - it's up there with Thomas Ligotti's Songs of a Dead Dreamer as a vital read for any fan of wierd horror.

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Summary: First Fiction Anthology for Award-Winning DELTA GREEN
Review: DELTA GREEN is the modern adaptation of Call of Cthulhu. Drawing on the same body of UFO lore and paranormal activity as the X-Files, DELTA GREEN has tapped into something very deep. And of course, once you have a successful RPG, you might as well start the fiction flowing, right?

"Alien Intelligence" is a collection of vigniettes that explores the world that DELTA GREEN inhabits and adds further detail to many hints, clues, and allusions from the DELTA GREEN RPG book. It gives more substance to the conspiracy of silence by our goverment on the supernatural, extraterrestrial, and subterrestrial.

Some situations explored by the authors are a resurgence in the colonization of humanity by aquatic beings who seem almost human, a review board examining a failed mission to stop a dimensional disturbance in South America, a sojourn into a spirit-realm by two ghouls, alternately trying to save or damn the soul of an unwitting agent, the last testament of a man who has spent his life trying to decode a message in alien technology and intends to use that message to escape from his captors, among other stories that will give you an idea of the psychological torment that must wrack these defenders of humanity.

Because the monsters, magic, and aliens are just a backdrop; the story is about men and women who become something they don't want to in order to protect those that they love. Who lose thir humanity to protect it in others. Who were just following orders until they realized it was what they wanted all along. Because when you take away the monsters, all that remains is a mirror, and you see yourself.

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Summary: Buy it while you can...
Review: I have always been a fan of way-out-there lunatic sci-fi/horror but unfortunatly most of the sci-fi and horror out there is just really insipid banal mainstream garbage. This book is different, the stories pull no punches and will blow you away. There is some violent violence and BIZZARE sexual stuff in this book so it is probably NOT for kids. Highly recommended and far better than the other Delta Green fiction "Rules of Engagement."

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Summary: A good read, but seems a bit over priced
Review: I really enjoyed reading this book. As with any collection of short stories, I liked some more than others, but there were none in here that I didn't like. There were a couple that I consider to be real gems. My only real complaint is that it's not much book for 12 bucks. It's about half an inch thick, with eight stories in it. I guess maybe it's priced higher than most paperback books because of the cost involved for a small company to have smaller quantities of a book like this printed, but I must admit I was a bit disappointed with it in this respect.

Rating:
Summary: A good read, but seems a bit over priced
Review: I really enjoyed reading this book. As with any collection of short stories, I liked some more than others, but there were none in here that I didn't like. There were a couple that I consider to be real gems. My only real complaint is that it's not much book for 12 bucks. It's about half an inch thick, with eight stories in it. I guess maybe it's priced higher than most paperback books because of the cost involved for a small company to have smaller quantities of a book like this printed, but I must admit I was a bit disappointed with it in this respect.

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Summary: A smorgasbord of fin-de-siecle Cthulhu morbidity.
Review: Let's see, in about 190 pages you get UFO conspiracies, teary-eyed environmentalists, language parasites, nudity, nihilstic horror in classic Chinese verse, guns, nightmares, drugs, Nazis in Antarctica, an American military intervention in Columbia, and a terrible, pervasive loneliness. Plus an order form for the Delta Green t-shirt. It's a class act all the way.

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Summary: An excellent compilation of the Delta Green worldview.
Review: Rather than espouse about the concept of the 1990s Cthulhu Mythos 'Delta Green' world, let me cut to the chase. This is an excellent book, filled with the writing that Mythos fans have come to expect from Tynes, Stolze, and Dettweiler. Each story comes from a distinctly different persepctive in the morass of horror that is the Mythos, from a Nazi's attempt to harness the power of the Elder Ones to the tale of a Delta Green operation gone terribly wrong in wartime Indochina to the decent into Lovecraft's Dreamlands. I have not enjoyed a good horror yarn like this since Shadow over Innsmouth.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent compilation of the Delta Green worldview.
Review: Rather than espouse about the concept of the 1990s Cthulhu Mythos 'Delta Green' world, let me cut to the chase. This is an excellent book, filled with the writing that Mythos fans have come to expect from Tynes, Stolze, and Dettweiler. Each story comes from a distinctly different persepctive in the morass of horror that is the Mythos, from a Nazi's attempt to harness the power of the Elder Ones to the tale of a Delta Green operation gone terribly wrong in wartime Indochina to the decent into Lovecraft's Dreamlands. I have not enjoyed a good horror yarn like this since Shadow over Innsmouth.

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Summary: conspiratorial whispers
Review: There is a good deal to recommend this book. It is for the most part well-written, and the idea behind the book is outstanding. However I have quite a few problems with it. The opening tale by John Tynes is somewhat too short to overcome by backstory and characterization a rather ugly incident that takes place within it, equating experience with the Deep Ones to a version of combat syndrome, and that taints the rest of the book. Other tales fare somewhat better, and have some very thought-provoking concepts, adding a bit of science fiction to the world of the Mythos. One can become a ghoul, for instance, by reading a certain book, and a certain Great Old One can tear holes in the spacetime continuum in order to attract males for her followers (kind of silly, but effective within the tale). On the whole, I liked it, but for me that is the crux of the biscuit-I wanted to love it, and did not. Fell far short of the expectations that were engendered in me by the blurbs on the back cover and the front cover recommendation from Lucius Shepard. Can't give it a thumbs-up, but worth looking at if you have the money. Slim for the price.