INTRODUCTION
John Joseph Adams
Soldiers are trained so that when they are faced with danger—so that when they must initiate danger—they don’t have to think; they simply react. And though their superiors do what they can to prepare them for what the enemy is capable of, their training must essentially prepare them to deal with anything—the unknown. So who among us would be better prepared to suddenly come face to face with what we thought was impossible?
When I conceived of this anthology, the only guidelines I gave the authors were that I wanted stories with an equal emphasis placed on both of the words military and fantasy, and I turned them loose. As a result, the anthology ended up with a wide variety of approaches to the idea of military fantasy.
When you think of that term, you might initially picture big epic fantasy battles like J.R.R. Tolkien’s Battle of Helm’s Deep or George R. R. Martin’s Battle of Blackwater. And indeed this anthology contains plenty of that: There’s “Bone Eaters,” a new story from one of military fantasy’s masters, Glen Cook, set in his Black Company milieu; there’s Elizabeth Moon’s “Mercenary’s Honor” (a Paksenarrion story), which pits two mercenary forces against each other with the fate of a town hanging in the balance; there’s Yoon Ha Lee’s “The Graphology of Hemorrhage,” in which the pen—or in this case, the brush—is truly mightier than the sword; and then there’s Jonathan Maberry’s tale of “The Damned One Hundred,” who must make a questionable alliance if they are to save their people from the rampaging horde of invaders at the gates.
But there are also stories where fantasy and the real world collide; in some, the real world has infiltrated fantasy: in Linda Nagata’s “The Way Home,” a squad of modern army soldiers suddenly finds themselves in a strange otherworld where they are beset by an unrelenting, demonic enemy unlike one they’ve ever faced before; or Tobias S. Buckell and David Klecha’s story “Rules of Enchantment,” in which a band of modern-day soldiers finds themselves in an epic fantasy world with an epic quest to fulfill.
In others, it’s fantasy that infiltrates the real world (instead of the other way around): “Heavy Sulfur,” by Ari Marmell, which takes us to WWI, where wizards are in the trenches and on the front lines; or Genevieve Valentine’s “Blood, Ash, Braids,” about the female Russian pilots in WWII known as “The Night Witches”; or Simon R. Green’s “Bomber’s Moon,” in which angels side with the Allies and demons are with the Axis powers; or T. C. McCarthy’s Korean War-era, elegiac “Pathfinder.”
But not all of the fantasy-invades-reality stories are historical; there are contemporary works as well, such as Weston Ochse’s “American Golem,” which takes us to the current war in Afghanistan (which the author actually began writing during a recent tour there), and tells a fantastical revenge story against the backdrop of that conflict.
Although battles are obviously at the forefront of many military fantasy stories—and indeed many of the stories in this volume do portray some epic engagements—I didn’t make battles a requirement because I think there are a lot of interesting stories to tell surrounding the battles, stories about the struggles of military personnel not only on the battlefield but off of it as well. So some of the stories do focus on other aspects of the military life: such as Myke Cole’s “Weapons in the Earth” (a Shadow Ops story), which deals with prisoners of war; while Carrie Vaughn’s “Sealskin” is about a soldier who finds himself lost after his service is over.
Other stories in the book don’t quite fit into the above-mentioned categories but are still military fantasy stories to the core: there’s Seanan McGuire’s “In Skeleton Leaves,” which tells the tale of neverending war in Neverland; there’s Tanya Huff’s story, in which a team of special forces soldiers—extra special you might say—lead an assault against the enemy’s “Steel Ships”; and then there’s Django Wexler’s action-packed apocalyptic-fantasy-steampunk-epic, “The Guns of the Wastes.”
All told that’s sixteen tales of soldiers living in impossible worlds, dealing with impossible situations, or fighting impossible foes.
Though many of the contributors to this anthology are (or were) soldiers, I am not and never have been. But as the editor of this anthology you could say I’m the commander of an elite unit of professionals—and our primary objective with Operation Arcana is to entertain readers with tales of military fantasy.
To conclude, I’ll just leave you with these words of wisdom that I passed along to the authors before we launched Operation Arcana, in which I paraphrased the legendary general of Gondor, Dwight D. Isengard, as he spoke to his troops on D-Day prior to launching Operation Dark Lord:
You are about to embark upon a great crusade. I have full confidence in your courage in creating fantastical plots, devotion to evocative prose, and skill in creating fictional battles. We will accept nothing less than full manuscripts! Good luck! And let us all beseech the blessings of the Valar upon this great and noble undertaking.