Delta Green: Extraordinary Renditions

Delta Green Fiction

by Jeff C Carter

Lovecraftian cosmic terror meets modern-day conspiracy in 18 tales of horror and personal "The Color of Dust" by Laurel Halbany."PAPERCLIP" by Kenneth Hite."A Spider With Barbed-Wire Legs" by Davide Mana."Le Pain Maudit" by Jeff C. Carter."Cracks in the Door" by Jason Mical."Ganzfeld Gate" by Cody Goodfellow."Utopia" by David Farnell."The Perplexing Demise of Stooge Wilson" by David J. Fielding."Dark" by Daniel Harms."Morning in America" by James Lowder."Boxes Inside Boxes" and "The Mirror Maze" by Dennis Detwiller."A Question of Memory" by Greg Stolze."Pluperfect" by Ray Winninger."Friendly Advice" by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan."Passing the Torch" by Adam Scott Glancy."The Lucky Ones" by John Scott Tynes."Syndemic" and an introduction by Shane Ivey.These stories are recommended for mature readers.Excerpted from the know a program called Delta Green really existed. You can find a couple of references to it in documents uncovered by Freedom of Information Act requests. Delta Green was a psychological operations unit in World War II, created to take advantage of the bizarre occult beliefs of Axis leaders. The public documents, which may have been released with the name unredacted by mistake, don’t say whether it had any success. The OSS was shut down after the war. Many of its people helped launch the CIA in 1947. We can only speculate whether the OSS’s lessons from Delta Green informed the CIA’s notorious psychological operations in the coming decades.Conspiracy theorists have done more than speculate. Delta Green came back as a secret project to track down Nazis after the war, they say. Delta Green brought federal agents, spies, and special forces together for missions too secret even for the CIA. Delta Green was the precursor and rival to Majestic-12, the U.S. government conspiracy that allied itself with aliens after Roswell. Delta Green fights otherworldly monsters and evil sorcerers under the cover of the Global War on Terror. Once you climb into the rabbit hole, the fall never ends.In this book we turn up tales from the rabbit Delta Green case histories rendered as short stories.They begin in the Dust Bowl, with a Naval intelligence unit supposedly called “P4” and memories of the abandoned New England town of Innsmouth (another bottomless well of conspiracy theories).They look at the days after World War II when secret agents pursued Nazis all over Europe, the early CIA attempted its first infamous schemes, and anticommunist witch-hunts seized on American terrors back home.They bring us through the Cold War desperation of the Seventies and Eighties, when America was shocked by its own crimes and Delta Green allegedly went underground again.And they come to the present day, and a Delta Green divided after it rebuilt itself in the secret government—but many old outlaws refused to trust the new order.Edited by Shane Ivey with Adam Scott Glancy.

Genres: Horror, Role Playing Games, Fiction, Anthologies, Lovecraftian, Fantasy, Short Stories

361 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 11, 2015

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

For those unfamiliar with Delta Green, I would say that they collect the bleakest, darkest, most soul-eroding windows into modern Lovecraftian horror. Unsanctioned tradecraft in a never ending war against the unimaginable horrors that lurk behind the corners of reality, trying to hold back the tide, one sanity breaking battle at a time. Needless to say, agents never survive unscathed, if they survive at all.

"Extraordinary Renditions" is the fruit of the Kickstarter for the previous Delta Green story collection, "Tales From Failed Anatomies". The Kickstarter was so successful, that it gave birth to two story collections. "Tales From Failed Anatomies" was outstanding, but I have to say that "Extraordinary Renditions" felt even better. Or worse, if you are the characters held within its pages.

With a massive collection of amazing writers like Adam Scott Glancy, Dennis Detwiller, Kenneth Hite, Greg Stolze, Shane Ivey, Cody Goodfellow, and more, each story gives us a glimpse to different moments in time for Delta Green, from the old days, through the cowboy years, to modern day. Something that made it stand out from previous collections was that it also portrayed the post PATRIOT ACT 911 Delta Green, and the schizm between the old guard and the new blood that has been returned to the fold of government black projects. Stories like the spectacular "Passing The Torch" exemplify this beautifully (or horribly, if you happen to be an agent).

Mind-expanding, terrifying, fascinating and hard to put down.

I would certainly hope that Delta Green and Arc Dream decide to publish subsequent collections in the future. If they would release one of these a year, I would be a happy (and possibly less sane) man.

Also, I would gladly be a backer for another Delta Green story project. Count me in, until the angles take me.

[Miloš Petrik · Rating 2 out of 5]

I half-expected this not to be a lazy tie-in, but my expectations were not met. Works as Delta Green adventure seeds, I suppose.

[Derrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the stories in this collection are incredible, unfortunately not all of it is of the quality of previous Delta Green offerings, STill giving it 4 stars the stories that are good are really good.

[Sly Reference · Rating 5 out of 5]

YEEEEEESSSSSSS. Oh, that's the good stuff. That's what I am hoping for when I open a book with Delta Green on the cover. The rich prose, the haunting details, the Dutch angle take on a mad, mad world.

Yes.

This was the last DG collection that I hadn't read, and the stories here are among the best. I think John Tynes' "The Lucky Ones" is my favorite, but almost all of the stories are pretty good, though some assume the reader's knowledge of the DG mythos more than others.

If there was one nitpick I could make, it would be that some of the early stories spent too much time revolving around the same set of Mythos encounters, hewing a little too closely to the same points in the DG timeline. Overall, though, a great addition to the corpus.

[BJ Haun · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an alright anthology. There were a few stories that I thought fit the setting well, a couple that were so confusing I had to flip back a few pages to see if I had accidentally missed something, and a few that seemed to think that a story set in a dark setting meant the story was just awful things happening with a veneer of plot.

The color of dust: 3/5
PAPERCLIP: 2/5
A Spider With Barbed-Wire Legs: 4/5
Le Pain Maudit: 3/5
Cracks in the Door: 2/5
Ganzfeld Gate: 2/5
Utopia: 3/5
The Perplexing Demise of Stooge Wilson: 4/5
Dark: 3/5
Morning in America: 4/5
The Mirror Maze: 2/5
A Question of Memory: 3/5
Pluperfect: 3/5
Friendly Advice: 3/5
Passing the Torch: 4/5
Boxes inside Boxes: 3/5
The Lucky Ones: 4/5
Syndemic: 3/5

[Mike Nusbaum · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are several very good stories in this Delta Green RPG inspired short story collection. There are also some bad ones and a few middle of the road pieces as well. I’d recommend this to readers who enjoy cosmic horror. Players and especially GMs running Delta Green games can easily mine these stories for their own campaigns, use them as inspiration for vignettes of their bonds during gameplay or just enjoy them for their setting.

[Marko · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 GR stars

More or less what I expected: Mythos pulp fiction, offering cheap Delta Green themed fun. Stories vary from low- to mid-quality, with a few exceptions such as those by James Lowder, Ray Winniger, John Scott Tynes, and Shane Ivey.

[Ernest Rowland · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked it. "Pluperfect" was my favorite, followed by "PAPERCLIP", and special mention to "Boxes Inside Boxes", for reasons that will be readily apparent to anyone who knows me.

[Joseph P. Spencer III · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delta Green never disappoints

Another great installment of the DG series. If you like your Cthulhu mythos with a bit of 'Homeland' or '24' in them, this is the way to go!

[Blaise Carland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid, in a delta green state of mind. My favorite was the Adam Scott Glancy story. Only a couple of duds. Overall good stuff.

[Jake Wilhite · Rating 2 out of 5]

Love DG and I love HPL. None of these stories grabbed my attention and i found myself halfway through one only hoping the next one would be more entertaining.

[Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honestly some real bangers in this

[Rob Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bought kindle book and read in one sitting. Haven't done that in a while. H. P. L.would be very proud of all these stories.

[Jason Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another fine collection of Delta Green tales. I have two favorites from the collection, the first was Passing the Torch which features a creature that I have always felt is underutilized in the Call of Cthulhu game system. This story features its ferocity and capabilities and should be a must-read for anybody wishing to run the game. The second was The Lucky Ones which sums up nicely the horror of the mythos. I also enjoyed the locale of St. Alban's used at one point in the story. I have been there as a tourist passing through from Canada and visited the St. Alban's Historical Museum on the corner of Church and Bishop. I used this town and the area in a Chaosium monograph several years ago and could not resist touring through that area. The story nicely captures the feel of rural Vermont. The rest of the stories in the book are outstanding in their own ways but those two really captured my attention. Kudos for producing yet another great product!

[Dan Groth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this by headlamp on a campsite over two with a fire burning and no other light but the moon, stars and the glowing eyes of woodland and other creatures. That atmosphere made the book even more enjoyable. Until I tried to sleep. This is a collection of short stories that has many more hits than misses. That is all you can ask for in a collection. This was my first Delta Green after reading every work of HPL's (H.P. Lovecraft for those of you who still think you are special in the universe). It was fun seeing where the stories would go, what the big and little bads would be, and picking the slang for this network (Night at the Opera!). Can't wait to read more volumes and a few of the novels.

[Kevin L · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75 stars. This is an uneven collection, but there are a few excellent stories within. Favorites included The Color of Dust by Laurel Halbany; Le Pain Maudit by Jeff C. Carte; Utopia by David Farnell; Morning in America by James Lowden (my favorite); A Question of Memory by Greg Stolze; Passing the Torch by Adam Scott Glancy; Boxes Inside Boxes by Dennis Detwiller; and The Lucky Ones by John Acott Tynes.

The above stories best captured the feel and flavor of Delta Green without being pastiches or incoherent as some oft hers in this collection. It's worth your money if you're a fan of Delta Green and the short story format.

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

DG: ER is another fantastic look into the operations of Delta Green through out various time periods. It is nice to see some of the cowboy ops that predate the Alphonse Cell days of the 90's and even some contemporary DG ops.
Not all of the stories are perfect as with any anthology but if you are a fan of the setting this is a valuable addition to the lore.

[Kevin Adams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection of short stories in the horror genre. My favorite would have to be "Morning in America". The Delta Green universe is a companion to that of HPLovecraft's Cthulhu mythos usually set in modern times.

K

[Ramón Nogueras Pérez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Potentísima recopilación de historias, seguramente de mis favoritas, abarcando toda la historia de la organización, y aunque variando en calidad, siempre con un nivel altísimo. De verdad que es el estándar para la ficción y los productos de rol de los Mitos.

[John R. Dailey Jr. · Rating 4 out of 5]

THE TALES ARE GREAT BUT WEIRD, THEY ARE...

Hello, some really great stories in this one and just a couple of so-so's. All in all, a very interesting and enjoyable read. Thanks.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

***1/2