Gunsmoke & Dragonfire: A Fantasy Western Anthology

by Diane Morrison (Editor/Author), Sable Aradia (Editor/Author), Liam Hogan

From the drought-plagued plains of Mars, to a post-apocalyptic Canada, to the familiar American West and Mexico, to other dimensions and other worlds weird and wonderful, an international cast of bestselling, award-winning, established, and emerging authors brings you 25 strange western tales:

Robert Lee Beers - A hardboiled P.I. and his partner must find their way back to the present from 1906 San Francisco before the Big One hits, dodging gunslingers and the risk of changing history, with only a drunken misanthropic wizard to help them...
James Blakey - A sheriff must question a colourful cast of characters to discover who has stolen a unicorn rancher's herd...
Zach Chapman - A card-cheating Spellslinger must duel a mysterious Green Gunslinger to his damnation or salvation...
Sara Codair - Two Martian sheriffs must stop a gang of outlaws from stealing a settlement's precious water, if they can keep their marriage together long enough to do it...
Eric S. Fomley - A marshal comes to town seeking an outlaw, but neither he nor the outlaw are the ordinary kind...
Milo James Fowler – Heroic Coyote Cal, the witch Donna Jamieson, and his faithful sidekick Big Yap, must stop a monster from ravaging the livestock and people of a town in the western desert...
Ron S. Friedman - A WWI pilot shot down over the Amazon must survive Germans, crazy scientists, the jungle and dinosaurs...
Carrie Gessner - An elven veteran is called back to face her demons when a little girl is snatched to serve the army that destroyed her...
Paul Alex Gray - The heir to the Bourbon Throne must earn coin in America to overthrow the French Republic and reclaim his birthright, so he builds a fantastic contraption to aid him...
Jude-Marie Green - Sorceress Jane Smith knows her partner Donna Quick is quite mad, but she follows her anyway...
Brent A. Harris - Marshal Bass Reeves has been asked for help by a desperate frontier settlement beleaguered by a dragon...
Ethan Hedman - A wandering gunfighter inherits an enchanted weapon, but it's broken...
Joachim Heijndermans - Two outlaws hole up in a quiet town full of terrified townsfolk, but all is not as it seems...
Russell Hemmell - Two investigators must discover why an entire colony in the Kuiper Belt has disappeared, leaving nothing but an anachronistic western frontier town in its place...
Liam Hogan - A young outlaw is hunted by an implacable mechanical foe...
G. Scott Huggins - A blacksmith with ghostly allies receives an unusual, and dangerous, client...
Sean Jones - The last Norse descendant in North America, who swears vengeance on the Comanche for killing his wife and village, is given supernatural aid by the Navajo...
Mackenzie Kincaid - Junior died helping Pa maintain the fence against the Somethings, so now 12-year-old Jane must take his place...
R. Daniel Lester - An old tap-dancing celebrity defaults on the payments for his magical shoes, and a repo agent has come to collect...
Diane Morrison - Two young elven Gunslingers must stop a cannibal spirit before it, or the blizzard it brings, kills everyone they know...
Diana L. Paxson - A painter journeys to the Rockies to paint landscapes, and stumbles upon an ancient mystery...
Claire Ryan - Rollo is going to get her giant slug herd in to market, come hell or high water, monster or no monster...
Ricardo Victoria - An ex-spellslinger has taken up a career as a travelling salesbeing of a newfangled weapon called a "rifle"...
Stanley B. Webb - A U.S. Marshal must stop a notorious outlaw who may or may not be a dragon...

We invite you to explore these stories in the grand pulp fiction tradition: from weird westerns, to sci-fi and space westerns, to post-apocalyptic westerns, alternate history, time travel, and cattlepunk.

Featuring a classic Solomon Kane story by Robert E. Howard.

Cover art by Aaron Siddall.
Cover design by Claire Ryan.

Genres: Fantasy, Mystery, Science Fiction

345 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 15, 2019

Reviews

[Sable · Rating 5 out of 5]

As the editor, I am very proud to present this amazing anthology of stories of the West as you've never seen it before! I was floored by the caliber of the authors who submitted their work, and these stories are some of the very best. All credit to the authors! Bestsellers gave us some of their best quality, and the new authors were so good that I was stunned they weren't pros.

We have fantasy westerns, weird western horror, sci-fi westerns, space westerns, historical fantasy westerns, time travel westerns, post-apocalyptic westerns, cattlepunk, and more. Stories range from high action to disturbingly creepy to beautiful plays of language to in-depth character pieces. I really don't think you can go wrong. There's something here for everyone.

It's a very large book: 567 pages, according to Amazon. Aaron Siddall has made us a lovely cover image, and Claire Ryan has put together a quality book that is easy to navigate and looks great.

Merged review:

As the editor, I am very proud to present this amazing anthology of stories of the West as you've never seen it before! I was floored by the caliber of the authors who submitted their work, and these stories are some of the very best. All credit to the authors! Bestsellers gave us some of their best quality, and the new authors were so good that I was stunned they weren't pros.

We have fantasy westerns, weird western horror, sci-fi westerns, space westerns, historical fantasy westerns, time travel westerns, post-apocalyptic westerns, cattlepunk, and more. Stories range from high action to disturbingly creepy to beautiful plays of language to in-depth character pieces. I really don't think you can go wrong. There's something here for everyone.

It's a very large book: 567 pages, according to Amazon. Aaron Siddall has made us a lovely cover image, and Claire Ryan has put together a quality book. If you get a version with this cover, be aware that it's an ARC and still has a few warts: some details have been edited, there's a couple of typos, titles might be off center, the epub is a bit garbled, and one of the stories in it did not end up in the final version of the anthology. I still stand by the quality of the stories though. I'm sure you'll enjoy the read!

[Leo McBride · Rating 5 out of 5]

Out on the trails of the Old West, there are hidden places. Shadows off the path, a mystery at the far end of the journey. In those dark spaces, the weird can be found. In those places, this anthology exists, spinning tales of fantasy and horror, out there where a six-shooter may not be enough to save you.

There might be dinosaurs lurking there, or dragons - maybe the ghosts still walking the town they used to frequent.

I loved the range of imagination on show here. There's Joachim Heijndermans' tale of a gunslinger in a town he might be better off not picking a fight in, in When The Bell Strikes Three, the kind of story that feels like it's still lurking in The Twilight Zone, resting its boots on a boardwalk rail as the music starts to play.

There's The Case of the Vanishing Unicorns, by James Blakey, the kind of mystery a mid-West Poirot might have loved to solve.

I also enjoyed No-Sell, from Ricardo Victoria, taking the theme and running with it, for in a Wild West world where magic is commonplace, what use is a gun? And what would the equivalent of a snake oil salesman do with one if he had one?

Sara Codair takes the theme to the plains of Mars, with a particularly poignant tale of a broken marriage, and the tests the partners face as they try to keep their community alive.

Then there's Brent A Harris' tale of Bass Reeves, the black lawman who inspired the legend of the Lone Ranger, here having to take on a dragon, a cracking tale of adventure.

Diana Paxson offers a tale of an artist that offers a simmering feeling of Lovecraft to it - and there's even a Robert E Howard story, with Solomon Kane swinging into action.

There are more than two dozen tales in here - so of course some stand out to me more than others, such is the way of anthologies.

One note I should make - I appear in the anthology twice, once in the list of folks who backed the Kickstarter, and once as a character! I'm polishing glasses behind the bar for Robert Lee Beers' reprinted tale of time travellers arriving just in time for the San Francisco earthquake... I fear some of those glasses might get broken.

All in all, this is a smashing way to discover a host of authors in the Weird West genre - with some great stories to read along the way. Joachim Heijndermans' story was my favourite, with Sara Codair's not far behind, but pick it up, find your own new author to love.

[Johan Haneveld · Rating 4 out of 5]

8- A chunky anthology, with some very good stories. I haven't read many anthologies that have been funded by kickstarter and filled with stories by authors from the more indie-side of the genre before. I must say that the quality was a bit less than that of anthologies with stories by respected authors with several books under their belt - this could be compared more with the anthologies on the Dutch market, with many stories by less experienced authors. I often think that the Dutch genre world can be compared as to quality to the indie community in the anglophone world. Some stories in here (as in the Dutch genre anthologies) were not that original, other had a bit of an awkward writing style. However, as with the Dutch anthologies, there were some outstanding works, with beautiful, flowing prose and fantastic ideas at the base, that I wouldn't have wanted to miss for the world. So, one has to search a bit harder for the diamonds in the mix, but they shine very bright.
I also like the idea of the fantasy western as a theme. I think the 'weird western' has a lot of potential, as there are common grounds between the genres - the frontier with the white spots on the map, the different people and cultures clashing, the heroes and villains and the themes of encroachment of 'modernity' and capitalism on nature and indiginous culture all lend themselves to a SF, fantasy or horror twist. That being said, I thought the editors used a bit of a too wide defenition here to my taste. There was a story set in the jungles of South America (albeit with a cowboy in it), with a pilot as the main character which to me didn't feel like a western. It had dinosaurs in it however and that almost made up for it ... Also, even though Robert E. Howard could write, his Solomon Kane-character does not fit with either the time period or the location of the western genre.
As I don't want to focus on the negative in my reviews on here, I will focus on the bright spots.
Joachim Heijndermans is represented here with 'When The Bell Strikes Three'. It's maybe not the best written story in here (Heijndermans is originally Dutch), but the story itself is great - a dark tale about a town that hews a bit too close to the western tropes to be believeable, and the outlaw taking shelter in there should have realised his mistake. Great ending.
'Pinkerton' by Liam Hogan has a young fellow who has fallen in with a bad crowd being pursued by a seemingly unstoppable agent. I liked this one a lot.
'The Teeth of Winter' by Diane Morrison was a tense story about a family being beset by evil creatures. It made me think of the Dark Tower-novels by Stephen King because of the post apocalyptic setting and the gunslingers tasked with rooting out supernatural threats - but in a good way. The story was well structured too.
'No-Sell' by Ricardo Victoria made me grin with its tale of tradesmen entering a frontier town with weapons fit to battle dragons.
'Rick and the Green Gunslinger' by Zach Chapman was an entertaining variation on 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'.
'One Hell of a Game' by Robert Lee Beers was a novella length story about private eyes traveling through time. As it was set in a city it didn't really feel all that much like a western, but I liked the cameo's by historical figures and the geekyness of one of the main characters a lot (also the game of poker is a common ingredient of westerns so it did fit the theme). I did think the ending could have been a bit stronger, though.
I thought the voice in 'Glorious Madness' by Jude-Marie Green well realised and fitting of the story which has a Don Quichotte-like character promising to take on a dragon ...
The voice of 'By Way of Answer' by Sean Jones felt quite unique - but I loved this story playing with native american mythology and a magical knife.
'The Burning Plains' by Brent A Harris was a great mash-up of real history (U.S. lawman Bass Reeves) and fantasy (a dragon), with a fittingly melancholy conclusion.
I found 'A PRayer for the Reaping Season' by Mackenzie Kincaid very well written and tense, with a family trying to protect themselves from an evil presence. Not all was explained, but enough to suggest a large world with its own rules. One of the highlights of this anthology.
Another highlight to me was 'Riders of the Rainbow Ridge' by Diana L. Paxson. Evocative prose and a fascinating situation. An artist finds himself commissioned to paint the inside of a dining room ... To tell more would be to spoil a truly fantastic story! This deserves wide recognition.
In conclusion: enough great stories in here to recommend this anthology, especially for readers interested in genre mash-ups and 'weird westerns'.

[VT · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book up because it's editor was one of my regional liaison people for the Nanowrimo event last year - to be perfectly honest, when I got it, I had tempered expectations - as I've said before, I'm not a huge fan of fantasy, and while I'm happy with the concept of cross-genre fantasy westerns and weird westerns and so forth, I don't generally go seeking these kinds of stories out on my own.

But I figured hey, let's support a local writer, they're doing good things for the local writing community, what could go too wrong?

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get around to reading this book. I haven't quite finished reading it yet, but I've read most of it, and I feel safe in writing this review up now.

For under $7 Canadian, you can buy the e-book version of this collection. It is a large collection, with over twenty short stories and novelettes included, written by an international cast of writers. It's a good deal if you're looking for somewhat different and fun.

It does do the 'blurb about the writers at the front of a story' thing that I find annoying - I took to skipping past the write-ups about the authors, because I didn't want to be influenced by their biographies before reading their stories. I did find a handful of typos and a couple of consistency problems, but over hundreds of pages I can't really complain.

Oh, but just one particular note, I've seen this in westerns before and it's a typo that sort of makes me laugh - horses don't generally have reigns, they wear reins.

A few of these stories didn't seem particularly western at all to me, and I wasn't sure why they were included, although they were all generally fun stories, and/but most did definitely have a western vibe - a couple were a bit grisly, a couple had a fair smattering of obscenities, but most were pretty easily PG13, and I think that it would probably be okay to recommend this collection to older teenagers.

A few stories have LGBTQ+ characters, a number of them have female leads, several are set in cold and snow, one is very explicitly set on the Canadian prairies.

It's become a bit of a me-joke to note how often this happens, so here we go: One of these stories includes an Earp name drop, and there's one that might have winked towards Doc Holiday.

Another quite unexpectedly gave a shout out to Edward G. Robinson.

A few stories didn't really do much for me, but the vast majority I found quite enjoyable, many have a sense of humour. Most are fantasy cross stories, there are a few sci-fi crosses, a couple I would call mostly horror, and one that was really just your standard time-travelling private eye story. There's even a Don Quixote re-telling in here, and Fenians captaining airships.

This was a neat collection. Not every story here is perfect, but there was only one or two that I would point to and say "hmm, a bit weak," and only a few times that I felt I was being a bit condescended towards.

I'm still not converted to the idea that reading about dragons and fairies magical potions in a 'weird west' is the way I want to go every day, but I do hope that there is a second Gunsmoke and Dragonfire anthology some time, because I would certainly be willing to give another one a go.

Thanks everyone!

[Sable · Rating 5 out of 5]

As the editor, I am very proud to present this amazing anthology of stories of the West as you've never seen it before! I was floored by the caliber of the authors who submitted their work, and these stories are some of the very best. All credit to the authors! Bestsellers gave us some of their best quality, and the new authors were so good that I was stunned they weren't pros.

We have fantasy westerns, weird western horror, sci-fi westerns, space westerns, historical fantasy westerns, time travel westerns, post-apocalyptic westerns, cattlepunk, and more. Stories range from high action to disturbingly creepy to beautiful plays of language to in-depth character pieces. I really don't think you can go wrong. There's something here for everyone.

It's a very large book: 567 pages, according to Amazon. Aaron Siddall has made us a lovely cover image, and Claire Ryan has put together a quality book. If you get a version with this cover, be aware that it's an ARC and still has a few warts: some details have been edited, there's a couple of typos, titles might be off center, the epub is a bit garbled, and one of the stories in it did not end up in the final version of the anthology. I still stand by the quality of the stories though. I'm sure you'll enjoy the read!

[Geoff Habiger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantasy is probably the most broadly encompassing genre in fiction because you can create so many unique stories in a limitless number of settings. Mix that with the Western genre, and you get a wonderful blend of stories. Diane Morrison’s Gunsmoke and Dragonfire anthology pulls together twenty-five of these stories into a single collection that just blows me away. The variety of stories presented, and the skill of the authors (from well-established authors to those just starting out), really stand out in this anthology. There are stories here of gunslingers and spellslingers, stories featuring magic and myth, and those set in the far future on worlds that are like the Old West.

As with most anthologies that I read there are stories that stand out to me. And that’s the nice thing about an anthology; the stories that inspire me and really struck a chord with me may be different than the ones that do the same thing for you. Below are five of the stories from Gunsmoke and Dragonfire that really stood out to me.

“When the Bell Strikes Three” by Joachim Heijndermans is not only a great fantasy western, but a wonderful slipstream story as well. I had shivers reading it and honestly, somebody from the Twilight Zone needs to make this story into an episode.

“No-Sell” by Ricardo Victoria was a fun story that reminded me very much of Dragonheart, but in a Western setting and blending in a bit of Aztec mythology. I really enjoyed the slow reveal on this story and the twist at the end.

“The Burning Plains” by Brent A. Harris mixes fantasy and western with historical fiction to create a wonderful tale of pioneers trying to deal with a dragon aided by Bass Reeves, who was the first African American US Marshall. I really enjoyed the blending of facts with fantasy in this story that creates a fun alternate history tale.

“A Prayer for the Reaping Season” by Mackenzie Kinkaid is a great coming-of-age story as a young girl must step into her older brother’s shoes to protect the family farm from the monsters that stalk the land. This story blends western action with fantasy really well, while showing that whether in the real world or in fantasy life often forces young children to grow into adulthood sooner than they’d like.

Finally, “Riders of the Rainbow Ridge” by Diana L. Paxson blends a western with mythology to tell the tale of a landscape painter who stumbles into a quiet village with a secret. Being a fan myself of artwork by famous western painters such as Albert Bierstadt I enjoyed this story of an artist who starts to mistrust his own eyes, and then learns the truth. The mythology is revealed subtly and is more enjoyable because it is not in your face.

I enjoyed many of the other stories in this anthology beyond the five mentioned above, but those are the ones that spoke to me the most. I do have one quibble about the anthology, and it has nothing to do with the stories, but with the layout. While done very well, it was none-the-less tiring to read because of the small font size chosen to fit so many stories into a single volume. As a publisher myself I understand the need to balance readability with production value and costs, and at 372 pages in length, this is a massive anthology. I guess it’s a sign of my own age that I had to pace my reading to avoid eye strain. (If you pick up a copy as an ebook you will not have this problem.)

Gunsmoke and Dragonfire is an amazing anthology highlighting some of the best in fantasy westerns today.

[Dawn Vogel · Rating 4 out of 5]

(This review originally appeared at Mad Scientist Journal.)

Gunsmoke and Dragonfire edited by Diane Morrison is an anthology of stories that mash up fantasy with westerns, resulting in a collection of 25 stories where the good guys don’t always ride white horses … but they might ride good dragons.

Many of the stories in this anthology are reprints, including a classic Solomon Kane story from Robert E. Howard, “Rattle of Bones.” A few of the stories are novella length or longer, and many are set in worlds where the authors have written other stories or longer pieces.

With so many stories to choose from, there were a lot that grabbed my attention. Sara Codair’s “Red Tide Rising” is a little more in the sci-fi end of the universe of speculative fiction, but their well-written characters and clever plot made this story work well within the confines of the anthology. I also enjoyed the plotting and world building in Zach Chapman’s “Rick and the Green Gunslinger,” where spells are etched into bullets and cast by firing a gun.

Liam Hogan’s “Pinkerton” had a really fun twist on the idea that the Pinkertons always get their man, and Jude-Marie Green’s “Glorious Madness” is a delightful retelling of Don Quixote. I also liked R. Daniel Lester’s “The Sound of One Shoe Tapping” both for the clever title and as a nice compact story that worked perfectly at its brief length. Finally, I found “Fallen Horseshoes” by G. Scott Huggins to be wonderfully atmospheric and creepy, while “Balthazar Beausoliel’s Blink Wolf Badger” by Paul Alex Gray was an action-packed romp with a real sense of the peril the main character faced.

If you enjoy westerns with fantasy (and sometimes sci-fi) elements, ranging from steampunk to magic and beyond, you’ll likely find a new favorite or several among the stories in Gunsmoke and Dragonfire!

The publisher provided us with a free copy of this anthology in exchange for review consideration.

[Christine Hart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cross-genre fans will find much to love in this collection!

The Gunsmoke & Dragonfire stories fuse two unlikely elements in a juxtaposition after my own heart. I loved that both western and fantasy - genres that seemed destined to never meet - were successfully woven together again and again.

Like the best bizarre speculative, we have characters naturally inhabiting surreal lands and circumstances. From stolen unicorns to an alt reality future Canada, I found these stories refreshingly unique.

The Gunsmoke stories are a good fit for fans of Stephen King’s Gunslinger novels. Highly recommended!

[Sloan Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

Got this in hardcover and it is beautiful. The collections of stories are all good and a few are absolutely fantastic with Raiders of the Lost World and Glorious Madness being my favorites.

Recommended to anyone who likes innovative short stories that blur the line between genres and writing styles.

[Devinne W. · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to like it but couldn't get into it. DNF.