SNAFU: Medivac

SNAFU: An Anthology of Military Horror #10

by Geoff Brown (Editor), Amanda J. Spedding (Editor), James A. Moore

A charity anthology for James A. Moore’s medical costs and ongoing costs of living.
120,000 words, with four original stories and eight best-of-SNAFU reprints.
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Some of the most important military missions have been medical evacuations – medivacs.
Soldiers don’t often fight for themselves. They fight for the guy next to them, their brother, their friend, their family.
And they fight hard.
In 2019, Cohesion author and friend… hell, more family, really… Jim Moore was suddenly in the struggle of his life. He overcame the Big C, but his fight is ongoing. A fight to pay for all the treatments in a country that has no free public health system, and a fight to claw his way back from the ravages of the very treatment that saved his life.
His fight is our fight, and if we don’t fight for our friends, is there anything really worth living for?
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All income from SNAFU: Medivac goes to Jim to help pay his bills and keep his household functional.
Once this is no longer necessary, the income will transfer to a cancer research or treatment charity.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Anthologies

314 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 2020

About the author

Geoff Brown aka G.N. Braun is an Australian writer and twice Australian Shadows Award finalist-editor raised in Melbourne’s gritty Western Suburbs.
He is a trained nurse, and holds a Cert. IV in Professional Writing and Editing, as well as a Dip. Arts (Professional Writing and Editing).
At graduation, Brown was awarded ‘Vocational Student of the Year’ and ‘2012 Student of the Year’ by his college.
He writes fiction across various genres, and is the author of many published short stories. He has had numerous articles published in newspapers, both regional and metropolitan. He is the past president of the Australian Horror Writers Association (2011-2013), as well as the past director of the Australian Shadows Awards. He was an editor and columnist for UK site This is Horror, and the guest editor for Midnight Echo #9.
His memoir, Hammered, was released in early 2012 by Legumeman Books and has been extensively reviewed. It has been expanded on for rerelease in 2019.
He is the co-founder/director of Cohesion Press and Asylum Ghost Tours.

Reviews

[Lena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Blank White Page by James A. Moore ★★★★½
“Whatever makes you think a few buildings brings about a civilized human being?”

I have a soft spot for weird westerns. I enjoyed this story of mysterious monsters facing off against mysterious monsters. The backstory of the albino mulatto cryptozoologist who is transforming into an unknown creature is a great story of its own. And is Crowley some kind of Faust? This story deserves a book or at least a novella.


Suits by Steve Lewis ★★★★½
Somewhere in this farmers-against-aliens story I realized I have never seen Pacific Rim. Now that sounds like an entertaining idea.


The Eldon Angels by Greig Beck ★★★★☆
There’s something in the water, and it’s not the first time it’s bubbled up and taken the children - the old gods are calling. This was an episode of the X-Files with better explosions!

No Balance But in Death by Evan Dicken ★★★★☆
The nation-state politics of Ancient Greece give depth to an entertaining zombie story.

Here There Be Monsters by Dave Beynon ★★★★☆
“It’s their world until we find something useful. Then it becomes annexed. For their own protection, of course.”

A clever, vicious story about a colonial expeditionary force meeting unmerciful monstrosities. There was a hungry malevolence I have not read since Dead Sea.

Show of Force by Jeremy Robinson & Kane Gilmour ★★★★☆
A coed special forces team locates a secret bioweapons base in an arctic section of outer Mongolia protected by enslaved local cryptids - Mongolian Death Worms! I enjoyed the team dynamic and would read more shorts from this world.


Claws, Teeth and Feathers by Charles R. Rutledge ★★★½☆
Dinosaurs, the spook show, and an immortal barbarian battle it out. The story was abrupt but entertaining.


The Demon Locke by Alan Baxter ★★★½☆
A fast and dirty two mile run to save the world.


The Decide Machine by Justin Coates ★★★½☆
A bumpy start leads to an epic battle in this Lovecraftian ode to Pacific Rim.


Hungry Eyes by Seth Skorkowsky ★★★½☆
Three modern day knight hunt the strange and dangerous in the Paris catacombs!

Ground Zero by Kirsten Cross ★★★☆☆
Special forces verses Dracula, his lieutenant, and various taints. Taint is a hell of word to use for a vampire. In American, besides meaning something undesirable/polluted, it also refers to the space between a man’s balls and his asshole. There, now that’s a thing you know.

Taking Down the Top Cat by R.P.L. Johnson ★★★☆☆
Skinwalker and special forces, fine ingredients but, even with that ending, it let me down. It was too much like Triple Frontier, a movie I never finished.

I read all twelve stories for an average of 3.75 happily rounded up!

[Elizabeth Shrum]

Best Stories for Charity

I've read some of these before, but it's like reading about old friends. A bunch of authors put this together for James Moore, who is battling cancer. The more of these I read, the more authors I want to continue to read.

[EM3 · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book for a good cause. I dropped one star because some of the stories are repeats from other SNAFU books. A good collection of military horror.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were 4-5 stories that I had read in other SNAFU books.