Killing wasn’t all that bad when you learned what was really going on. Death was a rule of the world. Everyone knew that. It was how systems renewed themselves. It was beautiful, in a way. These other things, though — these other things didn’t die on their own. Something in reality had slipped a spoke and they ran on and on. It was up to the group to punch their ticket. It was up to him. He had done many such things for the group since 1943. Since any semblance of normal life had ended.
No one knew what the things were, really. He had heard some in the group go on and on about Elder Ones and cycles and elliptical orbits of dead stars that ruined the world every 900 million years. He’d seen reports on time gates and ray guns and things that, if they slipped past the net the group had raised, could destabilize the whole world.
Once, he saw something huge and gelatinous and covered in a thousand eyes crawl up from a hand-carved pit in Peru, struggle over the ledge, and consume a tied-up goat with the avidity of a spider feeding on a fly.
That was okay. There were worse things, really.
—“Punching,” by Dennis Detwiller, © 2011
Stories of Delta Green
Delta Green: Tales from Failed Anatomies is a collection of stories by award-winning author and game designer Dennis Detwiller.
These tales span the life of Delta Green, the desperate organization that Detwiller helped create: a group of men and women who have seen the awful truths of reality and struggle to keep those realities at bay as long as they can.
With your support, we’ll publish Delta Green: Tales from Failed Anatomies as an ebook, as a paperback for backers and bookstores, and as a hardback for hardcore collectors.
We might even see Tales from Failed Anatomies: Volume 2 and audio stories, maybe even full audio books. It’s up to you.
The Stories
- Introduction (by John Scott Tynes)
- The Alien Thoughts, Part 1 (by Robin D. Laws)
- Intelligences (1928)
- The File (1942)
- Night and Water (1944)
- Dead, Death, Dying (1955)
- Punching (1964)
- The Secrets No One Knows (1968)
- Coming Home (1974)
- The Thing in the Stairwell (1977)
- Drowning in Sand (1981)
- Contingencies (1984)
- Philosophy (1993)
- Witch Hunt (2015)
- After Math (20__)
- The Alien Thoughts, Part 2 (by Robin D. Laws)
Our Goals
When Delta Green: Tales from Failed Anatomies reaches its core goal, we will publish it in an ebook edition, in a hardback for collectors, and in a paperback edition that will be available to stores everywhere.
Once it hits its core goal, new goals will open up. As stretch goals we’ll offer new Delta Green stories by Adam Scott Glancy, Kenneth Hite, Cody Goodfellow, Greg Stolze,Daniel Harms, Shane Ivey, and other writers. The higher the funding goes — meaning the more backers we get! — the more stories we’ll create.
“Other writers” might include you! We’re taking submissions for new Delta Green stories for this Kickstarter project. Read the guidelines and send a pitch to shane.ivey@gmail.com.
We’ll also offer audio productions of the stories of Tales from Failed Anatomies,produced by our friends at the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast (hppodcraft.com). You can hear a sampling in the video, where HPLLP’s Chad Fifer reads an excerpt from Dennis Detwiller’s story “After Math.” They do amazing work. We can’t wait to hear them narrate more of these stories.
Read more and back Tales from Failed Anatomies at Kickstarter now.