Title: A Mighty Fortress: Mormon Steampunk Anthology #4
Editor: Holli Anderson
Publisher: Immortal Works LLC, Salt Lake City
Genre: Speculative Fiction
Year Published: 2020
Number of Pages: 353
(Reviewed by Conor Hilton)
These Mormon Steampunk anthology volumes are delightful. Highly recommend the other three volumes in the series too. As with the other volumes, the stories in this collection are pulpy and fun and do quite a bit of interesting work in thinking about what Mormonism is, was, and could be. If you’re not really interested in that sort of thinking, the stories are generally filled with adventure and intrigue, like all good pulpy genre stories.
My five favorite stories from this volume are:
“The Tunnel”, by Jay Barnson
“Breaking O’er the Purple East”, by Justin Riley
“Can Such Things Be”, by Lee Allred
“The Deseret War”, by James Pyles
“I stand at the door”, by Roy Hayward
I particularly liked the ways that Pyles and Riley flip the script and interrogate the ways that Mormons may be villains in these stories. And, of course, absolutely riveted by Allred’s “Can Such Things Be”, which connects to his fantastic “Tracting Out Cthulhu” from the first volume. Each of these stories could justify an entire review in and of themselves. Wonderful work from these authors in particular (and all the contributing authors!).
I’ll be thinking about the possibilities raised by these stories for some time now. And might just start writing my own stories somewhat inspired by the work in this and the other anthologies.