I’ve been enjoying StoryHack magazine, and it’s a top contender to win my magazine quest once I’ve written all the second and third issue reviews and tallied the final scores. I’ve written posts about StoryHack Issue Zero and some of my favorite stories from Issues Two and Three. I’ll write full reviews of Issues One, Two, and Three some time in 2020.
In additional StoryHack News, Issue Five will contain a story written by your local Planetary Defense Commander. I hope you’ll all buy the magazine and try to guess which story is mine. Now, on to the Issue Four stories:
Hawkemoon by Sidney Blaylock. A strange form of undead, an assassinated king, and animal magic sounds like too much to cram into one story, but it fits together nicely.
Island Rescue by Spencer Hart. When a business deal is interrupted by a violent kidnapping/theft attempt, it’s up to the bigwigs’ kids to save the day.
Beyond the Temple of Baktaar by Jason Restrick. A French Foreign Legionnaire, wounded in a WWI trench, must survive German attacks and rescue his friend from the land of the dead (or another dimension or something). This is a sequel to an earlier StoryHack story.
Wild Yellow by Brandon Barrows. A western lawman crosses the desert to go after a criminal. Spoiler: I thought he’d died in the desert and the adventure was taking place in some sort of purgatory/afterlife, but apparently I was wrong.
My Foe Outstretched by Misha Burnett. Two men are sealed in a disused subway tunnel for a legally-sanctioned fight to the death.
Alpha Equation by Julie Frost. Werewolves … in … space. The lowest-ranking member of the pack has to do something after his Alpha is killed.
The Bouncer’s Tale by Jon Mollison. This is the third story to appear in StoryHack describing the same events from different characters’ perspectives. Normally, I’d just skip over anything that re-tells the same story, but Mollison is such a skilled author that I keep reading, hoping to improve my writing abilities by osmosis.
Retirement Plan by John Olsen. A soldier, left for dead by the military, thinks he’s done with violence until a new war comes to him. I think this story would make a nice opening chapter to a novel.
The Spirit of Saint George by Damascus Mincemeyer. After the First World War, Eddie Rickenbacker leads squadrons of biplanes against dragons which have risen from the Rocky Mountains. I’d really like to see this one turned into a novel, as it uses many historical figures and there are so many places the story could go. Hitler rises to power in Germany by promising to protect the people from dragons, but ends up turning the country over to them? Japanese pilots crash their planes into dragons in the skies over Tokyo?
Planetary Defense Command 
Congratulations on your upcoming publication. These sound like fun tales in a decent mag.
Thanks. I’ve been impressed by several of these indie/pulp magazines that have started in the past few years, usually just one person’s vision, sometimes a couple of people.
Cool! Congrats on the publication 🙂
Thanks. I’m looking forward to it much more than the non-fiction I’ve published.
[…] planet from bad science fiction.” I’ve not read this blog before, but they do give a short review of Storyhack #4. While I’m not going to post their entire review (which you can read by […]