A gaggle of writers have gotten together and crammed three magazines with sci-fi, fantasy, and horror short stories. The first three are out, and Pro Se Productions plans to do this more than just the one time.

The titles are Fantasy and Fear, Masked Gun Mystery, and Peculiar Adventures. There is no way I'm going to finish with the first month's batch before the next one is out. The books are huge.

Masked Gun Mystery

This one is the most traditional. it has old-timey detective and pulp stories. That's a good thing. I totally dig the approach. The old ways are comforting.

Peculiar Adventures

This one is centered around an original character, Peculiar Oddfellow. He bounces around in time. So he's the same guy, but each of his stories has him in every nerd genre, from pirate to superhero. That's clever and very fun.

One non-Oddfellow story has a pedigree that I was told about after the issue was published. Van Allen Plexico's science fiction story "Godslayers" was submitted for our RevolutionSF Fiction section years ago. We never ran it.

Now here it is, and it's good. I've known Van for years, but he just told me this now. Van has written for RevolutionSF since. Just not "Godslayer."

So Van's story is published in this neat new deal, instead of years ago on our lovely site. Savor this victory, Plexico, as if it were a long simmering dish of revenge.

I can tell that Peculiar Oddfellow is a favorite of the writers. Those stories are bouncy and fun; the guys are clearly having a good time. I'd like to see the title page of the magazine describe him with a few less exclamation points, though.

Fantasy and Fear

This is my favorite magazine of the three. "Fantasy" and "fear" cover more ground, topic wise, so the stories go further afield than in the other two books.

My favorite story is by James Palmer. James has done convention panels with me for years. Knowing James, I was hoping he would put in a talking ape in his story about Lao Fang. No such luck, this time. Instead, the first story about villain Lao Fang is a clever combo platter of Fu Manchu and Cthulhu.

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All of these books are worth a buy in sheer volume alone. Each title has around 100 pages, in print and PDF. Check them out here.

To make this much content, Pro Se must have the creators locked in a nerd sweatshop, where they slide Mountain Dew and Cheetos under the door during their two minute rest periods. Get back to work, people!