Clines, Peter

Entry updated 17 November 2025. Tagged: Author.

(1969- ) US screenwriter and author who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Long, Deep Dream" in Cthulhu Unbound: Vol 2 (anth 2009) edited by Thomas Brannan and John Sunsen, and whose Ex-Heroes sequence beginning with Ex-Heroes (2010) competently exploits Horror in SF topoi as a passel of Superheroes combat a Zombie apocalypse in Near Future California, which is suffering devastation from a planetary plague that has virtually wiped out Homo sapiens. Working from a heavily fortified Keep, the various superpowered protagonists keep a small human population alive in a world whose hostility is conveyed with unusual complexity for a tale of this sort.

Clines's first singleton, Robinson Crusoe: The Eerie Adventures of the Lycanthrope (2010; vt The Eerie Adventures of the Lycanthrope Robinson Crusoe 2016), is a spoof text, ostensibly abridged by Cline from a manuscript by Robinson Crusoe (see Robinsonade) as annotated by H P Lovecraft; the tale is narrated in the first person, in a fair semblance of Daniel Defoe's highly usable style. Crusoe turns out to be a Werewolf threatened on his Island by natives who seem to embody the Cthulhu Mythos. 14 (2012) is set in a complexly haunted house [for Bad Place see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below]. The Teleportation device that motors The Fold (2015) turns out to have the unintended consequence of entering – or perhaps creating – Parallel Worlds on each use, the consequent Multiverse being, perhaps, fatal to the fabric of reality. In god's Junk Drawer (2025), the secret of Time Travel must effectively be rediscovered by a man whose experiences in an earlier era have been discounted as fraudulent. Clines's increasing competence, and a certain exploratory confidence, may lead to very substantial work. [JC]

Peter Clines

born Cape Neddick, Maine: 31 May 1969

works

series

Ex-Heroes

Ex-Heroes (New York: Permuted Press, 2010) [Ex-Heroes: pb/]
Ex-Patriots (New York: Permuted Press, 2011) [Ex-Heroes: pb/]
Ex-Communication (New York: Broadway Books, 2013) [Ex-Heroes: pb/Jonathan Bartlett]
Ex-Purgatory (New York: Broadway Books, 2014) [Ex-Heroes: pb/Jonathan Bartlett]
Ex-Isle (New York: Broadway Books, 2016) [Ex-Heroes: pb/Jonathan Bartlett]

Threshold Universe

14 (New York: Permuted Press, 2012) [Threshold Universe: pb/Conzpiracy Digital Arts]
The Fold (New York: Crown Publishers, 2015) [Threshold Universe: hb/]
Dead Moon (no place given: Kavach Press, 2019) [ebook: Threshold Universe: na/]
Terminus (no place given: Kavach Press, 2020) [ebook: Threshold Universe: na/]

individual titles

Robinson Crusoe: The Eerie Adventures of the Lycanthrope (New York: Permuted Press, 2010) [spoof claim to be abridged version of H P Lovecraft original: pb/]
14 (New York: Permuted Press, 2012) [pb/Conzpiracy Digit Arts]
The Fold (New York: Crown Publishers, 2015) [hb/Tal Goretsky]
The Eerie Adventures of the Lycanthrope Robinson Crusoe (New York: Permuted Press, 2016) [vt of the above: pb/Christian Bentulan]
Paradox Bound (New York: Random House Crown, 2017) [hb/]
The Broken Room (Ashland, Oregon: Blackstone Publishing, 2022) [hb/]
God's Junk Drawer (Ashland, Oregon: Blackstone Publishing, 2025) [hb/]

links

previous versions of this entry

Internet Archive