Clines, Peter

Entry updated 12 September 2022. 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. Clines's increasingly 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]

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/]

links

previous versions of this entry

Internet Archive