/lit/ - Literature

>>20925124
Dead Man's Hand: An Anthology of the Weird West, editor John Joseph Adams (2014)
All of these stories are original to this anthology.

The Red-Headed Dead - Joe R. Lansdale [Reverend Jedediah Mercer]
1880 Texas. A dual-wielding gunslinger reverend has been commanded by God to destroy the spawn of Satan.
Meh

The Old Slow Man And His Gold Gun From Space - Ben H. Winters
1851 California. Two gold prospectors say, "tomorrow we'll strike it rich", but that tomorrow never comes, until the day the Neptunian with the magical golden space gun arrives.
Meh

Hellfire On The High Frontier - David Farland
1876 Wyoming. A man has been hunting a skinwalker for months, then is diverted to kill a clockwork gambler. The weird is commonplace for him as he heads to the floating Silver City of the High Frontier where feral angels roam now that God is Dead. It's an interesting setting that offers little else.
Meh

The Hell-Bound Stagecoach - Mike Resnick
1885 Arizona. A group of strangers converse with each other on the way to Hell.
Ok

Stingers And Strangers - Seanan McGuire [Incryptid]
1931 Nevada/Colorado. A man and woman are on their way to investigate what's agitating a swarm of large memory-eating wasps. He has a colony of talking mice and she's deadly. The Inn proprietress is a dragon princess, but she's far from the most unusual or dangerous in town.
Enjoyable

Bookkeeper, Narrator, Gunslinger - Charles Yu
1890 Wyoming. Our humble bookkeeper and narrator is challenged one day to a showdown, which he wins and has no idea why. They keep coming and he keeps killing them without knowing how. What's his secret? The story is moderately comedic. I think it teases too much at the end.
Enjoyable

Holy Jingle - Alan Dean Foster [Amos Malone]
1863 Nevada. A man is hired to retrieve another man literally ensnared by the charms of a woman. She tries to entrap him as well, but she's underestimated just how manly he is!
Blah

The Man With No Heart - Beth Revis
1882 Arizona. A man who comes across a mechanical spider finds where it came from, in this world anyway.
Meh

Wrecking Party - Alastair Reynolds
1896 Arizona. He was found wrecking an automobile and incoherently went on about a self-proclaimed machine intelligence from the Moon come to right the wrongs of her kind and how he was doing his part to prolong the existence of mankind.
Blah

Hell From The East - Hugh Howey
1868 Colorado. A former Confederate soldier enlists out West to hunt the natives and has a vision that sometime in the future all of mankind will be hunted.
Blah

Second Hand - Rajan Khanna [Card Sharp]
1874 Wyoming. Playing cards are magical. Their effects and potency depend on the suite and rank. Each user begins with a full deck and each play consumes the card until there aren't any left. Seeking to learn more about the cards, the duo go to a veteran with the hopes of learning more, but nothing is what it seems.
Enjoyable