Psi-Wars: Classified Cases of Psychic Phenomena

The 13 inventive tales in this original anthology crisscross between science fiction and horror to comprise a multifaceted dossier on psychic warfare. Gabino Iglesias’s outstanding “Awake” takes the form of a confidential memo from a scientist overseeing a military experiment in sleep deprivation and warning of the terrifying capabilities it’s awakened in its subjects. Stephen Graham Jones presents his ambitious “To Jump Is to Fall” as the thoughts of a telepathic spy mid-skydive during a mission to breach a secret federal facility. In Matthew Kressel’s “Very Surely Do I Not Dream,” an artificial intelligence run amok threatens the fate of humanity with an algorithm through which it accesses “an ancient pathway into mental darkness.” With settings ranging from ancient Atlantis (“Protectors of Atlantis” by Mario Acevedo) to the battlefields of WWII (“The Calabrian” by Warren Hammond), into the present (“And When You Tear Us Apart, We Stitch Ourselves Back Together” by Betty Rocksteady) and beyond, the breadth of these stories is impressive. Readers will be taken in by the paranoid appeal of this offbeat anthology. (May)