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The Buntline Special
A Weird West Tale

Mike Resnick

300pp
ISBN: 978-1-61614-249-0
Trade Paperback (6" x 9")
$16
December 2010
Cover Illustration and interior illustrations: ©J. Seamas Gallagher




The year is 1881. The United States of America ends at the Mississippi River. Beyond lies the Indian nations, where the magic of powerful Medicine Men has halted the advance of the Americans east of the river.

An American government desperate to expand its territory sends Thomas Alva Edison out West to the town of Tombstone, Arizona, on a mission to discover a scientific means of counteracting magic. Hired to protect this great genius, Wyatt Earp and his brothers.

But there are plenty who would like to see the Earps and Edison dead. Riding to their aid are old friends Doc Holliday and Bat Masterson. Against them stand the Apache wizard Geronimo and the Clanton gang. Battle lines are drawn, and the Clanton gang, which has its own reasons for wanting Edison dead, sends for Johnny Ringo, the one man who might be Doc Holliday's equal in a gunfight. But what shows up instead is The Thing That Was Once Johnny Ringo, returned from the dead and come to Tombstone looking for a fight.

Welcome to a West like you've never seen before, where "Bat Masterson" hails from the ranks of the undead, where electric lights shine down on the streets of Tombstone, while horseless stagecoaches carry passengers to and fro, and where death is no obstacle to The Thing That Was Once Johnny Ringo. Think you know the story of the O.K. Corral? Think again, as five-time Hugo winner Mike Resnick takes on his first steampunk western tale, and the West will never be the same.

Reviews:

“Mike Resnick is a journeyman in a world of apprentices, one who knows his craft. His name on a book guarantees a solid story and believable characters, constructed with imagination and grace. Most important of all, it guarantees entertainment.” —Raymond Feist, of the Magician trilogy

"Nobody spins a yarn better than Mike Resnick." —Orson Scott Card
               Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of Ender's Game

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About
the
Author:

Mike Resnick

Mike Resnick has won an impressive five Hugos and been nominated for twenty-six more. He has sold fifty-eight novels and more than two hundred short stories. He has edited fifty anthologies. His work ranges from satirical fair, such as his Lucifer Jones adventures, to weighty examinations of morality and culture, as evidenced by his brilliant tales of Kirinyaga. The series, with sixty-six major and minor awards and nominations to date, is the most honored series of stories in the history of science fiction.

Visit Mike Resnick online at www.mikeresnick.com.

See also Starship: Mutiny (Book One of the Starship Series), Starship: Pirate (Book Two of the Starship Series), Starship: Mercenary (Book Three of the Starship Series), New Dreams for Old, Ivory, Stalking the Unicorn, Stalking the Vampire, and Stalking the Dragon.

Photograph: © Carol Resnick