Black Hole Sundown

“I believe the common denominator of the universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility, and murder.” — Werner Herzog

In his sixth, and likely final, full-length story collection, Brian Hodge serves up his most mature and expansive vision of a universe that is, by turns, actively hostile and coldly indifferent…

Yet, at the same time, is the ultimate battleground for carving meaning out of chaos.

Come for the horrors of the cosmos, writ large in the gulfs of space and time; stay for the horrors writ small, between the beats of a human heart. Among the casualties:

• Taken by members of a cartel, three electro musicians from Mexico City struggle to keep their lives and souls intact when they’re plunged into the ancient Mesoamerican heritage of human sacrifice.

• Two film nerds, clinging to the long-gone glory days of indie video stores, pursue their ultimate prize: a nightmarish lost documentary by the legendary Werner Herzog.

• The downfall of H.P. Lovecraft’s notorious seaport town, as seen by the hulking, career-doomed Bureau agent who broke the case wide open.

• When the monstrous god of social media demands its due, nothing has less value than your dignity, your conscience, your soul.

• After her father is exiled from their post-apocalyptic community, an adolescent girl deals with her sudden vulnerability to the resident predators, while a dark magic begins to re-emerge from the forests.

• A family suffering an unimaginable tragedy is engulfed by the discovery that their loss was hundreds of millions of years in the making.

Make your peace. A black sun is coming down, and it’s about to swallow everything.

Contents

“West of Matamoros, North of Hell”
“Insanity Among Penguins”
“Rut Seasons”
“It’s All the Same Road in the End”
“The Lone and Level Sands Stretch Far Away”
“Butcher’s Blend”
“Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth”
“The Atrocity Exhibitionists”
“He Sings of Salt and Wormwood”
“Mommy’s Little Man”
“I Was a Teenage Shroom Fiend”
“The Weight of the Dead”
“On These Blackened Shores of Time”
“Endnotes: So Long, and Thanks for All the Squid”