Primordial Soup Kitchen: A Collection of Short Strangeness

THIRTEEN WEIRD AND WONDROUS TALES populate this anthology by the author of the Airship Daedalus pulp adventure series. Spanning a thirty-year catalog and often satirizing the 20th century ideal of the nuclear family and social mores, Primordial Soup Kitchen is a collection of the stranger side of Todd Downingʹs short fiction. Automatons remember an idyllic past that never was. Ghost hunters track a psychic vampire in 1920s San Francisco. A family must come to grips with a terrible truth. Rockabilly zombies cruise the American Southwest in a classic Cadillac. A Harlem Hellfighter killed at the Western Front is reborn with strange powers. Four kids investigate a strange disappearance in a small Oregon town in 1982. With elements of horror, science fiction, adventure, humor and retro-futurism--each with an underlying dark streak--this collection is sure to entertain fans of the offbeat and macabre. FOR MATURE READERS

Auteur

Todd Downing is the primary author and designer of over fifty roleplaying titles, including Arrowflight, RADZ, Airship Daedalus, and the official Red Dwarf RPG. A fixture in the Seattle indie film community, he is the co-creator of the superhero-comedy webseries The Collectibles, and the screenwriter behind The Parish and Ordinary Angels (which he also directed). His first feature film, a supernatural thriller entitled Project, was included in a PBS young directors series in 1986. He has written for stage, screen, comics, audiodrama, short-form and long-form, interactive and narrative, in a career spanning three decades. The father of two adult children, Downing spent several years in the videogame industry, working on games such as Spider for the Playstation, Allegiance for the PC, and Casino Empire. He also creates book covers and marketing art for fellow authors and corporate clients, and has done voiceover work for Microsoft and the Seattle Seahawks Pro Shop.

Widowed to cancer in 2005, Downing remarried in 2009 and currently enjoys an empty nest in Port Orchard, Washington, with his wife, a nihilistic cat, and a flock of unruly chickens.