Monster Brigade 3000

by Martin H. Greenberg (Editor), Charles G. Waugh (Editor), William Tenn

This new anthology from the creators of Animal Brigade 3000 features 14 harrowing tales of future warfare--fought by a monstrous new breed of techno-killer. Authors include Poul Anderson, Joe Haldeman, Brian Hodge, and many more.

215 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published April 1, 1996

About the author

Martin Harry Greenberg was an American academic and speculative fiction anthologist. In all, he compiled 1,298 anthologies and commissioned over 8,200 original short stories. He founded Tekno Books, a packager of more than 2000 published books. In addition, he was a co-founder of the Sci-Fi Channel.

For the 1950s anthologist and publisher of Gnome Press, see Martin Greenberg.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an odd anthology, mostly because it's arranged very symmetrically. The first and last stories are classic novelettes from the 1950's, Down Among the Dead Men by William Tenn and Operation Chaos by Poul Anderson. The second and next-to-last are short stories reprinted from other recent Greeenberg anthologies by writers not as well known (Dan Perez and Brian Hodge), and the third and third-from last stories are less recent short stories by very well-known authors of the time (Algis Budrys and Joe Haldeman). The middle six stories are all original to the book, by Gary A. Braunbeck, Lawrence Schimel with Mark A. Garland, Billie Sue Mosiman, Bruce Holland Rogers, Jake Foster, Peter Crowther, and Robert David Chase. The stories are unified by the theme of monsters in warfare, with the expected complement of vampires, witches, werewolves, Frankenstein, etc. extant. As with most Greenberg produced anthologies, there are a few good ones and a couple of duds...your mileage may vary. My favorite story in the book was the Anderson, and aside from the Tenn and Haldeman, I also enjoyed Foster's very funny (and non-pc) zombie story and Braunbeck's typically bleak and dark one. Another thing that's odd is the title; I have no idea what it means. None of stories seem to have 3000 of anything, and none of them are set in the year 3000. Tenn's mentions 2145, Hodge's is set in the Nazi occupation of France, Haldeman's is set during the Viet Nam war, Braunbeck's is an alternate 1847, etc. The back cover says, "From the Creators of Animal Brigade 3000 and Commando Brigade 3000," so they must have just really liked the number matched up with the word "brigade"...? (The front cover is a picture of a monster who was obviously influenced by the Predator and Alien films.) It's a fun book, but nothing really special.