Garth Owen


Garth writes pulpy stories of action and adventure, such as the Mongrels series and the Lost Picture Show tales.

Lost Picture Show

From an apocalypse of time travellers at the inauguration, to Trumpy Bear’s feud with Ranger Smith over forest fire alarmism, and on, updating every week, the Alternative Facts mailing list offers flash fiction, satire and commentary on US and world politics.

Alternative Facts: Totally True Tales Of Trump collects the prose from the emails, and updates with new flash fiction, jokes and satire every month. This is the first volume, which will carry on updating until December 2017- with the second volume coming out in January 2018- or until the US politics stops providing such ripe material for criticism and mockery.

Half the royalties from this book will go to charities supporting people affected by the craziness it makes fun of.

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In a climate changed future, Pickers travel the badlands between towns and farms, salvaging what they can from before the collapse.

One family of Pickers is about to start a search for a prize that could change everything.

Remy and his family are on the hunt for a seed bank, hidden away before climate change crashed everything. The trail has led them to a hidden bunker, and what they find inside is going to set them on a long journey, back to the community they ran away from ten years ago.

With a grain blight ravaging crops in France, the seed bank could be the only hope of finding resistant strains and saving the country’s remaining towns from starvation. Remy, Maxine, Veronique and Tony are determined to break into the vault and liberate the seed lines. However, they are in Spain, and they will have to cross the country, dodging ravaging bands of Raiders, and get over the Pyrenees before they’re even in France. And then, there is another obstacle. Only one valley over from their destination is the community they ran away from ten years earlier. The people of The Valley would be ideal recipients for a bounty of seeds, but will they welcome Remy and his family back after all these years?

Pickers was first released as a four part serial last year. This collected edition has had sections re-written.

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Warden’s Lodge has a blood soaked history dating back to before the Civil War. After a violent massacre it has stood empty for over twenty years. The locals keep their doors locked and are never far from a gun, fearing what they think lives in the lodge.

When eight teenagers turn up, determined to have a party in the lodge despite the warnings, blood can’t be far away.

In one long, violent night the lodge is going to claim more lives.

A house with a grisly history.

The killer who calls it home.

Eight teens planning a party.

But who’s hunting who?

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Mongrels

“There wasn’t an officer over the age of thirty-five in the squad room. There were some old-timers still in uniform, but a generation of law enforcement was in prison or retirement, and the children had taken their places.

Barker’s desk was laden with paperbacks, video discs and action figures. His understanding of his job came as much from these as any training he had received. There were rules about custody of evidence, treatment of suspects and general behaviour, but the language, customs and costumes were ripped and mashed up from popular fiction more than any local traditions.”

Barker and his partner Ennis are investigating the death of a young man found shot in a long abandoned building. They have no witnesses, no identification and few leads. Until a DNA test brings back an exact match to another body found two months earlier in another city.

How are the bodies related? And what do they have to do with the mysterious artificial intelligences known as the Patrons and their shadowy enforcers, the Mongrels?

After the Resource wars and ecological collapse, humanity has been saved by the mysterious artificial intelligences known as the Patrons. Facing open hostility and violence, the Patrons have recruited human enforcers. Part human, part machine, the Mongrels keep the peace and do their Patrons’ dirty work.

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Tammy, Tatiana and Miko- enhanced humans working for a mysterious Artificial Intelligence known only as Ruby Horse- have been sent to an Eastern European forest to shut down a secret lab which has started offering combat robots to the highest bidder.

“General Ordnance Division, shortened to GOD, had been the prefix attached to the model names of the original series of military robots out of the old United States of America. The name, with all its overtones, had stuck and been used to describe any robotic device seen in proximity to a human in uniform. From the humblest personal load carrier all the way up to the autonomous stealth cruisers- some of which were reputed to still be patrolling the Pacific and committing acts of piracy for spares and consumables- each one was a GOD.

With the exception of ghost navies and other legends most of the gun-toting GODs had done away with one another in the resource wars which had scarred the years before the emergence of the Patrons. But there were a lot of surplus unarmed GODs knocking around, and numerous civilian versions had appeared based upon the tech. GODs, particularly the older ones, were simple by the standards of current Intelligences. They were easy to work on, though modifications tended to have unintended consequences which were usually of the dangerous kind.”

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Other Books

B-Movie-cvr-150

Reviews of films, books and games from the archives of the long-running Spinneyhead weblog.

Ian Pattinson- and his pulp fiction alter ego, Garth Owen- has been reviewing all sorts of entertainment for years. Short and sharp, and occasionally silly, the reviews cover everything from Summer blockbusters to grindhouse obscurities, this collection has a bit of everything.

This is a continually evolving book, with more reviews being added all the time.

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Rockcover2-150

On an abandoned space station built into a hollowed out asteroid, the old woman has raised The Boy and created massive books from data gathered across a multitude of worlds. But now it is time for a mysterious visitor to take The Boy and the books away, if her own past doesn’t catch up with her first.

A short story from an abandoned world reached through the Lesser Universe.

The Lesser Universe is a parallel dimension of strange physics and barely understood dangers. But spacefarers have risked their lives in it for centuries, because it offers them a short cut between stars. Intrigue, wars, treachery, and even romance, happen on the many worlds the Lesser Universe has opened up to humanity, and sometimes slide into the strange domain itself.

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