Delta Green Fiction

In my last post I spoke a bit about Delta Green. After posting I realized that my familiarity with Delta Green is solely through RPG supplements and I was very unfamiliar with the Delta Green. To be honest, I have a tendency to avoid most "gaming fiction" - I read and enjoyed Dragonlance and Drizzt once upon a time but generally speaking I tend not to enjoy it. However, I was curious as to the Delta Green fiction so I asked around on the Call of Cthulhu RPG Google+ Community.The people there spoke very highly of the Delta Green fiction, even those who, like me, generally don't read RPG fiction. With that in mind I've obtained some ebooks of what seemed to be available and did some searching online to compile a list of what seems to be available in chronological order. After I finish the first anthology I'll post a review. However in the meantime I thought it might be worthwhile to share what I've been able to find.

Delta Green: Alien Intelligence. An anthology, out of print but available as a PDF from DriveThruFiction.com. It appears to be the earliest published fiction available though I believe some may have been printed in The Unspeakable Oath magazine.

Delta Green: Rules of Engagement. A novel by John Tynes (who is one of the creators of Delta Green and wrote some fantastic material in Call of Cthulhu d20). This book is out of print though it can be found within Strange Anthologies (below). I've linked to the Amazon listing for this book which appears to have some copies at a decent price.

Delta Green: Dark Theaters. Another anthology. This one sounds interesting, what with covering the raid on Innsmouth that gave birth to Delta Green and covering the tragedy in Cambodia which cost them their official recognition. Sadly, also only available as PDF. (I much prefer eBook formats but hey...) It is listed as the third Delta Green book and it lists the novel Rules of Engagement (above) so I'm guessing I'm placing it correctly.

Delta Green: Denied to the Enemy. A novel by Dennis Detwiller, another of the creators of Delta Green. He also was a co-creator of the Superhero RPG game Godlike, a very gritty take on WWII superheroes. Denied to the Enemy is set during World War II and seems to have been originally published in 2002. The version I link to is to the Kindle version from Amazon. Right now it is available for only $0.99.

Delta Green: Through a Glass Darkly. Another Detwiller novel. And the covers have suddenly gotten creepier. The link is to the Kindle version, the physical version appears to be in print as well. First published in 2011. I'm very much unfamiliar with this one. Reading the description, it seems to be about a Delta Green case that starts of in January of 2001 and serves as a bridge from the "classic" Delta Green era of the 1990s to the more modern (2010s) era. Also from reading the reviews it seems this one is a lot less standalone than the previous ones with lots of references to other works,

Delta Greens: Strange Authorities. This collection by John Tynes contains both short stories and the novel Rules of Engagement. Two of the short stories can be found within Alien Intelligence and Dark Theater. Looking at the copyright dates of all of the stories it appears that all of these were written prior to Through a Glass Darkly.








So I'm going to be plunging through these pretty much blind. I'm actually looking forward to it. As I work through them (which can take from weeks to months to years I'd imagine knowing me) I'll add links to reviews that I make.

Flipping through them I find myself looking forward to the upcoming Delta Green RPG that is in development. As most of my experience with Delta Green is after 9/11/2001 one reason I've shied away from it is it has always appeared a bit dated. While culturally I view the 1990s with some fondness, one thing which seems clear to me is just how close the 1990s were to the 1920s - a pleasant-enough seeming decade on the surface with a number of problems that were soon to manifest themselves and set the tone for the decades which followed. I think of how much time we spent thinking about the government hiding UFOs and not worried about an economy headed for some extremely rough times and terrorists getting ready to attack US warships and crash planes into New York City and Washington, DC.

However, I'm finding myself curious about those works set in the 1990s and even more about those set earlier in Delta Green's history. My gaming group has wrapped up its fourth Call of Cthulhu session in our current campaign and its becoming clear that I need a stronger framework to bind the characters together and direct them to their cases. With the game set in Arkham, Massachusetts in the summer of 1928 it seems a proto-Delta Green organization might take an interest in our band of investigators.