Skip to main content Skip to search Skip to search

Fiction Superheroes

All Those Explosions Were Someone Else's Fault

A Novel

by (author) James Alan Gardner

Publisher
Tor/Forge
Initial publish date
Nov 2017
Category
Superheroes
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780765392633
    Publish Date
    Nov 2017
    List Price
    $31.5
  • CD-Audio

    ISBN
    9781543690095
    Publish Date
    Feb 2018
    List Price
    $21.99

Add it to your shelf

Where to buy it

Description

Monsters are real.
But so are heroes.
Sparks are champions of weird science. Boasting capes and costumes and amazing super-powers that only make sense if you don’t think about them too hard, they fight an eternal battle for truth and justice . . . mostly.
Darklings are creatures of myth and magic: ghosts, vampires, were-beasts, and the like. Their very presence warps reality. Doors creak at their approach. Cobwebs gather where they linger.
Kim Lam is an ordinary college student until a freak scientific accident (what else?) transforms Kim and three housemates into Sparks—and drafts them into the never-ending war between the Light and Dark. They struggle to master their new abilities—and (of course) to design cool costumes and come up with great hero-names.
Turns out that “accident” was just the first salvo in a Mad Genius’s latest diabolical scheme. Now it’s up to four newbie heroes to save the day, before they even have a chance to figure out what their team’s name should be!

About the author

Contributor Notes

JAMES ALAN GARDNER has twice won the Aurora Award from the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association, as well as the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for short fiction, and the Asimov’s Reader’s Choice Award. He lives in Ontario. James is the author of Expendable, Commitment Hour, Vigilant, Hunted, Ascending, Trapped, and Radiant.

Editorial Reviews

"A very smart, funny, thrilling, and quite original science fictional treatment of magic by a master of both, featuring an irresistibly appealing heroine. " —Spider Robinson
"James Alan Gardner is a genius. He always knocks my socks off with his inventive use of language, wild imagination, and engaging storytelling, and this novel is his best yet. You'll love it—it's an absolute joy, managing to be funny, moving, and exciting all at once."—Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of Quantum Night
"Read this! It's brilliant, fast-moving FUN. The writing just POPS. A witty, wild ride."— Ed Greenwood, New York Times bestselling author

Other titles by

Shapers of Worlds Volume II

Science fiction and fantasy by authors featured on the Aurora Award-winning podcast The Worldshapers

by (author) Edward Willett, Kelley Armstrong, Marie Brennan, Garth Nix, Candas Jane Dorsey, Jeremy Szal, Jeffrey A. Carver, Bryan Thomas Schmidt, David D. Levine, Lisa Foiles, Susan Forest, Matthew Hughes, Heli Kennedy, Helen Dale, Adria Laycraft, Edward Savio, Lisa Kessler, ira Nayman, Carrie Vaughn, Nancy Kress, James Alan Gardner, Tim Pratt, Barbara Hambly & S.M. Stirling

They Promised Me The Gun Wasn't Loaded

by (author) James Alan Gardner

Compostela (Tesseracts 20)

edited by Spider Robinson & James Alan Gardner

Strangers Among Us

Tales of Underdogs and Outcasts

edited by Susan Forest & Lucas K. Law
by (author) Kelley Armstrong, James Alan Gardner, Edward Willett, Suzanne Church, A.M. Dellamonica, Gemma Files, Bev Geddes, Erika Holt, Tyler Keevil, Rich Larson, Derwin Mak, Mahtab Narsimhan, Sherry Peters, Ursula Pflug, Robert Runté, Hayden Trenholm, Lorina Stephens, Amanda Sun & A.C. Wise
introduction by Julie Czerneda

Radiant

by (author) James Alan Gardner
read by Katherine Gibson

Hunted

by (author) James Alan Gardner
read by Adam Henderson

Commitment Hour

by (author) James Alan Gardner
read by Darren Stephens

Ascending

by (author) James Alan Gardner
read by Christine Marshall

Expendable

by (author) James Alan Gardner
read by Christine Marshall

Gravity Wells

Speculative Fiction Stories

by (author) James Alan Gardner
read by Marisol Ramirez & P.J. Ochlan

Related lists