David Conyers

Major Harrison Peel of Australian Army Intelligence is an ongoing character appearing in several weird science fiction stories by David Conyers. Although a contemporary character, Peel’s world is one plagued by time travel and causality, dimensional gates, alien monsters, strange worlds, and bizarre physics. He has travelled to all the far corners of the world to combat these alien intrusions into our dimension wherever they occur.

WEAPON GRADE

The Spiraling Worm, Chaosium Inc., 2007

After suffering severe radiation poisoning after his encounter with a shoggoth in Sydney, Peel is dying. He hopes to go quietly, but NSA agent JAck Dixon calls upon Peel’s expertise, dragging him to Utah, Antarctica and finally another universe, to secret US bases where Dixon’s government has long been studying the properties of shoggoths. Meanwhile, an Israeli spy hopes to steal a tissue sample of a shoggoth, only to be defeated by Peel as they pass between dimensions. Strange outcomes abound, one is saved, and the other becomes something that is no longer human.  

MADE OF MEAT

The Temple of Dagon, May 2005
The Spiraling Worm, Chaosium Inc., 2007

In the Asian jungle Peel knows he's fighting a loosing war against Tcho-Tcho terrorists. They know his every move, efficiently eliminating his agents under his very nose. Perhaps a veteran of a Vietnam War can provide Peel with the intelligence he desperately requires to bring his enemy's reign to an end. 

Conyers doesn't write mythos stories for their own sake; the trappings are always at the service of clever plotting, believable character development, snappy dialogue and tightly written action scenes. - Matthew T Carpenter, Amazon.com

Disturbingly cool. This story has some great imagery and is told very well. The transition between points of view seldom seems awkward and gives us a complete take on what is happeneing while no single character ever knows. Great job. - Joshua Goudreau, author of Cities of Androscoggin: Out of the Shadows

IMPOSSIBLE OBJECT 

Dreaming in R'lyeh, Vol 1. Issue 3, 2005
The Spiraling Worm, Chaosium Inc., 2007

An alien city has been unearthed in the outback desert of Western Australia. The government's investigation of the city found nothing of value except for one strange artefact, the Impossible Object, which no one can describe or classify. Can Major Harrison Peel discover its purpose before more researchers fall foul to its unpredictable properties? Read the story online here.

This story has a sense of alienness running through it arising from the descriptions and influence of the object and the city. It is the most introspective story in the collection but also the most atmospheric. The revelation Peel has at the end of the story is brilliant and creepy in its implications. - Shane Jiraiya Cummings, OzHorrorScope

Very cool concept, and a fun, disturbing read - Christopher M. Cevasco Editor/Publisher of Paradox: The Magazine of Historical and Speculative Fiction

Tautly written, suspenseful and an edgy ending. Definitely worth a few rereads!  - Matthew T Carpenter, Amazon.com

A genuinely eerie menace pervades Conyers's take on the Mythos in this neat little peephole view of a host of colossal mysteries. More, please . . . - Cody Goodfellow, author of Radiant Dawn & Ravenous Dusk

FALSE CONTAINMENT

Horrors Beyond, Elder Sign Press, 2005
The Spiraling Worm, Chaosium Inc., 2007

After the events of Impossible Object, Harrison Peel travels from Central Australia to Thailand, Los Angeles and then into the deserts of Nevada, spurred on by a strange encouter with a very familiar individual bearing disturbing news. Toxic and nuclear waste is materialising all over the world, and Peel is convinced its source is a new waste treatment plant in Nevada, utilising technology of great interest to the Pentagon.

David Conyers' pulse-pounding "False Containment" - a heady mix of science fiction, horror, and thriller - is a fantastic example of the kind of hybridization featured in the book. - Jeff Edwards, SF Reader.com

Well David Conyers does it again. "False Containment" is marvelous, maybe the best story in the book... All in all a  very impressive effort! I hope that Mr. Conyers is planning a great deal more mythos fiction. - Matthew Carpenter, amazon.com

This is a fantastic story . . . Conyers throws us an interesting twist at the end. Definitely a swift story with an engaging plot.. - John W. Oliver, amazon.com

Like a Delta Green scenario mixed with elements from a sci-fi B-Movie, but even better than that paltry description suggests - James Ambuehl, Editor of The Tsathoggua Cycle and Hardboiled Cthulhu

Some of the highlights of the anthology include . . . "False Containment" by David Conyers, has a fun and unique blend of wormholes, radioactive waste, government agents, time travel, and an ever-growing flesh devouring monster - Chris Welch, A Hellnotes Review

I can think of three stories, though, where I finished reading but could not stop thinking about the story; . . ."False Containment" (the last of which has left me with images that I'm afraid I'll never be free of). When the horror is so gripping that you can not continue reading but you cannot stop thinking, then you have read a rare crafting of language and imagination. In my mind, that is high praise. - Alexander Scott, amazon.com

Conyers has yet to disappoint me as a Mythos fan and this story just adds to that... [False Containment] builds tension and then relives that tension, not through resolution, but by unsettling the reader. All in all, it stands out as a good piece of work - Steven Marc Harris, Thousand-Faced Moon