Never Gut-Shoot a Wampus

On a distant world teeming with alien fauna, a minor landholder jumps at the chance to join Major Daphne, a famously reckless wealthy hunter, on an interstellar safari. The target: the legendary wampus, a creature as dangerous as it is prized. What begins as a straightforward trophy hunt spirals into something far darker as the party ventures deeper into the wilderness, where the line between hunter and hunted blurs. Marks, writing in the punchy, masculine tradition of 1950s pulp adventure, uses the hunt as a lens to examine what greed costs the man who pursues it. The story zips along with sharp dialogue and vivid creature design, but its real teeth lie in what it suggests about vanity, overreaching, and the creatures we become when we think we're the most dangerous thing in the room. A quick, satisfying read that lands its commentary without preaching.