A. Christopher Drown

A. Christopher Drown publishes under the fuller name Aaron Christopher Drown and writes speculative fiction across fantasy, science fiction, horror, and related forms. The Gods Must Clearly Smile is a short-story collection organized around shifting roles between hunter and hunted. Drown has explained that its title comes from a line attributed to Aristotle and that the stories range from the Old West to futuristic settings while sharing that central reversal. The collection followed his debut novel A Mage of None Magic, which won the 2010 Darrell Award for Best Novel. He is also an award-winning graphic designer, a second practice visible in his account of creating the collection’s cover. The Gods Must Clearly Smile therefore brings together two parts of his work: genre storytelling and visual presentation. Its varied settings are linked less by a single invented world than by the recurring possibility that a seemingly secure character may discover an unseen threat already closing in.