Steven Campbell Books In Order

Publication Order of Hard Luck Hank Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Steven Campbell, aka The Brain Whisperer, is an American comic, science fiction, and comedy writer. He’s also a speaker and educator known for catching people’s attention with a simple but wise message. Campbell’s work includes The Hard Luck Hank series and the novel titled Spell talker.

Screw The Galaxy
Screw The Galaxy is the debut in the Hard Luck Hank series. Hank is a great-natured mutant enforcer on the most irrelevant and corrupt space station on the distant border of the space empire.

He is a thug who knows he is one and has no problem with the realization. He settles chaos between rival crime syndicates knocking down a few heads and doing that with no bloodshed.

In his perspective, the galaxy has given him a special gift in the form of a mutation that enables him to persevere physical trauma.

Hank is virtually indestructible, which means he can absorb severe damage, take all the brutal beating and even regrow lost limbs. His boss realizes all this when Hank suggests that he would rather talk than shoot. His life has been good, but soon heel breaks loose for him.

Despite having the powers, Hank is a low-level gangster who lives comfortably enough to keep himself in Hamburgers, doughnuts and anything else he wants to eat in the coming years. He’s a close friend of the station’s corrupt security chief, Garm, and has no other ambitions except to keep doing the same for the next several centuries.

A couple of mutants show up, and they want Hank’s help to score some drugs, changing his life completely. The couple has been living next door, and one of them can change the galaxy. It’s an odd job, but they know Hank is suitable for the game with huge pay.

However, nothing is what it seems as the two mutants turn out to be level 10 mutants who are being tailed down by the navy. Meanwhile, the Colmarian navy is on its way to the Belvaille space station for an inspection. The residents only have a couple of weeks to clean the place before arriving. Due to its location, Belvaille is filled with only crooks, and every day is a battle of power struggles between the crime bossed.

The two refugees have been raised in a secret government lab to exist as living weapons. Now the government wants to take them back and to make matters worse, a couple of ferocious indestructible robots arrive and start killing. It appears they want the mutants too, and then a planet-sized alien spaceship shows up, and it’s up to Hank to resolve all this.

Hank’s job becomes harder as he wonders if the coming of the Colmarian confederations has anything to do with the recent taking of two Dredel Led. These giant robots had landed on Belvaille and killed anyone tried to stop them before they went into hiding.

Hank is a likable character, and even though he is dangerous, he can deal with most problems without getting wounded. Unfortunately, most of the problems are much more dangerous than for him. As a career criminal, in the course of the story, you will see him trying to do whatever he’s paid to do, but he stays honest despite everything.

Hank thought he had it all until a mysterious blue woman came into his life with an exciting job offer. They soon leave public light and find themselves at the galaxy’s center, having unwelcome attention.
The author has a skill for portraying a man who’s good at what he does not because of natural talent but because he has been doing it for a long time. Hank never finds time to rest; whenever he turns around, he gets a new problem to solve. He’s a negotiator among the station inhabitants, not because he is brilliant or an expert, but because if someone shoots him in the face, he’ll still continue talking.
Steven’s writing style is great, with a quirky sense of humor to keep the reader entertained.

Basket of Crap
Basket of Crap is the second novel in the Hard Luck Hank series. Hank was a perishing breed on the space station Belvaille. The criminal crew that once owned homes there were kicked out by the corporations that took control after the place became an independent protectorate.

With the discovery of the dead body, mutants hank’s adventures continue on the space station Belvaille. The place was not so big, but it was full of violence.

As an armed guard, Hank protects the casino, and with the corporations taking over everything, he thinks things can’t get any worse; the casino blows up on his watch.

There are no more gentle gang wars that were once popular and had made Hank’s seen as a negotiator. Instead, the city is currently plagued by the clash of corporate armies possessing heavy weapons. Ow tanks have started roaming the streets more often than before.

Out of a job, Hank soon finds himself working freelance. Jobs seems to come to his table as two women who pay him a large sum to find someone for them. When things take a different direction, Hank has to find a way out of the Basketful of Crap before he drowns.

Most people from the old days had either been murdered due to organizational changes or fled the station. These are changes that Hank had brought up when he was negotiating Belvaille’s status with the navy.
As Hank thinks about whether he can survive in this dangerous environment, he finds out that things are not as bad as they appear because they’re worse. The station is entirely different from the way it was in the previous novel.

Hank declines being active unless he’s paid something, which leads to the piling up of events that finally end up being revealed to be all interconnected. Hank will be hired to do some investigations, but with no leads, he will take a second or third job that pays directly.

The jobs involve violence against someone who might or might not deserve it but always up chaos.