Customer Reviews

Wastelands

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This book is a great read! If you are interested in post-apocalypse stories, this is a must have!!! Do not miss out on this one! Every story has a different flavour but they are all delicious! Dig in!

After the very disappointing The Living Dead I was anxious to see if this anthology from the same publishers would eclipse the former or simply stumble to the stable. I'm very happy to say that this was a much more satisfying read; with less focus on people dealing with each other and more about people facing an uncertain future. I strongly recommend this as a quick reader for in the bathroom or on the bus as each story can be read in just a few minutes.

Somebody once said that after a disaster there is always at least one survivor to tell the story to others. But what if you are the sole survivor and there is no-one else on Earth to talk to?

Long ago I read a SF-story (or should I say a post-apocalyptic story? Oh well, what's in a name?) about a man who was not only the sole survivor of the human species but of all existing life including vegetation. Because of his injuries he could only crawl. After several months he finally reached the Ocean, crawled into the water and died. His decomposing body would provide the Ocean with atoms and molecules so that in a far future, new life could emerge from it.

Because of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and the Cold War, post-apocalyptic literature was popular. But the fall of the Berlin Wall meant also the end of post-apocalyptic literature.

Today there is a revival of this genre. Probably because adventure and the possibility of starting all-over have a kind of charm. Maybe the most notorious example is Cormac McCarthy who received the Pulitzer-Price for his novel 'The Road'.

In this collection, you won't find stories where an invasion by Aliens or an uprising of Zombies are responsible for wastelands all over the globe. The editor of this anthology, John Joseph Adams, says that they could be the subject for another anthology.
The best thing I can do right now is to give you the name of each author and the title of his/her story.

The End of the Whole Mess - Stephen King
Salvage - Orson Scott Card
The People of Sand and Slag - Paolo Bacigalupi
Bread and Bombs - M. Rickert
How We Got In Town and Out Again - Jonathan Lethem
Dark, Dark Were the Tunnels - George R.R. Martin
Waiting for the Zephyr - Tobias S. Buckell
Never Despair - Jack McDevitt
When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth - Cory Doctorow
The Last of the O-Forms - James Van Pelt
Still Life with Apocalypse - Richard Kadrey
Artie's Angels - Catherine Wells
Judgement Passed - Jerry Oltion
Mute - Gene Wolfe
Inertia - Nancy Kress
And the Deep blue Sea - Elisabeth Bear
Speech Sounds - Octavia E. Butler
Killers - Carol Emshwiller
Ginny Sweethips' Flying Circus - Neal Barret, Jr.
The End of the World as we Know It - Dale Bailey
A Song Before Sunset - David Grigg
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I am a sucker for thematic short story collections. Although I respect "best of the year" books, there is something much more focused in an overarching theme. Years could be generally weak (although, thankfully, recent ones haven't been), and so the "best of..." collection suffers. But with themes you just know that if the editor has done his or her job, it is going to be good.

That said, I am an even bigger sucker for apocalyptic SF. Not the Mad Max b-movie kind, but the thought-provoking, inventive, chilling predictions of the many, many ways in which civilization or the world as we know it could be destroyed. So, naturally, when I noticed the gorgeous cover of Wastelands, and then the names written on it, I simply had to read it.

In one word, this apocalyptic collection is superb! The amount of genuinely brilliant fiction inside is staggering. John Joseph Adams has opted for established names, and those deliver stories that range between light-hearted quests - such as Jack McDevvit's Never Despair (set in the universe of his post-apocalyptic novel Eternity Road) - and poetic pieces like Gene Wolfe's delicate and silently horrifying Mute. There are tragic tales (George R. R. Martin's beautiful Dark, Dark Were The Tunnels) and there are tales of violence and strife (Paolo Bacigalupi's The People of Sand and Slag). And above all lies the theme of a world that has been, but is no more. An idea that holds as much hope as it does horror.

Two stories deserve special mention:

One of the most original entries in this collection is Octavia Butler's Speech Sounds in which the "apocalypse" has appeared in the form of a disease that renders most of humanity incapable of recognizing and producing speech or written words. People have reverted to a deteriorating primitive society that resorts to violence as the alternative to communication. But the effects of the disease are not passed to further generations, and hope is born anew.

Dark, Dark Were the Tunnels by George R. R. Martin has to be my favorite story in Wastelands. A few centuries after a nuclear war has destroyed Earth's surface, a form of humanity has survived deep underground, developing telepathic connection to the mutated animals that also dwell in the tunnels. Then a shuttle from the dying Moon colony - the only remnant of an age long gone - lands in search of survivors and resources. And the meeting between the two civilizations is not what any of them might expect.

Of course, not all stories in this collection are equally good. Stephen King's The End of the Whole Mess is more or less Stephen King being his usual manipulative self, using easily recognizable ways of extracting the appropriate reaction from his readers. Orson Scott Card's Salvage on the other hand - part of his "Mormon Sea" cycle - could very well be set on an alien planet with no change of setting whatsoever. The apocalypse has happened a long time ago, and Card is a lot more interested in exploring his religion than anything else.

Still, there isn't even one weak story in Wastelands, and the good ones are pure joy. Adams starts each entry with an introduction to both the author, and the story itself, and I found many of those really interesting. There is also a "For further reading" list at the end of the book, which contains almost every work of apocalyptic SF that's worth its salt.

All in all, Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse is as good as they get. There are both new, and old names, an amazingly wide range of themes and styles, and an overall quality that is truly rare even in this type of collection.

8.5/10

[...]

Most collections of short stories are, at best, a hodge-podge grouping of tales that go from the highly creative through those that are far less than memorable. While this compilation is no different than the norm in that manner, the number of high quality tale-telling far outstrips those that are merely written words on a page. I would recommend this book for anyone who has a bit of morbid curiosity and/or creative imagination of how it may be if there actually were an Armageddon. What if the sun rose tomorrow and there were few, if any of us, to see it?

The End of the Whole Mess - Stephen King
Salvage - Orson Scott Card
The People of Sand and Slag - Paolo Bacigalupi
Bread and Bombs - M. Rickert
How We Got In Town and Out Again - Jonathan Lethem
Dark, Dark Were the Tunnels - George R.R. Martin
Waiting for the Zephyr - Tobias S. Buckell
Never Despair - Jack McDevitt
When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth - Cory Doctorow
The Last of the O-Forms - James Van Pelt
Still Life with Apocalypse - Richard Kadrey
Artie's Angels - Catherine Wells
Judgement Passed - Jerry Oltion
Mute - Gene Wolfe
Inertia - Nancy Kress
And the Deep blue Sea - Elisabeth Bear
Speech Sounds - Octavia E. Butler
Killers - Carol Emshwiller
Ginny Sweethips' Flying Circus - Neal Barret, Jr.
The End of the World as we Know It - Dale Bailey
A Song Before Sunset - David Grigg