Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse

Rating NR Genre sci-fi Author Various Publisher Night Shade Books

Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse is an anthology of some of the best end-of-the-world science fiction stories from the last three decades (although most of the stories were originally published after 2000).  Comprised of 22 stories, Wastelands covers the whole gamut of apocalyptic triggers: war, famine, global environmental destruction, disease, and adult self-interest and arrogance.  John Joseph Adams, the editor, deliberately left out tales of alien invasion.  This entertaining collection looks solely at human error, accountability, and change.

Stellar writers including Stephen King, Orson Scott Card, Nancy Kress, Cory Doctorow, Jonathan Lethem, Octavia Butler, and Elizabeth Bear delve into the physical, social, and psychological effects of surviving various devastations.

The anthology begins with an emotional wallop as Stephen King’s “The End of the Whole Mess” sets the doom-and-gloom mood with both horror and humor. The narrator, who has little time before he dies, spends his remaining minutes giving witty, chatty explanations with the hope that others have survived the worldwide poisoning for which his well-meaning but naive brother was responsible.

Cory Doctorow’s “When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth” is a compelling look at how the Internet and the computer geeks that use it would endure disaster.  Doctorow’s unpretentious language and fast-paced plot make this a highly entertaining read.

While many of the stories are dark, most are by no means hopeless.  Catherine Wells’s “Artie’s Angels” is a moving testament to friendship and bravery. Despite having to live under a radiation shield and to deal with the barbarism of others, the kids of Kansas Habitat, with the help of a strong and caring boy named Artie, are able to forget their troubles for a while by focusing on the simple past-time of building and using bicycles.

Not all the stories revolve around the aftermath of devastation. Some stories that seem bleak are really just depictions of evolutionary inevitabilities in the far-future.  What is depressing is not the end of our world; rather, it’s the notion of a dramatically different, unrecognizable world in years to come.  One such story, Paolo Bacigalupi’s brilliant “The People of Sand and Slag,” describes how futuristic humans struggle with how to handle a dog, a supposedly extinct animal.

Stories like “The End of the Whole Mess” and Kress’s “Inertia” stand out because of their natural dialog, suspense, and strong human drama.  In fact, “Inertia” is without a doubt one of the best science fiction stories ever written.  The characters, who are disfigured from a new plague, are isolated in colonies.  When a doctor from the Outside comes in to study them, the colony inhabitants are at once excited and suspicious of the man’s intentions.  The personal struggles unfold as Kress shows how the older generation sadly deals with the memory of being free on the Outside and how the younger ones become increasingly aware and curious of that outside world.

The only shortcoming in this collection is that most of the stories culled are America-centric.  The plus, however, is that neither anti-religion nor pro-religion stances dominate the themes in the book.

In his introduction, Adams explores why apocalyptic stories remain so popular.  Both fans of this sub-genre of science fiction and those unfamiliar with it will appreciate Adams’s thoughts, which provide a provocative lead-in to this exceptional collection.