 |
| Wastelands
by John Joseph Adams | |
Alternative Titles
| Wastelands: stories of the Apocalypse | |
|
Summary
| Famine, Death, War, and Pestilence: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the harbingers of Armageddon - these are our guides through the Wastelands... From the Book of Revelations to The Road Warrior; from A Canticle for Leibowitz to The Road, storytellers have long imagined the end of the world, weaving tales of catastrophe, chaos, and calamity. Gathering together the best post-apocalyptic literature of the last two decades from many of today's most renowned authors of speculative fiction, including George R.R. Martin, Gene Wolfe, Orson Scott Card, Carol Emshwiller, Jonathan Lethem, Octavia E. Butler, and Stephen King, Wastelands explores the scientific, psychological, and philosophical questions of what it means to remain human in the wake of Armageddon. | |
|
Notes
Genre
| Science fiction | |
| Fiction | |
| Psychological | |
| Anthology | |
Topics
|
| The End of the Whole Mess | p. 3 |
| The People of Sand and Slag | p. 39 |
| How We Got In Town and Out Again | p. 67 |
| Dark, Dark Were the Tunnels | p. 87 |
| Waiting for the Zephyr | p. 101 |
| When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth | p. 117 |
| The Last of the O-Forms | p. 149 |
| Still Life with Apocalypse | p. 161 |
| And the Deep Blue Sea | p. 229 |
| Ginny Sweethips' Flying Circus | p. 267 |
| The End of the Word as We Know It | p. 283 |
| A Song Before Sunset | p. 297 |
| Episode Seven: Last Stand Against the Pack in the Kingdom of the Purple Flowers | p. 307 |
|
Famine, Death, War, and Pestilence: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the harbingers of Armageddon - these are our guides through the Wastelands... From the Book of Revelations to The Road Warrior; from A Canticle for Leibowitz to The Road, storytellers have long imagined the end of the world, weaving tales of catastrophe, chaos, and calamity. Gathering together the best post-apocalyptic literature of the last two decades from many of today's most renowned authors of speculative fiction, including George R.R. Martin, Gene Wolfe, Orson Scott Card, Carol Emshwiller, Jonathan Lethem, Octavia E. Butler, and Stephen King, Wastelands explores the scientific, psychological, and philosophical questions of what it means to remain human in the wake of Armageddon.
|
Science-fiction writer and novelist Octavia Estelle Butler was born in Pasadena, California, on June 22, 1947. She earned as Associate of Arts degree from Pasadena City College in 1968 and later attended California State University and the University of California. Her first novel, Patternmaster, was the first in a series about a society run by a group of telepaths who are mentally linked to one another. She explored the topics of race, poverty, politics, religion, and human nature in her works. She won a Hugo Award in 1984 for her short story Speech Sounds and a Hugo Award and Nebula Award in 1985 for her novella Bloodchild. She received a MacArthur Grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The award pays $295,000 over a five-year period to creative people who push the boundaries of their fields. She died in Lake Forest Park, Washington on February 24, 2006 at the age of 58. (Bowker Author Biography)
|
|
From Steven King's take on the end of humanity through science gone wrong ("The End of the Whole Mess") to John Langan's horrific tale of a small group's valiant last stand against an unbeatable enemy ("Episode Seven: Last Stand Against the Pack in the Kingdom of the Purple Flowers"), the 22 stories in this end-of-days anthology run the gamut from nuclear devastation to environmental debacle to the Second Coming. Also featuring Orson Scott Card, Octavia E. Butler, and Gene Wolfe, and including an original story by Jerry Oltion ("Judgement Passed"), this title belongs in most sf or short fiction collections. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
|
This harrowing reprint anthology of 22 apocalyptic tales reflects the stresses of contemporary international politics, with more than half published since 2000. All depict unsettling societal, physical and psychological adaptations their authors postulate as necessary for survival after the end of the world. Keynoted by Stephen King's "The End of the Whole Mess," the volume's common denominator is hubris: that tragic human proclivity for placing oneself at the center of the universe, and each story uniquely traces the results. Some highlight human hope, even optimism, like Orson Scott Card's "Salvage" and Tobias Buckell's "Waiting for the Zephyr." Others, like James Van Pelt's "The Last of the O-Forms" and Nancy Kress's "Inertia," treat identity by exploring mutation. Several, like Elizabeth Bear's "And the Deep Blue Sea" and Jack McDevitt's "Never Despair," gauge the height of human striving, while others, like George R.R. Martin's "Dark, Dark Were the Tunnels," Carol Emshwiller's "Killers" and M. Rickert's "Bread and Bombs," plumb the depths of human prejudice, jealousy and fear. Beware of Paolo Bacigalupi's far-future "The People of Sand and Slag," though; that one will break your heart. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
|
With this well-chosen set of postapocalyptic stories, editor Adams provides a bit of everything that is best about the trope, from bleak, empty worlds to beacons of hope in an otherwise awful situation. Only Jerry Oltion's Judgment Passed, about what happens when a space expedition returns to an Earth to which Jesus has returned, and the rapture has come without them, is original to the collection. Stephen King's bleak The End of the Whole Mess opens, John Langan's much more recent Episode Seven: Last Stand against the Pack in the Kingdom of the Purple Flowers closes, and they are wildly different. Highlights in between include Octavia Butler's Speech Sounds, in which civilization has ended because a disease has made most people unable to talk, read, or do any number of once-taken-for-granted things, and Elizabeth Bear's And the Deep Blue Sea, a brilliant take on a world laid waste and a devil's bargain that treads in Roger Zelazny's manic footsteps. A well-chosen selection of well-crafted stories, offering something to please nearly every postapocalyptic palate.--Schroeder, Regina Copyright 2008 Booklist
|
|  |
