Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #72923 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Customer Reviews

Great book to jump start your interest in the genre...
Like another reviewer has said, I'm not really a short story fan...... usually. I am however, a fan of post apocalyptic/end of the world/last man standing type fiction, so chose this book hoping to find a few good stories to tide me over until I found my next 'currently reading'.

The stories have been well selected and although they all follow a similar subject matter, they're all so different and even the very, very short stories stay with you after you've read them. It was interesting to find a few new takes on the genre and for this reason I'm glad I read 'Wastelands'. These stories have helped me find a few new branches to head along and broaden the subject for me.

This is the perfect book to have by your bedside, for those times when you only want to dip into a book....but be warned, even with the best intentions of "I'll just read one story to wind down before I drift off" can turn into ".....maybe I'll just read one more little story THEN I'll call it a night......or perhaps just a couple more....."

This is a great book for anyone familiar with the genre, but equally if you're new to this type of subject it's a gentle lead in to some of the best SF writers around.

What I really liked was the index at the end which gives further suggested reading lists. All books should come as standard with one of these. I had already found and devoured most of the further reading list given, but there were a couple that have now been added to my 'to be read' list.

Get this book whether you're familiar with the subject and looking for new paths or you're new to the subject and looking to explore it. There's something for everyone here.

Tomorrow never comes.
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

Un-put-down-able!
I have never been a big fan of short stories, but this is a fantastic collection, I read it non-stop from beginning to end.

It also has an excellent list in the back of the book of further reading for fans of apocalyptic fiction.