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Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse |  | Creator: John Joseph Adams
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
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Rating:  63 reviews
Sales Rank: 9751
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Pages: 331
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6 x 1
ISBN: 1597801054
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.0876208
EAN: 9781597801058
ASIN: 1597801054
Publication Date: January 15, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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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.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 63
Excellant compilation September 6, 2010
Jonathan Brand (West Bloomfield, MI)
The book is well put together. There were several authors that I had never read before and after reading the book I sought them out. It is a book that you must have if you love apocalyptic stories. Some of them are odd and some of them are more of what you would expect, but all of them are very well written. Definitely worth the $17.
 DEFINITELY WORTH WINNOWING FOR JEWELS August 28, 2010
Jack Of Alltrades (Loth Ethtadoth Unidoth)
There is some chaff here, true enough, but I was surprised to find several superbly crafted stories by relatively unknown masters here, too.
There are half a dozen stories here that make this collection worth reading, even if from the library. I won't list them. They may be different for everyone, but they are unforgettable.
One thing I did notice is that the best here is not from the names you've heard before. I wouldn't buy the book, but I would skim it and enjoy what you find.
 Uneven collection of short stories August 25, 2010
Bryan (Ellicott City, MD)
I'm a fan of apocalyptic fiction (when it's good) but most of the stories in this collection didn't rise above the tried and true. The synopses at the beginning of each selection were useful; they helped me steer clear of a few stories which didn't interest me at all. Stephen King's contribution, which begins the book, is below his standard. As others have mentioned, the story entitled The People of Sand and Slag is hard-hitting in its nihilism, envisioning a future where humans, having adapted to a horribly polluted Earth, seem barely human. Most entertaining story for me was Judgement Passed, about a spaceship crew returning to Earth only to find it empty, apparently due to the Rapture.
 Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse August 23, 2010
miss sandy
Grand book...every story is different, and hits you on a different level. You need
to buy this book!
Wastelands August 3, 2010
Roland
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 63
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