[Wastelands 01] • Wastelands · Stories of the Apocalypse

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 Revelation to The Road Warrior; from A Canticle for Leibowitz to The Road, storytellers have long imagined the end of the world, weaving eschatological tales of catastrophe, chaos, and calamity. In doing so, these visionary authors have addressed one of the most challenging and enduring themes of imaginative fiction: the nature of life in the aftermath of total societal collapse.

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. Whether the end of the world comes through nuclear war, ecological disaster, or cosmological cataclysm, these are tales of survivors, in some cases struggling to rebuild the society that was, in others, merely surviving, scrounging for food in depopulated ruins and defending themselves against monsters, mutants, and marauders.

Complete with introductions and an indispensable appendix of recommendations for further reading, Wastelands delves into this bleak landscape, uncovering the raw human emotion and heart-pounding thrills at the genre’s core.

Contains the following stories:

Introduction by John Joseph Adams

The End of the Whole Mess by Stephen King

Salvage by Orson Scott Card

The People of Sand and Slag by Paolo Bacigalupi

Bread and Bombs by M. Rickert

How We Got In Town and Out Again by Jonathan Lethem

Dark, Dark Were the Tunnels by George R. R. Martin

Waiting for the Zephyr by Tobias S. Buckell

Never Despair by Jack McDevitt

When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth by Cory Doctorow

The Last of the O-Forms by James Van Pelt

Still Life With Apocalypse by Richard Kadrey

Artie’s Angels by Catherine Wells

Judgment Passed by Jerry Oltion

Mute by Gene Wolfe

Inertia by Nancy Kress

And the Deep Blue Sea by Elizabeth Bear

Speech Sounds by Octavia E. Butler

Killers by Carol Emshwiller

Ginny Sweethips’ Flying Circus by Neal Barrett, Jr.

The End of the World as We Know It by Dale Bailey

A Song Before Sunset by David Grigg

Episode Seven... by John Langan

Appendix: For Further Reading