It’s hard to imagine following up something like the end of the world.
But fans of post-apocalyptic fiction know that end-of-the-world stories aren’t really about the end—they’re about new beginnings and the end of the world as we know it. Our stories, our lives, our world continues on, even if the trappings change and the facade of civilization falls by the wayside. As the title of George R. Stewart’s masterpiece reminds us: the Earth abides.
And as the Earth abides, so does our interest in post-apocalyptic fiction. The genre has continued to flourish in the years since the original Wastelands (hereinafter referred to as “Volume One”) was published, and when I began reading for the new anthology I discovered a wealth of material to choose from. Yet it was very difficult to even contemplate following up a book like Volume One, which, to my astonishment, was widely hailed as not only the definitive post-apocalyptic anthology but as one of the finest anthologies of any kind. And, although it was my first anthology, it contained works by the likes of Stephen King, George R. R. Martin, Orson Scott Card, Octavia E. Butler, and other legendary figures of the SF/fantasy field. When you come out of the gates with that kind of success, it’s daunting to say the least to contemplate a follow-up.
But my love for post-apocalyptic fiction has not waned since editing Volume One, and it’s clear the genre is still at the forefront of many authors’ minds as well. Five of the stories included here are from the 20th Century, but the remaining twenty-five were all published from the year 2000 onward, and eighteen of those were originally published in the years since Volume One came out. That seems to indicate that the boom in post-apocalyptic fiction that I detected back when I decided to put Volume One together is still ongoing, and writers and readers now are seemingly as fascinated with the apocalypse as we were back in the genre’s heyday in the 1950s. Or, in other words, it’s certainly not the end of the world for the end-of-the-world genre.
In Volume One’s introduction (which you can find online at johnjosephadams.com/wastelands), I traced the rise and resurgence of post-apocalyptic fiction, citing the dawn of the Atomic Age as the former, and 9/11 as the latter. I also speculated at length about why we’re so fascinated by the end of the world. There, I said, “To me, the appeal is obvious: it fulfills our taste for adventure, the thrill of discovery, the desire for a new frontier. It also allows us to start over from scratch, to wipe the slate clean and see what the world may have been like if we had known then what we know now.” But it’s since occurred to me that many of us have a strong attraction to things that scare us; there wouldn’t be a horror genre otherwise. And in many ways, post-apocalyptic fiction is the scariest kind of fiction there is, because the more plausible a horrific story is, the scarier it is. Stories about demons and supernatural monsters can be entertaining, but deep down I don’t find them particularly scary, because I’m pretty certain those things don’t—and never will—exist.
The end of the world, however? That could happen.
Will we ever sate our appetite for stories about the end? It’s hard to imagine that we will. At least not until the end actually comes…