Search - Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse

Stories by Stephen King, Orson Scott Card, Paolo Bacigalupi, M Rickert, Jonathan Lethem, GRR Martin, Tobias Buckell, Jack McDevitt, Cory Doctorow, James Van Pelt, Richard Kadry, Catherine Wells, Jerry Oltion, Gene Wolfe, Nancy Kress, Elizabeth Bear, Octavia Butler, Carol Emshwiller, Neal Barrett, Dale Bailey, David Grigg, John Langan, and a "For Further Reading" list in the back. Something for everybody.

From the introduction by Adams: " ... tales of survival and of life in the aftermath that explore what scientific, psychological, sociological, and physiological changes will take place in the wake of the apocalypse. What you will *not* find here are tales depicting the aftermath of aliens conquering the Earth, or the terror induced by a zombie uprising ..."

I actually bought a second copy after reading Cory's story (When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth) and gave it to the college's IT Department at work. Black humor, but I giggled.

It's a keeper for me (not releasing it, sorry! No way, no how!) and a thumb's up :-)
AND I discovered some new authors I'd never read before!

I am a huge fan of apocalyptic fiction and these stories are some of the best I've read in any compilation. Original and gripping, minus the crapiocca of some post apocalyptic fiction (vampires...uh, I don't think so), it's well worth a read.

I am a big fan of post-apocalyptic fiction, but this book just didn't do it for me. I read the first 5 or so stories and couldn't read the rest. The stories are very futuristic and not really focused on survival (such as The Cell, I Am Legend, etc). It didn't capture my interest.

The main reason I got it was for the Stephen King story, which turned out to be one of the ones already published in Nightmares and Dreamscapes.. too bad.

This started slowly, but is ultimately a decent mix of good and mediocre stories from both familiar authors and new ones. It also includes a 3 page "additional reading" list of other post-apocalyptic fiction novels which is useful for fans. All the included stories are taken from magazines or other works, many of them older issues (80s-90s), so if you subscribe to sci fi/fantasy magazines, you may have already read most of these. Recommended for fans of the post-apocalyptic genre.