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A tightly themed, well executed collection: Wastelands captures our apocalypse fears and fantasies equally well and sometimes even simultaneously.Adams wisely chooses Stephen King's "The End of the Whole Mess" as an opener and moves into all manner of exciting territory from there. Wastelands is the expected mix of strong (and some average) short stories; most of them have a high re-read score and there is an good mix of diverse ideas and themes that keep within the central focus.THAT SAID: if y...
This sounded like a great idea. I read a lot of post-apocalyptic (and dystopian) books. I mean, a LOT, probably 90% of what I read. After this book, for the first time in years, I need a break. I've needed breaks from zombie books, but when I, need a PA break, something's clearly gone wrong.It's not that the stories are bad. Well, some of them aren't so hot, but some of them are quite good, and overall it is a decent collection. But it's all just sooo damn depressing. To go from one depressing s...
I have been thinking about all these stories. They range from really good to simply meh. I am going to borrow the format some other folks have used, this was a group read for Apocalypse Whenever. I don't think they will mind. The End of the Whole Mess: Let me just say they didn't think about the unintended consequences of their actions. Folks, let's remember the big picture. Salvage: First time I have read this author. Felt like the first chapter to a good story.The People of Sand and Slag: Seco...
This book had a strong start with Stephen King's The End of the Whole Mess, but quickly went downhill from there. Bleak story after bleak story had me feeling a little bit down.There were a few gems amongst them however. My favorites were Speech Sounds, Artie's Angels and Mute. My least favorites were When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth and The People of Sand and Slag. Although to be fair the latter wasn't my least favorite because it was awful, but because of its shocking content. I got a similar fe...
I didn't have great hopes for this since I've read a lot of post apocalyptic stories & books over the years. There's rarely anything new, the same old tropes. Kadrey even explains most of them in his offering as he paints a truly poignant picture that puts them all to shame. Most of the stories here are truly unique & fantastic. Only Butler's story was a repeat for me. I even liked King's! He was short & to the point for a change. Good point, too. Doctorow's story focused on an overlooked area,
A lazy holiday caprice which only disappointed. I read the stories by the heavy hitters first and then hunted and pecked, ending with a surprising story Last of the O Levels which was about a carnival and a pervasive mutation. I'm somewhat sure I read the pieces by Stephen King and GRRM before, or maybe the selections matched their typical frequency. I don't know. I thought reading these after my Mark Fisher experience would be revelatory. It wasn't. When the world ends I'll be one of the carbon...
An incredibly solid collection of short stories. Most of them highly entertaining and original. Some more so than others obviously but I wouldn't put any story in the book under 3 stars and most are at 4 stars. I've acquired a lot of JJ Adams edited compilations here and I'm looking forward to reading them especially if they are as well done as this one.
This is an overall incredibly good but mostly rather depressing collection. But it explores mostly the lives of people trying to survive, sometimes failing to do so, in a postapocalyptic landscape so one might expect that much. And there are definitely glimpses of hope, sometimes even a bit of humor. Some of the best stories included “Speech sounds” which deals with a woman’s loss of the ability to read the books she loved “Ginny sweethips’ flying circus” which offers up the story of a woman usi...
The worst:The End of the Whole Mess by Stephen King: Reviewers keep talking about what a great story this was to open the collection. Nope. It's crap.Waiting for the Zephyr by Tobias S. Buckell: This was a really short and seemingly inoffensive story about a girl trying to escape her family and get on a wind-driven landship out of town, but I hated it. I don't even really know why. It was like 4 pages long but it managed to infuriate me anyway.Salvage by Orson Scott Card: Mormon propaganda.A Son...
An excellent collection with generally very high quality stories, many of which have won numerous awards and have been published widely before. In particular, I liked Octavia Butler's story, as well as well as the story by Dale Bailey.The End of the Whole Mess by Stephen King (4.0) - Two brothers. One a genius, bent on curing the world of it's biggest disease. Violence. This was intriguing and thoroughly engaging, the story narrated as a journal documenting the tale of how the end came, despite
Would've been ideal if I hadn't read most of the stories in this before, since I'm a big fan of postapocalyptic fiction. But this does collect all my favorite PA stories, so it's handy when I want to go re-read them. Even better was the handful of new stories in the volume.
