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Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse
by: Stephen King, Cory Doctorow, George R. R. Martin, Octavia E. Butler, Jonathan Lethem, Orson Scott Card, Gene Wolfe, Jack McDevitt, Tobias S. Buckell

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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.0876208
EAN: 9781597801058
ISBN: 1597801054
Label: Night Shade Books
Manufacturer: Night Shade Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: January 15, 2008
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Sales Rank: 3983
Studio: Night Shade Books

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Editorial Review:

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.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Not really apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic
I was disappointed in this book as I was hoping for some pure "end of the world" fun. However, better than half of these stories are not set during an apocalypse or after an apocalypse; they're merely set in some distant dystopian future. Sorry, but dystopian does not equal apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic. Claiming that the stories contained in this volume are of these genres would be like saying that "1984" is post-apocalyptic. There's a few gems in here, whether they're about armageddon or not, but mostly the stories in here are of average quality. A few of them are just bad.

It's not a bad buy, but quite a disappointment for me due to the misrepresentation of content.

Rating:

- Varied Post-Apocalyptic Viewpoints
3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

My biggest problem with this collection is that many of the stories are recently written and from the pages of Asimov's and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. End result, I'd read 80% of these or so in the past several years.

The collection gives a wide variety of viewpoints of apocalypse types and as often as not focuses on life after the apocalypse rather than the actual apocalypse. They run the gamut from the strangeness of Ginny Sweethips Flying Circus and The Last of the O-Forms to the heartbreak of the King and the Bacigalupi works. Paolo Bacigalupi's is perhaps the best portray of the lack of humanity and empathy of a post-apocalypse post-human race. In fact loss of humanity is a theme running through several of the works in this book.

With any collection it can grow wearisome reading of the same subject matter over and over, and despite ... Read More

Rating:

- Not Free SF Reader
Wastelands is pretty close to the perfect anthology, making just a touch over the magic 4.00 story average.

For an authoritative (the editor does say he is now an expert) look at the sub-genre, it is a bit light on for analytical non-fiction. For readers, less space taken thanking your mates, more time writing about the work would be appreciated, I think.

There is a fairly lengthy bibliography of various written works in and around this particular sub-genre at the back of the book. What is lacking here is one for short fiction, which is a bit odd, for an anthology. There is a good website for the book mentioned here, too, and it is useful, actually lists the contents and authors and other information like reviews. If there wasn't space in the book, then the website would be a natural for this sort of list. Minor issues, but you can't be perfect without 'em.

That said, the more important ... Read More

Rating:

- Just Okay
I must admit I was a little disappointed by this book, a lot of the stories I had already read and the new ones were okay. All in all if buying this make sure you haven't read the stories already then it would probably be a good buy

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