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A review by millennial_dandy
Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse by John Joseph Adams
4.0
I suppose one could say that going into year three of the Covid-19 pandemic has got me in the mood for a bit of cathartic apocalypse reading. Enter 'Wastelands.'
With stories from 22 different authors, 'Wastelands' as a collection really does have something for everyone: technology and nuclear-warfare run amok, check. Inter-planetary travel, check. Commentary on religion, check. And plague and mutants, of course. We get to see the world end 22 different times, in 22 different ways.
To say that 'cynicism' runs as rampant as some of the viruses in this collection would be a collosal understatement, so no new ground was trod there, yet the stories were picked with enough care that this rather bleak messaging at least didn't feel redundant.
There are some big names in 'Wastelands': we start off with Stephen King, we get George R.R. Martin, Octavia Butler, Orson Scott Card, and a slew of others that, based on the brief biographies, seem like fairly heavy-hitters in sci-fi/dystopian fiction.
Were there any standouts? Well, this is where we get subjective. The very stories I found to be the least punchy could easily be someone else's favorite, but I will say that I was personally more impressed by some of the authors I'd never heard of than the ones I had. Not because the more famous names had done less impressive work, just that if you've read one King or Butler story, you kind of know what to expect, and you get it.
My personal favorites, i.e. the ones I found the creepiest, the most uncanny, the ones that really got under my skin, were:
1. The People of Sand and Slag by Paolo Bacigalupi -- If you're an animal lover, this one is tough, but Bacigalupi does an amazing job really taking a look at the dark side of things like cloning and hyper-advanced medicine.
2. A Song Before Sunset by David Grigg -- A truly heartbreaking counterpart to the infinitely more optimist 'Station Eleven' by Emily St. John Mandel, this story explores a similar thesis: 'survival is insufficient.'
3. When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth by Cory Doctorow -- This wasn't so much creepy as it was novel in its perspective. The apocalypse itself was your standard 'everyone catches a mysterious illness and dies instantly' fare, but our POV characters are a group of data scientists and programmers who try to keep the internet running post-apocalypse by networking with small groups like theirs around the world. Some of the lingo likely went over my head, as I've limited proximity to that sphere, but it was an interesting thought experiment.
4. Judgment Passed by Jerry Oltion -- What if the Day of Reckoning Comes, but you were off-planet and so you missed it? That's the premise of this short story. A small group of astronauts return to Earth only to discover that in their absense, God or Jesus swooped down and took away all the people, leaving them the sole humans to populate the planet. This sparks discussion among them of whether or not to try to get God's attention and let Him know He missed a few. Though seemingly an on-the-nose examination of religious fanaticism, Oltion does it in such a smart way that it feels fresh.
With stories from 22 different authors, 'Wastelands' as a collection really does have something for everyone: technology and nuclear-warfare run amok, check. Inter-planetary travel, check. Commentary on religion, check. And plague and mutants, of course. We get to see the world end 22 different times, in 22 different ways.
To say that 'cynicism' runs as rampant as some of the viruses in this collection would be a collosal understatement, so no new ground was trod there, yet the stories were picked with enough care that this rather bleak messaging at least didn't feel redundant.
There are some big names in 'Wastelands': we start off with Stephen King, we get George R.R. Martin, Octavia Butler, Orson Scott Card, and a slew of others that, based on the brief biographies, seem like fairly heavy-hitters in sci-fi/dystopian fiction.
Were there any standouts? Well, this is where we get subjective. The very stories I found to be the least punchy could easily be someone else's favorite, but I will say that I was personally more impressed by some of the authors I'd never heard of than the ones I had. Not because the more famous names had done less impressive work, just that if you've read one King or Butler story, you kind of know what to expect, and you get it.
My personal favorites, i.e. the ones I found the creepiest, the most uncanny, the ones that really got under my skin, were:
1. The People of Sand and Slag by Paolo Bacigalupi -- If you're an animal lover, this one is tough, but Bacigalupi does an amazing job really taking a look at the dark side of things like cloning and hyper-advanced medicine.
2. A Song Before Sunset by David Grigg -- A truly heartbreaking counterpart to the infinitely more optimist 'Station Eleven' by Emily St. John Mandel, this story explores a similar thesis: 'survival is insufficient.'
3. When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth by Cory Doctorow -- This wasn't so much creepy as it was novel in its perspective. The apocalypse itself was your standard 'everyone catches a mysterious illness and dies instantly' fare, but our POV characters are a group of data scientists and programmers who try to keep the internet running post-apocalypse by networking with small groups like theirs around the world. Some of the lingo likely went over my head, as I've limited proximity to that sphere, but it was an interesting thought experiment.
4. Judgment Passed by Jerry Oltion -- What if the Day of Reckoning Comes, but you were off-planet and so you missed it? That's the premise of this short story. A small group of astronauts return to Earth only to discover that in their absense, God or Jesus swooped down and took away all the people, leaving them the sole humans to populate the planet. This sparks discussion among them of whether or not to try to get God's attention and let Him know He missed a few. Though seemingly an on-the-nose examination of religious fanaticism, Oltion does it in such a smart way that it feels fresh.