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A review by brucemri
The End Has Come by Ben H. Winters, John Joseph Adams, Sarah Langan, Mira Grant, Nancy Kress, Elizabeth Bear, Jonathan Maberry, Hugh Howey, Megan Arkenberg, Robin Wasserman, Annie Bellet, David Wellington, Carrie Vaughn, Tananarive Due, Jake Kerr, Seanan McGuire, Charlie Jane Anders, Jamie Ford, Ken Liu, Leife Shallcross, Will McIntosh, Chris Avellone, Scott Sigler
5.0
Good heavens, this is astonishingly great stuff.
John Joseph Adams is a really good anthologist - he has a knack for selecting themes that invite very diverse contributions and for choosing some excellent reprints, for volumes where that's appropriate. I've never been less than satisfied by a volume he's put together. And I already read and enjoyed The End is Nigh already, and was intrigued by his explanation of it being the first of a trio of volumes in which authors would be free to carry on their stories from impending apocalypse to apocalypse present to aftermath. This is the second volume of that trio, with apocalypses going off all around the characters.
Every single story in this volume is excellent. To begin with, they're all working with fresh apocalypses. The one more or less classic zombie apocalypse story approaches it from an angle just touched on a little in World War Z (and some more in The Strain), and in very few other zombie stories I can think. There's an alien invasion story that brings the human characters face to face with aliens who have nothing to do with the invasion, and sticks them with hard choices. Several of the stories work with medical calamities, including animal-consuming fungi and a global wave of genetic tweaks, not necessarily "defects", that shift human mental development in some tight but immensely significant ways. There's...heck, there's all kinds of things here, up to and including what may be the voice of God in the minds of human settlers on an alien world.
Every single story here presents characters I was interested in. I might not like some of them, but none were dull and none left me just wishing they'd all get eaten or whatever. Put that together with fascinating ways to push civilizations and species over, and you get - well, at least I got - a really, really rewarding read.
John Joseph Adams is a really good anthologist - he has a knack for selecting themes that invite very diverse contributions and for choosing some excellent reprints, for volumes where that's appropriate. I've never been less than satisfied by a volume he's put together. And I already read and enjoyed The End is Nigh already, and was intrigued by his explanation of it being the first of a trio of volumes in which authors would be free to carry on their stories from impending apocalypse to apocalypse present to aftermath. This is the second volume of that trio, with apocalypses going off all around the characters.
Every single story in this volume is excellent. To begin with, they're all working with fresh apocalypses. The one more or less classic zombie apocalypse story approaches it from an angle just touched on a little in World War Z (and some more in The Strain), and in very few other zombie stories I can think. There's an alien invasion story that brings the human characters face to face with aliens who have nothing to do with the invasion, and sticks them with hard choices. Several of the stories work with medical calamities, including animal-consuming fungi and a global wave of genetic tweaks, not necessarily "defects", that shift human mental development in some tight but immensely significant ways. There's...heck, there's all kinds of things here, up to and including what may be the voice of God in the minds of human settlers on an alien world.
Every single story here presents characters I was interested in. I might not like some of them, but none were dull and none left me just wishing they'd all get eaten or whatever. Put that together with fascinating ways to push civilizations and species over, and you get - well, at least I got - a really, really rewarding read.