Apocalypse Wow: Wastelands Conquers All

Wastelands: Stories of Life After Apocalypse, edited by John Joseph Adams, has been one of the great success stories of the early part of 2008--selling out its initial print run (and going back to reprint), garnering rave reviews, and just generally conquering all in its path. Given the volatile nature of anthologies, which have a high failure rate, that's quite an accomplishment. But it's no surprise, given the careful editing and packaging of Wastelands, which has its own website (including free downloads of some of the fiction) and includes reprinted stories from the likes of Orson Scott Card, Jonathan Lethem, George R.R. Martin, Gene Wolfe, and many other luminaries.

Why wastelands, why now? According to Adams, the appeal of post-apocalyptic fiction is that "it allows us to strip away the artifices of civilization and take a long, hard look at ourselves--to speculate about how we would think and act if we had to do it all over again, and knew what we know now."

In the wake of recent environmental disasters and looming world-wide threats to civilization, it makes sense that readers would be fascinated with an anthology of this nature. "There's certainly a good dose of horror to be found--which to me is really the most potent form of horror in fiction, since the world really could end, and we really could end up in a scenario like one of the ones in the book."

But Adams also says there's an adventure fiction factor, too: "Post apocalyptic fiction typically contains elements of the Western...but what post-apocalyptic fiction most closely resembles is epic fantasy or swords-and-sorcery: there's often a lone protagonist on a quest to save his village and he finds himself confronting forces he doesn't quite understand."

So what's a typical Wastelands story like? Here are some first lines from stories by Jonathan Lethem, Stephen King,  Catherine Wells, Octavia Butler, George R.R. Martin, Elizabeth Bear, and Richard Kadrey to jump-start your imagination. If you want to find out who wrote which ones, you'll just have to read the book!

I want to tell you about the end of war, the degeneration of mankind, and the death of the Messiah--an epic story, deserving thousands of pages and a whole shelf of volumes, but you (if there are any "you" later on to read this) will have to settle for the freeze-dried version.

When we first saw somebody near the mall Gloria and I looked around for sticks.

There was trouble aboard the Washington Boulevard bus.

When you set out to perpetrate a lie, I suppose it's counterproductive to write down the truth like this.

They're dragging another horse from the canal, its chestnut coat sheened bubblegum pink from the freon.

The end of the world had come and gone. It turned out not to matter much in the long run

Greel was afraid.