Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse (2008) by JJ Adams (ed)
I got this book earlier in the year and have been quite excited to read it because of my fascination with the PA genre and in spite of the fact that I don't really dig on short stories too much.
Unfortunately, the whole thing does not come together too well as a collection. There are 23 short stories here which were written from 1973 to 2006. While many of them certainly qualify as apocalyptic there are others that seem weirdly out of place.
It is not like the list of writers is poor - we have stories from Stephen King, Gene Wolfe and Lethem. My feeling is that the editor never had a clear idea about how he wanted to present what he felt were PA stories and as a consequence he just grabbed whatever he could find and threw them in there. Something of a disappointment.
1 comment:
I picked this up based on the editor's blogs (he obviously raves about it) and I have to say that I was also unfulfilled to the point that I could not even finish it. You are right on both counts: the authors are great but the collection somehow comes off disjointed.
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