Post-apocalyptic fiction is about worlds that have already burned. Apocalyptic fiction is about worlds that are burning.
The End is Nigh is about the match.
I love short story collections – eat them up like candy, actually, so expect to see me review one every few weeks – but sometimes it’s hard to find one with really good stories. A lot of editors seem to have a talent for finding pretty mediocre work. John Joseph Adams consistently puts together the most amazing collection of talent, especially in his zombie-themed compilations, The Living Dead and The Living Dead 2. Keep in mind that I don’t even like the zombie genre; you can imagine how amazed I was to pick up one of those on a whim and enjoy every story inside. So when I found out that the editor who specializes in dark, off-beat science-fiction was releasing a trilogy of pre-Apocalypse stories, and the book was co-edited by Wool and Sand author Hugh Howey? Sold.
I did have some reservations when I read Adams’s intro. “..I suggested that Hugh and I co-edit an anthology of post-apocalyptic fiction.” Great! “What if, instead of just editing a single anthology, we published a series of anthologies, each exploring a different facet of the apocalypse?” Fantastic idea! “So when we recruited authors for this project, we encouraged them to consider writing not just one story for us, but one story for each volume, and then connecting them so that the reader gets a series of mini-triptychs within the Apocalypse Triptych.” And I thought, oh shit. We’ve gone from a theme to a gimmick, haven’t we? Is this going to be a collection of story snippets, unfinished and unresolved so we’ll be on the hook to buy the next two books? Well, not really. A few of the authors would only agree to write the one story. Several will be coming back for another installment, but the idea was to make each chapter stand on it’s own. Some authors are better at this than others.
The twenty-two stories in The End is Nigh cover a range of possible world endings: alien invasion, planet-destroying comet (several of those), planet-wide contagion, pollution and neglect finally killing the air, and terrorism (domestic or otherwise). And then there was Bring Her to Me, which was surprisingly creepy with an interesting (although unexplained) premise. I’m looking forward to seeing more of that in the next books, even if I was a little frustrated at how the story was cut off so abruptly.
The stories cover the whole range in quality as well. They’re all dark (end of the world, naturally), but there’s the darkness of people dealing with an end that’s already inevitable (Goodnight Moon), and then the darkness that comes from having the author focus on just how lovely and perfect everything was, right up until the moment that the main character’s happiness is destroyed forever (Wedding Day was a good example of that, as was Spores, although Spores was at least able to do a well-told tale of tragedy without being all-out maudlin about it). Stories like Break! Break! Break!, and Heaven is a Place on Planet X suffered from having an open ending; I ended up being annoyed at all that lead up with no payoff.
A couple of the stories were upbeat, or even a little comical, a few were straight sci-fi/action adventure. There were cases where it looked like the author was indulging an odd kind of wish-fulfillment, and then there was Enlightenment, a horror story about an obsession that was surprisingly unsettling. Dancing With Death In The Land Of Nod was probably the best story in the book, or at least my favorite. It very much stands on its own, with sympathetic characters and a satisfying ending. So of course it’s one that just about ripped my heart out.
I can’t say this is a collection to read if you’re easily depressed or anxious; it’s hard to find much that’s positive about the end of the world. By their very nature, stories about the apocalypse are going to be frightening and gloomy, and you’ll always have characters that show the worst of human nature in the face of disaster. Looking back over these, the ones I like best were able to show something amazing about human nature though: the ability for self sacrifice and honor despite (or because of) the fact that things have gone past the point where the ending can be changed.
So yes, darn it, the gimmick worked, and I’m now on the hook for the next two installments of this trilogy. I just hope the payoff for some of these stories ends up being worth it.