Just Finished Reading: The Mammoth Book of The End of the World edited by Mike Ashley (FP: 2010)

 

This is the last (for now at least!) of my Pandemic/Post-Apocalypse reading. Generally these books (this one containing 24 stories of eco-disaster, asteroid impact, pandemics, nuclear war and much else) are pretty hit and miss affairs. Some of the stories will be excellent, others barely passable but the majority will be pretty solid if generally unspectacular. This was actually one of those (in my experience at least) rare instances when nearly every story in here was at worst pretty good. For example I thought the worst (not actually shabby) story was by Robert Silverberg. That alone says something. The publication dates ranged from 1951 (Fritz Leiber) to 2010 (Alastair Reynolds and others) and included well known (again to me) authors as well as those I hadn’t come across before. My favourites included ‘The Rain at the End of the World’ by Dale Bailey, ‘The Man Who Walked Home’ by Alice Sheldon, ‘The Clockwork Atom Bomb’ by Dominic Green and ‘Terraforming Terra’ by Jack Williamson. But I think my favourite of the lot (which is saying something from such a strong bunch) was ‘Moments of Inertia’ by William Barton - If for nothing else for the really inventive (and to me hilariously funny) reason for the end of everything. As the Galaxy was consumed by a powerful energy beam and the last people on Earth prepared to kiss their collective ass’s goodbye they were visited by aliens who apologised for the inconvenience but they were the clean-up crew and hadn’t realised that there was intelligent life here. You see our Universe was actually the result of an industrial accident in a higher dimension and they’d only just noticed. Being moral beings they couldn’t just wipe out intelligent life everywhere (not just on Earth!) so had created ‘reservations’ to house every creature that had ever lived – everywhere…… So please stand by and, oh, yeah, sorry about that……! [lol] I just loved the irony. Humanity thinking itself so important and trying to figure out the origins and meaning of existence and it turns out to be the result of someone else’s mistake. Brilliant!

Anyway, this is a most excellent collection of post-apocalypse stories and will no doubt get you thinking about lots of things. I think that they’re all pretty reader friendly – despite the subject matter – so no nightmares I predict. Lots of enjoyment and musing though. That I can be sure of! Enjoy!