Apocalyptic

by S.C. Butler (Editor), Joshua Palmatier (Editor), Seanan McGuire (Contributor)

Who doesn’t love a good apocalyptic story? They come in all kinds, from the nightmare terrors of superflus and zombie invasions to quieter, more reflective tale of loss and survival. Stories that feature people struggling through the end of the world or fighting to survive in what little bits of civilization still remain are always compelling. What better way for readers to safely explore the extremes of the human condition without actually having to fight off the ravening hordes themselves?

APOCALYPTIC features stories from fourteen old and new favorite ZNB authors: Seanan McGuire, Aimee Picchi, Tanya Huff, Nancy Holzner, Stephen Blackmoore, Zakariah Johnson, Violette Malan, Eleftherios Keramidas, James Enge, Leah Ning, Thomas Vaughn, Marjorie King, Jason Palmatier, and Blake Jessop. Flee the Baboon King, die of thirst in the White Mountains, brew up a bubbling blob of nanotech road kill in the back of a garbage truck, or, worst of all, try to reintegrate yourself back into society as a former zombie. Then ask yourself, would you survive the Apocalypse? Would you even want to?

Genres: Short Stories, Horror, Science Fiction, Anthologies, Post Apocalyptic, Speculative Fiction, Fiction

220 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 2020

About the author

S. C. Butler was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the middle of the last century, which really isn’t so very long ago. He currently resides in Brooklyn, New York, with no dogs, no cats, and certainly no shape-shifting bears.

Reviews

[Mike Finn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The idea that some apocalyptic event will trigger the end of the world has entered our collective subconcsious. It's not a shocking concept. For many of us the question isn't, "Will there be an apocalypse?" or even "How do we stop the apocalypse?" but "What kind of apocalypse will finally hit us?" and "What will I have to do to survive?" and (for some of us) "Would I want to survive?"

The thirteen stories in 'Apocalypse' each has a take on these questions. Some of the stories are funny (in a dark "You've gotta laugh or you'd cry" sort of way. Some are grimly pessimistic. Some are hopeful. Some smell of schadenfreude. All of them made me think. Many of them kept me entertained and some of them made me want to linger with the characters and see them safely through.

I'm always on the look-out for new-to-me authors to follow when I read anthologies. 'Apocalyptic' added four books to my TBR pile and I'll be looking for anthologies with stories by at least three more of the writers in this collection.

I've given a review of each story below.

COAFIELD'S CATALOG OF AVAILABLE APOCALYPSE EVENTS by Seanan McGuire

For me, this was an amusing but slightly weak start. Kudos to Seanan McGuire for coming up with an Apocalypse Event for each letter of the alphabet but this is more a back of a napkin after a lot of beers list than a story. Still, if you're looking for prompts to write an apocalypse story of you're own, this is a great resource.

SOLO COOKING FOR THE RECENTLY REVIVED by Aimee Picchi

This is one of the most original zombie apocalypse stories that I've read. Actually, it's a post-zombie-apocalypse story, told from the point of view of a 'cured' zombie. It starts in a what-a-fun-idea way. It gets sadder as the reality of living in a world that has just been through an apocalpyse beomes. I think it's a good story for thinking aboun any society that's survived violent struggles.

TO DUST WE SHALL RETURN by Tanya Huff

I first read this story in 'The Shorter Parts Of Valor'. I enjoyed reading it again, despite how sad it is. This time around, I understood why the ship Torin Kerr was assigned to was called the CFS Palmatier.

THE END OF ETERNITY by Nancy Holzner

This is a punchline science fiction story with a big Ta Da! at the end. The start hooked me. I was intrigued by the main character's reaction to the imminent end of the world. The explanation was bold and original. The rest of the story didn't have the traction it might have had because the main character had such a thin grip on his own memories. He'd turned his history into a romantic mantra, bleached of all colour and with all context lost. I began to lose interest in him and kept reading only to find out how the story ended. The ending was what I expected but it was well done.

I checked out Nancy Holzner's novels and bought "Deadtown"(2009) when I read the opening paragraph:

"TWO RULES I LIVE BY: NEVER ADMIT TO BEING A shapeshifter on a first, second, or third date with a human. And never, ever bring along a zombie apprentice wannabe on a demon kill."

LITTLE ARMAGEDONS by Stephen Blackmore

LIke the Seanan McGuire story, this one explores a long list of apocalyptic endings to the world but it does it with a lot more zest and it has a plot. I liked the way this story showed that scientists focused on collecting and analysing data may be no better placed than the rest of us to understand what the patterns in the data mean for our daily lives. Although the situation in the story is bleak, it's veined with humour arising from the question "Will data-obsessed scientists save the world or end it?"

ALMOST LIKE SNOW by Zakariah Johnson

This is a grim, rueful, realistic story about how we to struggle to survive even when we know that we're doomed, as long as the doom is happening a little at a time.

It's perfectly paced and beautifully told.

It pulled me onto the thin ledge of life that Charlie is clinging to above the apocalyptic abyss and then showed me what Charlie already knows: one day soon he will fall. but, he will not let go.

One paragraph in the story seemed to me to sum up the mood of a lot of climate fiction at the moment. It certainly sums up my thinking:

"By the early 2000s, we’d accepted that global warming would exterminate us by the end of the century. Not that we said as much, but inaction spoke louder than words. Fact was, dying via slow-motion suicide was easier than casting off the socio-economic system we’d fought five centuries of bloodyi wars to perfect—the system that fêted the most grasping among us and celebrated them for their gluttony. Through fanaticism or apathy, we agreed to defend the privileges of our masters to the death. Besides, we figured we had a few good decades left—enjoy the party and the hangover be damned, right?"

I liked Zakariah Johnson's writing so I've downloaded his 2023 novel 'Mink Skinning Time In Wisconsin'

SHADOWS BEHIND by Violette Malan

I like the idea of an apocalypse caused by a war between mages. I felt an immediate connection with the main character in the story. The world she lives in felt like it had a lot of depth in Violette Malan's imagination. That gave the story a solid foundation. The magic system was intriguing and novel. Then there was the cat and the dog and the violence. What more could I ask for?

I went looking for Violette Malan's novels. There are lots of them but not even the most recent are available in a digital format, so I'll be following her work through the other anthologies that feature her short stories.

A TALE OF TWO APOCALYPSES by Eleftherios Keramidas

This story felt like the pursuit of an idea for structuring storytelling. I can imagine the author asking themselves: "What would happen if I told two apocalpyse stories with the same cast but different triggers and outcomes and intercut them with one story starting at the end and the other story starting at the beginning like a literal DNA for the tale?", My answer? A well-crafted, ingenious piece of fiction where the form was so dominant that it distracted from the content and I didn't engage with either story.

ZODIAC CHORUS by James Enge

I loved the writing in this. There's a sustained sense of dislocation that serves to strengthen the impact of the apocalypse brings the devastation of the apocalypse to life. The narrator (there may be more than one, the narrator isn't sure) has memory problems. Amnesia has laid waste to his mind as much as the meteors have laid waste to his world. The first line sets the tone for the story:

"I know more than I remember, so I don't realy know what I know."

The Zodiac of the title seems to refer to a poem written as a sort of suicide note that the narrator comes across. The end of the poem stuck with me:

" Enough whining; enough weeping
He is greedy of life who grasps at living
when the wide world goes with him to the grave."

I think this might be my reaction to an apocalypse. I can't imagine finding the will to survive at any cost. I think it might be my reaction if I was unfortunate enough to still be alive when everyone I love is dead.

LAST LETTERS by Leah Ning

I loved the set up and young Alice, the main character, and the perfect pacing of the plot. "Last Letters" is one of those short stories that I wish there was more of, not because the story felt incomplete or unsatisfying but because I wanted to spend more time in this world and I wanted to know what happened to Alice.

There is some charm in NOT knowing what happened to Alice. Now, in my imagination, she'll always be at the start of something, facing the apocalypse with an optimism that only the young and the loved who have no memory of a BEFORE can summon. Alice and her generation would always be the best hope of humanity. It's those who are haunted by what has been lost who grieve.

GUT TRUCK by Thomas Vaughn

I admire the calm, down-to-earth way this story, which brings together AI, direct action, upper-class arrogance and a working man's schadenfreude, is told.

Way back in the twentieth century, William Gibson is alleged to have said "The future has arrived. It's just not evenly distributed yet." "Gut Truck" is a graphic and gory example of a truth I think many of us have absorbed through cultural osmosis: "The future will never be evenly distributed. The rich will keep it for themselves." and of a wish some of us (or is it just me?) harbour "When the apocalypse comes, I hope the rich die first."

I'll be reading Vaughn's novella, "The Ethereal Transit Society" (2020) in the coming months.

SASS AND SACRIFICE by Majorie King

I liked this original take on the need for the forms of protest to evolve to meet changing circumstances and the importance of nuturing a spirit of challenge and independence in the young, encouraging them to live up to the nickname 'Spitfire'.

The story is set after a conquest of Earth by aliens who see themselves as benign. Their mantra is Do no harm, To Self. To Others, To All which sounds fine except how they enforce that mantra is inimical to an important part of what it means to be human. The question the story asks and answers is "How do you protest against benign rule?"

I picked up 'Maverick Gambit' (2019), the first book in Majorie King's space opera. I'm expecting it to be a fun ride.

THE BALLAD OF RORY MCDANIELS by Joshua Palmatier

Initially, I was put of both the y the ballad/folksy storytelling style and by the 'life is an (American) football game' mindset, but the plot kept tickling my curiosity so I read to the end and then had to smile. It was a great ending, which transformed the whole story.

TRUST FALL by Blake Jessop

'Trust Fall' was imprestsive. It used a plot about a climb during a polar vortex to the top of the ruins of the 650 metre CommerzBank II Tower in Frankfurt to unfold a view of a post-apocalyptic world, have a remarkable AI facilitate an intergenerational disucssion about grief and guilt and how to move forward from them and deliver vivid, tense and exciting climbing scenes.

I loved Blake Jessop's story 'Swallowtail' in the 'Last-Ditch' anthologyI bought 'Apocalyptic' so that I could read more of his work. I'll be looking out for him in other anthologies.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

S.C. Butler and Joshua Palmatier edited the anthology Apocalyptic. It has some great familiar authors in it (Seanan McGuire! Tanya Huff!) and more by authors I’m not as familiar with. Like most anthologies your taste isn’t entirely likely to line up exactly with that of the editors, so you’ll find some stories better than others.

Seanan McGuire’s entry is “Coafield’s Catalog of Available Apocalyptic Events”–a catalog of possible apocalypses that one might “order” up. A fun and whimsical take on the genre, and one of my favorites in this volume.

Aimee Picchi wrote “Solo Cooking for the Recently Revived.” We’ve had something like the zombie apocalypse, only the zombies have now been cured and are being rehabilitated before they’re released back into the wild. But how do one’s old family and friends deal with what you were–and how they had to handle it–before you were cured? This one is poignant.

The fact that Tanya Huff has a Torin Kerr story in here made me squeal in delight! I’m a total addict for her Torin series, and since I think she’s stopped writing Torin novels now, little stories like this are jewels. Torin is a military NCO in the far future, working with alien races in a kind of blended military. In this installment, she’s been sent with some of her people to check out a mining colony that’s gone silent. It’s a fascinating story. While the various aliens and such will make more sense to someone who’s read at least one of Huff’s Torin novels, the general plot stands pretty well alone.

Nancy Holzner’s “The End of Eternity” introduces us to someone who won eternal life in a card game, as he faces the fact that the world is about to end as a rogue planet crashes into it. Nice, simple, and enjoyable.

One of my other favorites is “Little Armageddons” by Stephen Blackmoore. Imani and Daniel have been working for years at feeding all possible data into a simulation, and now every simulation they run is an apocalyptic one that ends on today’s date. Some of those apocalypses are pretty ridiculous, mind you, so the higher-ups won’t listen (I mean, who really believes that the earth will be destroyed by a giant Bob Ross cyborg with laser eyes, or maybe the Baboon King?). This story goes to some delightful places from there. It’s funny and dark all at the same time, and I loved it.

Zakariah Johnson’s “Almost Like Snow” takes place in an apocalypse where climate change went nuts and Yellowstone blew its top at nearly the same time. Things are hot and covered in ash. This one was a bit depressing.

Violet Malan’s “Shadows Behind” is more of an urban fantasy type of apocalyptic. It’s rumored that the apocalypse was due to powerful mages having a disagreement. Now the protagonist and her colleagues go to work sniffing out artefacts and pockets of power–something highly illegal. This one was fascinating.

Eleftherios Keramidas brings us “A Tale of Two Apocalypses: Flesh as a Roiling Wave, the Mind as a Dismal Oubliette.” As the title says, it covers two different apocalypses: one that one of the characters wrote about, and one that’s “real.” Each has a very different take on the end of things. It’s a bit confusing; I probably would have found it better if I’d gone back and read it a second time.

James Enge’s “Zodiac Chorus” was mostly confusing to me. There are meteors, and someone who might or might not be named Will, and memory problems, and someone’s dying, or maybe not?

Leah Ning’s “Last Letters” introduces us to Alice, a teen who’s been in hiding with her mother since the apocalypse happened when Alice was just a babe. She lives by her schedules and chore lists, and she knows that if her mother is ever gone for more than ten days, she’s to open the letter left under her mother’s pillow, because she won’t be coming home. This is that day.

Thomas Vaughn’s “Gut Truck” is fascinating. There are solar storms, and Domingo works in the “nicer” zones while living in the bad part of town. His job is to drive the mostly-robotic “gut truck” that cleans up roadkill. When the police have him haul away the head and torso of a dead woman, his AI goes a bit strange on him.

Marjorie King’s “Sass and Sacrifice” made me tear up a bit. The world has been occupied by the “Thrum,” an alien race. That race’s motto is “Do no harm. To self. To others. To all.” They train that into people such that they physically cannot harm–or even discomfort–each other. Venya’s sassy five-year-old daughter Sasha is about to start her training. Venya knows her daughter will never be herself again.

“The Ballad of Rory McDaniels” by Jason Palmatier is fantastic! Mysterious “Dust” falls to earth and creates new and unusual forms of life, many of which can be deadly. A local group of people is having one last party before planning to join up with the Amish since things like electricity are no longer in the cards. Rory refuses to give up, however. The tone of this thing is wonderful; there are turns of phrase that just make it feel like an actual ballad even though it’s in prose form, and it has some nice surprises in store.

In Blake Jessop’s “Trust Fall,” Alina and her Uncle Stig must climb to the top of a very tall ruined building to retrieve a chip for the AI that helps them. The climbing portion is heart-stopping. The AI is interesting, particularly in how the members of different generations view it very differently. And the relationship between Alina and Stig takes center stage. Absolutely wonderful.

I definitely recommend this book for fans of apocalyptics. You’ll find some great entertainment and food for thought in here!

Content note for animal harm and death, as well as mild gore.


Original review posted on my blog: http://www.errantdreams.com/2020/08/r...

[Sharon Zimmerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The stories of Apocalyptic reflect different causes and phases of the fall of human civilization, but through them all runs a common theme of human emotion and character.
The Coafield's Catalog describes the possible ends of humanity with a dry wit that gives the perfect opener to this collection. From there, we journey through apocalypses in progress and into the aftermath. Each story provides a unique perspective on the human condition. It's hard to pick a favorite when each story is so well crafted.
We're taken through apocalyptic scenarios with clever and engaging characters. The End of Eternity offers a view of the pending end through the eyes of an immortal. Little Armageddon felt like a tour of mad world ending scenes through the eyes of two people running through and from them.
Post-Apocalyptic stories don't have to be focused on dystopian horror. Sass and Sacrifice explores the downsides to utopian societies. Trust Fall takes an uncle and niece on a journey through conflict and shared grief.
The variety of perspectives, themes and tones in this collection keep the apocalypse interesting and thrilling throughout the collection.

[Duncan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a sucker for themes anthologies and this is no exception. The standout stories for me were Solo Cooking for the Recently Revived by Aimee Picchi, Gut Truck by Thomas Vaughn, The Ballad of Rory McDaniels by Jason Palmatier and Trust Fall by Blake Jessop. A tidy anthology for those that like such things. Give it a whirl!

[Vida · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intense Read During a Pandemic

Short stories are the right length to read right now, but,oh, such stories! Each complete world limned with an economy of language and vision that’s masterful.

[Schnaucl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed it, particularly Seanan McGuire's alphabetical list of apocalypses a person might order. It wasn't as bleak as some post-apocalyptic anthologies I've read.

i also particularly liked the story about the man with eternal life at the end of the world.

[Beau Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. There is a lot to love in this anthology, but I must admit some stories worked better for me than others. Which, I've found, is more the norm when reading anthologies. And what doesn't work for me doesn't necessarily mean it won't work for someone else. Here we have a zombie attempting to reintegrate into society "after the storm." There's also speak of a wager and the prize of eternity being won. Very nice, that story, and let there be light indeed! "Gut Truck" too, and whatever was created within its bowels sticks out in my mind, as well as an old man who has conversations with certain voices in his head as he attempts to survive what he's been surviving for years. But I'd say Little Armageddons is what I keep coming back to, even though I knew where it would end up. Tidy, fun, and it made me chuckle. You know what that means? It means you should go forth, seek out, purchase and enjoy. Tell 'em another lover of apocalyptic shenanigans sent you.

[Eleanor With Cats · Rating 4 out of 5]

CONTENTS:
(1) Coafield's Catalog of Available Apocalypse Events - Seanan McGuire
(2) Solo Cooking for the Recently Revived - Aimee Picchi
(3) To Dust We Shall Return - Tanya Huff
(4) End of Eternity - Nancy Holzner
(5) Little Armageddons - Stephen Blackmoore
(6) Almost Like Snow - Zakariah Johnson
(7) Shadows Behind - Violette Malan
(8) A Tale of Two Apocalypses - Eleftherios Keramidas
(9) Zodiac Chorus - James Enge
(10) Last Letters - Leah Ning
(11) Gut Truck - Thomas Vaughn
(12) Sass and Sacrifice - Marjorie King
(13) The Ballad of Rory McDaniels - Jason Palmatier
(14) Trust Fall - Blake Jessop

I really liked stories 1 , 2, 3, and 5. (I believe story 1 has been reprinted somewhere, maybe in a Seanan McGuire collection.) Story 2 is the one about reintegrating into society as an ex-zombie that's mentioned in the blurb. Story 5 includes the Baboon King.

Tanya Huff's story is part of her Sergeant Torin series.

Content warning for the bad guy killing cats in story 7.

I am really picky, so 3/14 is a good anthology score in my personal reckoning, and worthy of buying.

[Elaysee · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good collection, though one's mileage probably varies depending on what 2020 has done to one's reading habits. No complaints about the stories overall - ones I enjoyed: McGuire, Blackmoore, Vaughn. Ones that were well-written but harder for me this year: Johnson, Ning.

[Heather Warner · Rating 5 out of 5]

*10 stars*!!!!!! Freakin’ awesome anthology!!!!!!!!!! Horror, humor, fantasy, apocalyptic, dystopian, sci-fi, supernatural, and zombies......ZOMBIES!!!!!! This book literally had everything I could want!!!!!!!!!!!! I absolutely adored this book!!!!!! I am SO happy that I ordered it!!!!! I will definitely be rereading it every year-it was that much fun! TOP, TOP, TOP BOOK!!

[Mark Slauter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some very interesting short stories in this anthology. Zombies Need Brains adds to their growing collection of anthologies.

[LaShawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Coafield’s Catalog if Available Apocalyptic Events” by Seanan McGuire