This Way to the End Times

Starred review from September 12, 2016
A pessimist’s dream comes true in 21 exceptional tales of Earth’s devastation and humans’ inventive, and often ironically self-destructive, ways of surviving. Themes of religion, flooding, Adam and Eve, Atlantis, aliens, misogyny, and government oppression permeate the collection, which contains works written between 1906 and 2016 by science fiction legends as well as new authors. The epic opener, Jules Verne’s “The Eternal Adam” (1910), set 20,000 years in the future, chronicles a flood covering Earth, the rise of an Atlantis-like continent, and man’s barbaric struggle to rebuild civilization. Earth is destroyed in other creative ways. In Fritz Leiber’s “A Pail of Air” (1951), after a dark star pulls Earth beyond Pluto, a family survives amid frozen oxygen and liquid helium. An Indian woman seeks enlightenment through ritual as the future collapses into the past in Alvaro Zinos-Amaro’s elegant “Prayers to the Sun” (2016). As energy sources dwindle, an Orwellian police state emerges in Ursula K. LeGuin’s “New Atlantis” (1975). Dale Bailey’s “The End of the World as We Know It” (2004) is a primer on “last man alive” clichés. The funniest story, Brian W. Aldiss’s “Heresies of the Huge God” (1966), reveals an unusual visitor to Earth that causes continental destruction, and the malevolent religion created to appease it. These stunning stories contemplate survival while questioning whether life is worth saving, and many have such rich ideas and settings that they could easily spark full-length novels.

In a substantial anthology of stories about the end of the world, editor Silverberg (Tales of Majipoor, 2013, etc.) brings together works by both classic science-fiction writers and contemporary authors.The 21 stories here have a pleasing range of styles and contexts, offering a much-appreciated texture to the potentially dispiriting common theme of apocalypse and post-apocalypse. The oldest hail from the early 1900s (Jules Verne started writing "The Eternal Adam" in 1904), and the most recent story ("Prayers to the Sun By a Dying Person" by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro) has its debut in this book. Each story is preceded by a short introduction in which Silverberg gives readers a chatty and often charming tidbit of the author's biography and explains why he chose the story. The reader learns not only that James Tiptree Jr. was the pen name of Alice Sheldon, but also that she once worked for the CIA; that Malcolm Edwards only ever published one story but is a celebrated editor; and that Silverberg has no compunction about including multiple stories by certain authors, or stories by himself, or a story by his wife ("Three Days After" by Karen Haber). The sense of genuine personal delight and admiration as a guiding editorial principle lends the anthology the friendly air of someone showing off a beloved and much-studied collection, despite the often dire content of the stories themselves. The stories are uniformly good and frequently excellent. Only five are by women, but those five are genuinely exciting, and while a more diverse group of authors might be desired, the variety of ways in which these stories choose to end the world offers a great deal--nightmarish, funny, lonely, or hopeful--for the imagination. Wonderfully written, surprisingly varied apocalyptic tales. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from October 1, 2016
Apocalyptic fiction is still a very hot trend, but as award-winning sf writer and editor of this collection Silverberg notes in the introduction, it's hardly a new one: Humankind seems to take a certain grisly delight in stories about the end of the world, and the market in apocalyptic prophecy has been bullish for thousands, or, more likely, millions of years. Silverberg emphatically proves this statement with these 21 stories by a variety of modern authors, from Jules Verne to Brian Aldiss and Ursula K. Le Guin to Connie Willis. Each story begins with a detailed and engaging introduction that sets each tale in context, both its own historical one and how it holds up to readers today. All are intriguing examples of the popular trope, but of particular note is the viscerally chilling and highly original 1977 story The Screwfly Solution, by James Tiptree Jr. (pen name for Alice Bradley Sheldon.) With its range of contributors, this is a much-needed volume that will both satisfy the high demand for apocalyptic tales and remind readers of the actual breadth and depth of this literature of the end of the world.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

August 15, 2016
In a substantial anthology of stories about the end of the world, editor Silverberg (Tales of Majipoor, 2013, etc.) brings together works by both classic science-fiction writers and contemporary authors.The 21 stories here have a pleasing range of styles and contexts, offering a much-appreciated texture to the potentially dispiriting common theme of apocalypse and post-apocalypse. The oldest hail from the early 1900s (Jules Verne started writing The Eternal Adam in 1904), and the most recent story (Prayers to the Sun By a Dying Person by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro) has its debut in this book. Each story is preceded by a short introduction in which Silverberg gives readers a chatty and often charming tidbit of the authors biography and explains why he chose the story. The reader learns not only that James Tiptree Jr. was the pen name of Alice Sheldon, but also that she once worked for the CIA; that Malcolm Edwards only ever published one story but is a celebrated editor; and that Silverberg has no compunction about including multiple stories by certain authors, or stories by himself, or a story by his wife (Three Days After by Karen Haber). The sense of genuine personal delight and admiration as a guiding editorial principle lends the anthology the friendly air of someone showing off a beloved and much-studied collection, despite the often dire content of the stories themselves. The stories are uniformly good and frequently excellent. Only five are by women, but those five are genuinely exciting, and while a more diverse group of authors might be desired, the variety of ways in which these stories choose to end the world offers a great dealnightmarish, funny, lonely, or hopefulfor the imagination. Wonderfully written, surprisingly varied apocalyptic tales.

COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.