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?

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?

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.

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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.