Few books have had the impact on me that WASTELANDS: STORIES OF THE APOCALYPSE did.

I started reading editor John Joseph Adams’ definitive collection of end-of-the-world tales from the last 20 years while on vacation in Cambodia, and that’s where things started getting weird. WASTELANDS kicks off with Stephen King’s “The End of the Whole Mess,” and as I sat, reading it in a place desperately trying to cover the scars of failed social engineering, I started seeing apocalyptic remnants and portents everywhere.

In that country, full of people so adapted to poverty and unrealized dreams, it’s easy to see the seeds of a future where humanity has evolved to cope with even the most extreme conditions, as in Paolo Bacigalupi’s “The People of Sand and Slag.” Walking amid ancient ruins where the skull-and-crossbones land mine warnings sit just 30 feet off the main road is ample evidence that the remnants of war last much longer than the actual war itself, as M. Rickert outlines in “Bread and Bombs.”

These kind of double-whammy moments didn’t do much for my worldview, and I knew that for every country that was slowly struggling out from under apocalyptic conditions as Cambodia is, there were two more waiting in the wings to take its place. Orson Scott Card’s “Salvage” gave me a bit of hope, in a backhanded kind of way, and the humor inherent in Jonathan Lethem’s “How We Got in Town and Out Again” was of the cynical variety evident among any long-term observer of suffering.

Cambodia’s an extreme example, and it’s fairly easy pickings if you’re a book reviewer with his mind on Armageddon. Unfortunately, WASTELANDS stayed in my system. Reading Cory Doctorow’s excellent “When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth” on the flight back from Chicago gave me little respite. What if nothing was there to greet us, and the runways are littered with wreckage, or worse yet, there’s nothing at the airport at all but empty, moving walkways and automated greetings when we land?

None of this occurred. But sitting up, alone, at 3 a.m. while battling through epic jet lag and reading Richard Kadrey’s “Still Life with Apocalypse” reminded me that even the simplest things can spiral out of control, and human nature is most eager to take advantage of the situation, to society’s detriment.

But the sun rose, as is the norm, and I got on the train to work with ruined cities and prowling scavengers coloring my vision, as I committed myself once more to a society that I was sure would come, screaming, to a halt at any minute. The crowded, noisy train stations contrasted wildly with the silent future of Octavia E. Butler’s “Mute,” and there weren’t any insurgents hiding out in my home when I got back from work that day, despite being nearly convinced it would happen by Carol Emshwiller’s “Killers.”

I confessed my melodramatic dread to my wife, and I found no sympathy.

“It’s just a book,” she said. “Don’t be so stupid.”

That was definitely true, and WASTELANDS’ pièce de résistance, “The End of the World as We Know It” by Dale Bailey, expertly points out the tropes and themes that get dragged out again and again when we imagine the apocalypse, and posits that the real end of the world will probably be far more mundane and far less scripted.

WASTELANDS is a great collection that gets my highest recommendation. Just don’t read it all at once. —Ryun Patterson

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF CORY DOCTOROW:
• LITTLE BROTHER by Cory Doctorow
• SOMEONE COMES TO TOWN, SOMEONE LEAVES TOWN by Cory Doctorow

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF STEPHEN KING:
• CELL by Stephen King
• THE COLORADO KID by Stephen King
• CREEPSHOWS: THE ILLUSTRATED STEPHEN KING MOVIE GUIDE by Stephen Jones
• CUJO by Stephen King
• DUMA KEY by Stephen King
• THE SECRETARY OF DREAMS: VOLUME ONE by Stephen King
• STEPHEN KING: THE NON-FICTION by Rocky Wood and Justin Brooks