by Hugh Howey
First published 2014
The signs are everywhere, but most people refuse to see them. Scientists track spreading pandemics in sterile laboratories. Farmers watch crops wither under toxic skies. Ordinary citizens notice their neighbors disappearing one by one. These are the final moments before everything changes forever. Twenty-three writers imagine the hours and days when catastrophe looms but has not yet struck. Hugh Howey explores a world where people know the end approaches but cannot stop it. Paolo Bacigalupi shows characters making desperate choices as their familiar world crumbles. Seanan McGuire, Nancy Kress, and Charlie Jane Anders each capture different faces of impending doom. Some protagonists fight against the inevitable. Others prepare for survival. A few simply try to hold their families together as normalcy dissolves around them. Each story reveals how people respond when they realize tomorrow may never come. The collection opens the first volume of The Apocalypse Triptych, a series examining life before, during, and after civilization ends. These tales focus on the terrible waiting period when disaster approaches but hope still flickers.
Genres: fiction, short-stories, science-fiction, apocalyptic
Vibes: suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: desperate-choices, found-family
361 pages · Paperback · CreateSpace