found_drama

Third person, fly-on-the-wall type P.O.V.  A Handmaid’s Tale-style near apocalypse.  An evangelical Christian school; a real house on the hill sort of thing.  No one knows how they’ve kept this thing a secret, this sprawling multi-wing complex.  It’s the eve before the unveiling; the board of directors is giving a tour to some media folks from the outside world.  They’re well-dressed and proud that they’ve come this far, proud that they haven’t succumbed to the terrors without, proud that this facility of theirs will no doubt serve as a beacon unto the rest of what’s left of civilization.

Our camera changes up; we follow a young man sneaking through the halls of the All Girls wing.  He isn’t a Humbert Humbert type; he’s about the same age as these girls and he seems to be here looking for one in particular.  We get the sense that he’s fought through whatever terrors are outside to get here, to find her.  And he does find her, manages to catch her arm and away they slip into one of the quieter rooms.  The room is slanted and at the top of the rise is a trophy case.  They talk guardedly; she is trying not to give something away and he is trying not to betray some other secret.  He notices that she is pregnant.  She explains that it has something to do with taxes, that it’s for the good of the school.  He makes some lewd jokes but they’re all in good humor.

The camera shifts again: outside, the terror closes in.  Thousands upon thousands of green-skinned plague zombies swarming up the cliffs.  The school’s defenses take their positions on the ridge of the cliffs and fire down into those hordes.  There is a muffled voice crying out not to shoot, that shooting will only make things worse but the firing goes on.

A tightly themed, well executed collection: Wastelands captures our apocalypse fears and fantasies equally well and sometimes even simultaneously.

Adams wisely chooses Stephen King’s “The End of the Whole Mess” as an opener and moves into all manner of exciting territory from there. Wastelands is the expected mix of strong (and some average) short stories; most of them have a high re-read score and there is a good mix of diverse ideas and themes that keep within the central focus.

THAT SAID: if you are considering this one, read the introduction before you make the purchase. This isn’t about zombie plagues or alien invasions or black holes ripping through our space-time continuum. This is about somewhat more plausible apocalypses. Even when they’re totally unexplained.

Most of these stories I enjoyed as much as I expected (e.g., “Speech Sounds”) and some less so (e.g., “When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth”) and some more so (e.g., “Salvage”). I won’t enumerate the themes you expect in an apocalypse-themed collection; they’re all here and they’re all in full force. I will remark on the following, however:

• I was a bit amused by how many of these shorts featured nomads;
  • and more so by how often those nomads were of the carny folk variety.
• The stories seem to be pretty “current” in their bio-engineered plagues and their genetic fall-out and their post-Peak Oil crises and 9/11-kneejerks; the last star in my review would have been earned by but one thorough and explicit treatment of WW3-ish nuclear winter.
• Remember: you brought this on yourself.

Review originally posted on GoodReads.com.