The End is Nigh

The Apocalypse Triptych

By: John Joseph Adams, Hugh Howey, Scott Sigler

Narrated by: Mur Lafferty, Rajan Khanna, Kate Baker, Lex Wilson, Ralph Walters, Jack Kincaid, Norm Sherman

Famine. Death. War. Pestilence. These are the harbingers of the biblical apocalypse, of the End of the World. In science fiction, the end is triggered by less figurative means: nuclear holocaust, biological warfare/pandemic, ecological disaster, or cosmological cataclysm.

But before any catastrophe, there are people who see it coming. During, there are heroes who fight against it. And after, there are the survivors who persevere and try to rebuild. THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH will tell their stories.

Edited by acclaimed anthologist John Joseph Adams and bestselling author Hugh Howey, THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH is a series of three anthologies of apocalyptic fiction. THE END IS NIGH focuses on life before the apocalypse. THE END IS NOW turns its attention to life during the apocalypse. And THE END HAS COME focuses on life after the apocalypse.

Post-apocalyptic fiction is about worlds that have already burned. Apocalyptic fiction is about worlds that are burning. THE END IS NIGH is about the match.

TABLE OF CONTENTS: Introduction by John Joseph Adams | The Balm and the Wound by Robin Wasserman | Heaven is a Place on Planet X by Desirina Boskovich | Break! Break! Break! by Charlie Jane Anders | The Gods Will Not Be Chained by Ken Liu | Wedding Day by Jake Kerr | Removal Order by Tananarive Due | System Reset by Tobias S. Buckell | This Unkempt World is Falling to Pieces by Jamie Ford | BRING HER TO ME by Ben H. Winters | In the Air by Hugh Howey | Goodnight Moon by Annie Bellet | Dancing with Death in the Land of Nod by Will McIntosh | Houses Without Air by Megan Arkenberg | The Fifth Day of Deer Camp by Scott Sigler | Enjoy the Moment by Jack McDevitt | Pretty Soon the Four Horsemen are Going to Come Riding Through by Nancy Kress | Spores by Seanan McGuire | She's Got a Ticket to Ride by Jonathan Maberry | Agent Unknown by David Wellington | Enlightenment by Matthew Mather | Shooting the Apocalypse by Paolo Bacigalupi | Love Perverts by Sarah Langan.

©2014 John Joseph Adams & Hugh Howey (P)2014 John Joseph Adams & Hugh Howey

If you enjoy doom and gloom then this is for you!

Captivating performances, interesting stories, and a diverse group of writers providing amazing perspectives and ideas for what the phrase "end of the world" actually means.

Get Ready

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

Absolutely. Another wonderfully edited anthology of stories by John Joseph Adams.

What did you like best about this story?

Stories about the world’s end should prompt the reader to ask tough questions. How do you pick who gets to survive? At what point is it okay to give up on survival? Is society worth saving in the first place? To what lengths would you go to survive? Do you deserve to survive if you’re the reason the world has ended in the first place? Along with all of these questions, The End is Nigh highlights a wide variety of social issues, including same-sex marriage, global warming, euthanasia, genetic manipulation, human medical testing, and eating disorders, to name a few. The End is Nigh tackles these questions head on, and frequently the resulting answer is appropriately unsettling.

The menu of characters is similarly varied: con men; cult members; tech-savvy teenagers; scientists with OCD; artists; unfaithful husbands; computer hackers; grandmothers; and astronauts (astronauts who are also grandmothers). Good people doing good things, good people doing horrible things. Horrible people doing horrible things, horrible people doing good things.

Additionally, I was very pleased with the character diversity, whether it was with regard to ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation. Women written by men and men written by women.

The strongest stories in this collection are anchored by these strong, complex characters and issues and tack on the utter destruction of everything as a side note. My honorable mentions are:
- “Wedding Day”—Follows a same-sex wedding that is left too late, and the resulting conflict around the characters' ability to save legal family members.
- “Removal Order”—Brings us a responsible teenage girl trying to care for her terminally ill grandmother as the world burns around her.
- “Spores”—Introduces one of the more unique characters I’ve met in the apocalypse; a laboratory scientist with severe OCD who is tasked with surviving the outbreak of a genetically engineered fungus. (This story also gets my award for most disturbingly icky plague.)
- “The Fifth Day of Dear Camp”—Imagine the guys from the SNL “Bill Swerski’s Superfans” sketches encountering an alien invasion while hunting in the woods. Lovable, but deadly.

Any additional comments?

I listened to the Jake Kincaid-produced audiobook as my primary reading experience and found this experience to be fairly hit or miss. A number of the performances were so overly emoted as to be practically unlistenable. In the case of “The Balm and the Wound,” I found the interpretation of the main character to be completely off. (Would you follow a spiritual cult leader, if he sounded like mob lackey from The Jersey Shore?) On the flip side, the accents in “The Fifth Day of Dear Camp” were performed very admirably and added nicely to the story. And, those stories that were treated more as unacted narrations were generally well done.

Wow

What the frack is wrong with all of you?
Seriously?
What's wrong with me for listening to them all?

THE END IS NIGH

What other book might you compare The End is Nigh to and why?

This is similar to JJA's anthology Wastelands, though I believe Wastelands to be superior. That being said, this anthology is a good fix for you apocalypse junkies. I am also very much looking forward to the continuations of some of these stories in the next anthology that Hugh and John are doing: The End Has Come.

Teasers

This book felt like a compilation of first chapters of books done by several different authors. None of the first three stories felt like a completed whole.

Excellent in places, never less than solid.

An interesting mix of reasons the world will end, almost all tantalizing views of 'what ifs'. Some stories are clearly chapters 1 due to the format, others may or may not be. Looking forward to the next book.

Amazing, couldn't put it down!

Where does The End is Nigh rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

This is one of my favorite audio books, and I have listened to quite a few. I prefer short story anthologies and every single piece in this book was a new gem.

What was one of the most memorable moments of The End is Nigh?

I loved that so many of these stories came at the apocalypse premise from unusual directions. Every time the world is going to end in a different way, and the character viewpoints are also very different so each new story brings a different perspective. Sometimes the protagonists are likely to live, sometimes they don't make it to the last paragraph. As a reader, the uncertainty makes each story exciting.

Have you listened to any of the narrators’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

It was great to hear famous podcast voices such as Mur Lafferty, Tina Connolly, Kate Baker, Jack Kincaid, Norm Sherman and others who consistently deliver clear, evocative story narrations - these are artists at the top of their craft delivering excellently edited performances.

Any additional comments?

John Joseph Adams compiled a GREAT set of stories in this anthology. I can't wait for the next book in this series to be released!

Pre-dystopian anthology

This book is a collection of multiple authors' ideas on what life was like on the cusp of a pre-dystopian event. Very different stories from chapter to chapter. Hugh Howey's name is what brought me to buy this book (I love everything he's ever written).
Some of the stories were fantastic. Some I had to fast-forward through due to either an unpolished narrator or an uncaptivating storyline. I did discover a few new exciting authors to follow by listening to this, which is fab.
I don't think I'll follow up with the second in the series because I enjoy being drawn into a story for hours at a time too much to become a regular reader of anthologies.

loved it!!

finished all the stories except one.will be reading 2nd book in series. one or two stories gave me shivers. the rest were solid stories

Couldn't stop listening!

Great storytelling. I loved every entry. Can't wait for the next part of this series!