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.

Buffet of the end is near scenerios

How will our demise come let me count the stars or read this great concept, cook book for end of days appetites. Ultimately the end of days comes to everyone by way of illness, natural disasters, accidents & don't even start on man made causes. Then there is God who has tried the extermination route, no rehab for those folks, & since we don't seem to learn our lessons there is a rumor were in for another dose of end times from the Creator. We shoud not be blamed if it all makes us feel like the bug that gets zapped on TV by a can of "R__d". like the song say's "Our day will come", so while were waiting, smile & say hi to a stranger, smell some flowers & listen to this book.

Neat Collection

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

This is fun. I enjoyed the individual stories and how drastically they differ from one another. The narrations are good, for the most part... Over all this was a great listen. Am looking forward to the new two books

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

Defiantly some crazy stories here!

What aspect of the narrators’s performance would you have changed?

There's one narrator that inhales HEAVILY through his nose at the end of EVERY line... And one who sounds like they're reading on ambien.... but the rest of the narrators are really good.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

The creativity of these short stories was really interesting... Even the absolutely ridiculous stories were fine because they were short... this reads like an early season of The X Files.

Any additional comments?

You'll want to listen to it again when you're done... there are so many stories and some of them continue on to the next book!

I enjoyed this one minus a few

Would you listen to The End is Nigh again? Why?

I don't think this is a book I'd re-listen to, but I would / will listen to the next two.

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

Wastelands 2: Stories of the Apocalypse - It's the same type of book, only the stories in "The End is Nigh" aren't quite as good as Wastelands 2. BUT still has some good performances and good stories.

Would you listen to another book narrated by the narrators?

Most of them.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes, though that's impossible, so a bit each day worked for me.

Any additional comments?

1. Has annoying "chimes" and some stories had sound effects in it that annoyed me. One author thought adding in a mouth noise to indicate drinking/eating was a good idea. (it's not)

2. This story: Chapter 9: "Removal Order" has to be one of the worst narrators I've ever listened to. She drones on and on and on. I couldn't take how slow and boring this narrator was. I skipped ahead 30 seconds to see if it got better, repeatedly, only to hear the same awful drone over and over and over.

3. 90% of the stories in this were well done. You'll know the 10% within the first 30 seconds.

Wonderful concept and solid execution

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

There’s a lot to love about this collection. First, the concept of three anthologies that look at the apocalypse from before, during, and after is bold. And I gotta say I’m looking forward to the next two installments, to see how some of these concepts are grown. I listened to the audiobook, and the production was top notch. For free podcast samples, pop over to EscapePod and listen to “Enjoy the Moment” and Drabblecast for “Heaven is a Place on Planet X”.

I was pleasantly (?) surprised at the variety of apocalyptic visions for our world. While the killer asteroid was the most represented, it was nowhere close to the preponderance. I think the only thing I can think of in the popular consciousness that didn’t make it was the collapse of the food system through the death of pollinators. We even got a zombie story (“Agent Unknown”), although the fungus one (“Spores”) was even more effective body horror than zombies ever could. There are so many I could talk about (like Bachigalupi’s return to the world of The Tamarisk Hunter) but I’m going to restrict myself to the ones that made the deepest craters in my psyche.

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

The two narrations that really blew me away were Laurice White reading “Removal Order” and Tina Connolly reading “Goodnight Moon”. Both performances really delivered pathos and made the individual tragedies of the characters all the more impactful.

Any additional comments?

I thought the opening of the collection with “The Balm and the Wound” was great. It felt a lot like a cultier version of Hensley’s “Lord Randy, My Son” which is one of my favorite Dangerous Visions. The other cult story’s noir tone (“She’s Got a Ticket to Ride”) really set it apart, while subverting the style by having the brooding hero be rescued by the damsel in distress.

Probably the most subtle of the stories is the soft apocalypse in Nancy Kress’s “Pretty Soon the Four Horsemen are Going to Come Riding Through”. I’ve picked up her novel Beggars in Spain and I can see a similar nod to the themes set there. This is probably the one story I’m most looking forward to seeing how it evolves.