Apocalyptic Short Stories

In Dark Property, a woman carries a dying baby across a desert waste, moving toward a fortress harboring a mysterious resurrection cult. Menaced by scavengers, she nevertheless begins to suspect that the reality within the fortress may be even more unsettling than the blasted environment outside. In Contagion and Other Stories, Evenson takes his audiences into a world that is at once apocalyptic, dark, observant, and grotesque without ever dipping into static genre conventions.

In this debut collection of body-horror fairy tales and mid-apocalyptic Catholic cyberpunk, memory and myth, loss and age, these are the tools of storyteller Jarboe, a talent in the field of queer fabulism. Bodily autonomy and transformation, the importance of negative emotions, unhealthy relationships, and bad situations amidst the staggering and urgent question of how build and nurture meaning, love, and safety in a larger world/society that might not be "fixable."

A shopping mall where droids sell organs harvested from street trash. A murderous imaginary friend. A psychotic composer drafting music from pain. All in a day's work for the Lawman of the Future. Edited by and with an introduction by Dredd veteran Michael Carroll, Judge Fear's Big Day Out and Other Stories gathers the very best short stories from more than a decade of the Judge Dredd Megazine, including stories by legends Alan Grant, Gordon Rennie and Simon Spurrier, among countless others.

Famine, Death, War, and Pestilence—the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the harbingers of Armageddon—these are our guides through the Wastelands. Gathering together the best post-apocalyptic literature of the last two decades from many of today's most renowned authors of speculative fiction—including George R. R. Martin, Gene Wolfe, Orson Scott Card, Carol Emshwiller, Jonathan Lethem, Octavia E. Butler, and Stephen King—Wastelands explores the scientific, psychological, and philosophical questions of what it means to remain human in the wake of Armageddon.

A glittering landscape of twenty-five speculative stories that challenge oppression and envision new futures for America - from N. K. Jemisin, Charles Yu, Jamie Ford, G. Willow Wilson, Charlie Jane Anders, Hugh Howey, and more.

Imagine you’ve woken up in an unfamiliar room with no memory of who you are, how you got there, or where you were before. All you have is the disconnected voice of an attentive caretaker. Dr. Kuhn is there to help you - physically, emotionally, and psychologically. She’ll help you remember everything. She’ll make sure you reclaim your lost identity. Now answer one question: Are you sure you want to?

Return to the zombie apocalypse wasteland that is the Rot & Ruin in this short story collection from Jonathan Maberry. Benny Imura's zombie-infested adventures are well-chronicled in the gripping novels Rot & Ruin, Dust & Decay, Flesh & Bone, and Fire & Ash. But what else was happening while he was on his quest? Who were the others navigating the ravaged landscape full of zombies? Bits & Pieces fills in the gaps about what we know about First Night, surviving the plague, and traveling the land of Rot & Ruin.

In the late 2020s and early 30s, corporations managed to render the major governments of the world obsolete. The big corporations owned most of the territories as well as the majority of the world’s wealth. While many of the old traditions were still observed in various parts of the world, the true power was with the corporations. In the late 30s, what would be known as the Corporate Wars began as larger companies initiated hostile takeovers in a whole new fashion. Employees, armed with corporate weapons, warred for dominance. It was a bloody time.

No communication. Limited power. An unbreakable will to survive. A violent blast of solar magnetic radiation plunges much of Earth into darkness. From the decaying orbit of the powerless ISS to a devolving Southeast Texas neighborhood and a secret doomsday bunker buried deep underneath the Colorado Rockies, The SpaceMan Chronicles tells the story of a stranded astronaut, his family and friends on the ground, and a shadowy conspiracy to rebuild the world in the shape of a new society.

Drowned Worlds looks at the future we might have if the oceans rise, good or bad. Here you'll find stories of action, adventure, romance, and, yes, warning and apocalypse. Stories inspired by Ballard's The Drowned World, Sterling's Islands in the Net, and Ryman's The Child Garden. Stories that allow that things may get worse, but remembers that such times also bring out the best in us all.

The world isn't how they left it. When the bunker airlocks release them after 20 years in hibernation, the survivors find a silent, barren world outside. But they are not alone. There is a presence here, alive in the dust - spirits of the earth, benevolent and malicious as they interact with the human remnant.

A fresh post-apocalyptic anthology: the end of the world seen through the salvage and ruins, featuring Emily St. John Mandel, Carmen Maria Machado, and more.

You can't kill the dead! Like any good monster, the zombie has proven to be ever-evolving, monumentally mutable, and open to seemingly endless imaginative interpretations: the thralls of voodoo sorcerers, George Romero's living dead, societal symbols, dancing thrillers, viral victims, reanimated ramblers, video-gaming targets, post-apocalyptic permutations, shuffling sidekicks, literary mash-ups, the comedic, and, yes, even the romantic.

Welcome to Tisaia - the last hub of modern civilization, in a world left scorched by the nuclear fires of the Biomass Wars. Surrounded by a fortress of steel walls, and protected by a fierce and loyal Council of Royal Knights, Tisaia seems relatively safe to the average State worker and citizen. A plentiful supply of Biomass powers the cities, and food is abundant, but security has come at a terrible cost.

By protecting and nurturing the ones with the knowledge, Terry Henry Walton begins building his Force de Guerre, a paramilitary group that will secure this new world from those who would take and destroy.

In this 2024 re-release, the apocalypse has ended for Adrian Ring, and the rebuilding of the world has begun. But have all the stories of the old world's death been told? Elsewhere on Earth, there is a plane filled with innocents, and a criminal could wipe it from the skies with a tide of undeath. A young man in Manhattan is going mad with hunger and fear. A veterinarian races to save her animal patients, and their owners, one by one. A drunk lunatic is driven to self-destruction, craving the undead horde and the absolution they will give him.

Wastelands 2: More Stories of the Apocalypse is a new anthology of postapocalyptic literature from some of the most renowned authors in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres today, including George R. R. Martin, Hugh Howey, Junot Díaz, David Brin, and many more. This eclectic mix of tales explores famine, death, war, pestilence, and harbingers of the biblical apocalypse.

For fans of the oral history genre phenomenon World War Z, a worldwide plague of insomnia creates a devastating new apocalypse. Sleep Over is collection of waking nightmares, a scrapbook of the haunting and poignant stories from those trapped in a world where the pillars of society are crumbling, and madness is slowly descending on a planet without rest.

Sergeant is my first name, and it happens to be my rank as well. I was born into - and because of - this war...but that's another story. My particular interest in the military hovered near zero for most of my life, but like everyone else in my , we were drafted into service. There was never a time during the war that I didn't want to stay alive, either, so I fought. At first, I fought selfishly for my own life, and then for my squad and platoon, and finally for the individuals I served with. It was a circuitous route, and probably just a little self-centered, but it led me here.

The Doomsday siren calls on civilization's last day. Natural disaster. Nuclear war. Pandemics. These are the ways the world ends. Now, in the aftermath of ruined cities and humanity gone savage, mankind will once again find his oldest allies and closest friends amidst the debris of all that once was. The Walking Dead meets The Incredible Journey in 14 incredible tales of nobility, self-sacrifice, and unconditional love as told by today's most talented independent authors.