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Best Tales of the Apocalypse
Fourteen of the best horrifying tales of the end of the world, collected in one anthology.Best Tales of the Apocalypse is full of the best short stories and novellas of the sub-genre. There are gods and monsters, Lovecraftian creatures and viruses that wipe out life as we know it. Read about colliding continents, nuclear war, and technology gone awry with darker, more insidious things you haven’t yet imagined.Edited by D. L. Snell and Bram Stoker Award–winner Joe McKinney, this collection contains 14 shattering tales by some of the genre’s first and final scribes. Here, the world doesn’t just end once. These are the horsemen, the trumpeting angels. Their words are the bowls of wrath, dumped again and again. This is the book that’s been centuries in the making. The Final Book. And the choir’s singing one last Psalm. The End is the best part.Featuring works McKinney, Tim Curran, J.F. Gonzalez, Michael Oliveri, David Conyers, Lee Moan, Rebecca Day, Derek J. Goodman, Lyn C.A. Gardner, Ian Randal Strock, Michael Sellars, Dario CirielloDaniel R. Robichaud, Ian Rogers, and Patrice Sarath.
- GenresAnthologies
402 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 8, 2013
About the author
D.L. Snell
43 books56 followersD.L. Snell is a writer and freelance editor at Permuted Press. He edited Dr. Kim Paffenroth twice, John Dies at the End once, and provided a constructive critique to Joe McKinney on his next major novel after Dead City. He has also edited Permuted’s Undead series.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 29, 2021
Usually Amazon ebooks that are only one or two dollars are garbage, either amateurish self-published junk or decades old out-of-copyright filler. I swore I would never fall for one again, but I'm glad I did, as this book is an exception. All the stories are at least good, with a couple of real gems. "Today is Not" by Michael Sellars by itself is worth the $1.99.
May 10, 2024
Spoiler alert: these are not the best tales.
By assigning each of the 14 short stories a score out of 5 and then using the average, this book scored a dismal 2 stars.
At it’s best is The All Night One-Stop Apocalypse Shop by Derek J. Goodman,, a super fun story where convenience store night clerks Caleb and Gloria deal with ghouls, vampires, zombies and potential end-of-the-world scenarios on the regular while the rest of the world remains oblivious. Loved this one.
Also good was Restore From Backup by JF Gonzalez and Michael Oliveri, where data crunchers are somehow holding worldwide illness at bay… until someone messes with the code. And Pigs and Feaches by Patrice Sarath,, about a new and deadly Alzheimers variant, was sad and poignant and beautifully written.
Unfortunately, those were the exceptions. I rated six of the 14 stories as 1 star. The worst of these was Kelmscott Manor: In the Attic (my note for this says “?? pretentious time machine twattle”) and America is Coming! by Dario Ciriello, in which, get ready for it, America breaks away and floats around the planet, careening into other land masses and destroying them, but two Italian guys manage to maneuver close enough in their rubber boat to jump aboard and I CAN’T MAKE THIS SHIT UP.
So yeah. I’m sorry for those couple of great stories that got buried in this mess.
By assigning each of the 14 short stories a score out of 5 and then using the average, this book scored a dismal 2 stars.
At it’s best is The All Night One-Stop Apocalypse Shop by Derek J. Goodman,, a super fun story where convenience store night clerks Caleb and Gloria deal with ghouls, vampires, zombies and potential end-of-the-world scenarios on the regular while the rest of the world remains oblivious. Loved this one.
Also good was Restore From Backup by JF Gonzalez and Michael Oliveri, where data crunchers are somehow holding worldwide illness at bay… until someone messes with the code. And Pigs and Feaches by Patrice Sarath,, about a new and deadly Alzheimers variant, was sad and poignant and beautifully written.
Unfortunately, those were the exceptions. I rated six of the 14 stories as 1 star. The worst of these was Kelmscott Manor: In the Attic (my note for this says “?? pretentious time machine twattle”) and America is Coming! by Dario Ciriello, in which, get ready for it, America breaks away and floats around the planet, careening into other land masses and destroying them, but two Italian guys manage to maneuver close enough in their rubber boat to jump aboard and I CAN’T MAKE THIS SHIT UP.
So yeah. I’m sorry for those couple of great stories that got buried in this mess.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews