The End of the World: Stories of the Apocalypse »

Martin H. Greenberg Martin H. Greenberg has been called “the best anthologist since Ellery Queen.” He’s the most prolific anthologist in publishing history and recipient of the Ellery Queen Award for life achievement in editing from the Mystery Guild of America. He is also one of the editors of Sherlock Holmes in America and Vampire Stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He lives in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Robert Silverberg is a bestselling science fiction author. He is a multiple winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Famous stories of the apocalypse by the world’s best science fiction writers.

Publishers Weekly

A sensitive introduction by Robert Silverberg sets the tone for 19 varied glimpses of humankind's ending, arranged thematically and ranging from the nuclear bang of Norman Spinrad's "The Big Flash" to the sad whimper of George R.R. Martin's poignant "Dark, Dark Were the Tunnels." Lester Del Rey's wrenching "Kindness" nods to the last living Homo sapiens while John Helfers's "Afterward" envisions a blue-whitebrown planet sterilized of human contamination. Orson Scott Card's "Salvage" and Nancy Kress's elegiac "Fools Like Me" eloquently humanize the inhuman and convincingly imagine the unimaginable. Even longtime SF fans who know many of these classic stories will be thrilled to have them all in one place, a moving and powerful reminder of humanity's capacity for self-destruction and powerful will to survive. (July)

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Dancing Through the Apocalypse Robert Silverberg 1

Bang or Whimper

The Hum Rick Hautala 8

Salvador Lucius Shepard 16

We Can Get Them for You Wholesale Neil Gaiman 34

The Big Flash Norman Spinrad 43

The Last Man

Kindness Lester Del Rey 66

The Underdweller William F. Nolan 81

Lucifer Roger Zelazny 94

Life after the End

To the Storming Gulf Gregory Benford 102

The Feast of Saint Janis Michael Swamwick 151

The Wheel John Wyndham 181

Jody after the War Edward Bryant 188

Salvage Orson Scott Card 194

By Fools like Me Nancy Kress 214

Dark, Distant Futures

The Store of the Worlds Robert Sheckley 228

Dark, Dark Were the Tunnels George R. R. Martin 235

"If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth . . . " Arthur C. Clarke 252

Afterward John Heifers 257

Witnesses to the End of the world

When We Went to See the End of the World Robert Silverberg 262

Flight to Forever Poul Anderson 271

About the Authors 321