The End is Nigh anthology edited by John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey
This has been sitting on my ereader for a very long time. It’s part of a 3-part series of short stories that take place just before, during, or after some apocalyptic event. This anthology covers the “just before” stories.
Some decent stories in it.
Young Men and Fire by Norman Maclean
This had been on my “to read” list for a while, but then Mike mentioned it in the presentation he gave to the Lab back in July so I pushed it forward to read sooner rather than later.
It recounts a team of 15 Smokejumpers (elite fire-fighters that parachute to a fire to get it under control quickly–a big deal during the era that forest-fire management practice was to put them out as quickly as possible) who jumped on the Mann Gulch Fire in 1949. Within 2 hours 10 were dead and 2 fatally burned.
It tries to answer the question, “What happened?”
Interesting read. A little bit of an odd style. Maclean kind of tells the story at least 3 times with slightly different bents and I think his writing is easiest follow if you read it in the voice of a guy telling a tale in order to get the right cadence.
The End is Now anthology edited by John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey
The second installment in the aforementioned series. I think I enjoyed this one more than the first, but I’m getting a little burnt out on apocalypse stories at this point.
Humankind by Rutger Bregman
Bregman looks critically at human history and the current best data across sociology, psychology, anthropology, etc. to argue the position that people are generally good.
People have done horrible things–of course, without question–but those are aberrations from the norm.
I thought it was a fair interpretation of the available data and any time Bregman introduced a counterpoint to the narrative of everyone-is-terrible he would straightforwardly acknowledge the flaws in his examples.
Easy read and a nice reprieve from the apocalypse stories.
