The Fix has a great, very detailed review up of Wastelands. Here’s a snippet:

There’s a wry, fatalistic charm to Dale Bailey’s “The End of the World as We Know It,” an unusual and highly self-conscious tale of the apocalypse. It begins with a brief description of the Bubonic plague, and interspersed throughout the subsequent narrative are a number of digressions reflecting on the conventions of the “end-of’the-world” story to which, as Bailey observes, his protagonist fails to conform. Alongside these dissections of the mechanics of the sub-genre, Bailey also cites a number of real life apocalypses—Pompeii, Krakatoa, 9/11, the extinction event that did in the dinosaurs, the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda. One event he mentions—the death of Elvis Presley—hints at the real point of the story, which is that for both victims and survivors, the apocalypse is largely a personal event. [whole review]
 

It’s really a well-crafted review, and considering it’s written by several different reviewers, the overall result is remarkably cohesive.

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Joe Sherry, over at Adventures in Reading, has posted his review of Wastelands. Here’s a snippet:

The bottom line is that collectively the stories John Joseph Adams has put together here in Wastelands shows off the range of the post-apocalyptic sub-genre of fiction. Wastelands is an excellent anthology of short fiction and one that would easily fit on any collector’s shelves. [whole review]

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In the mail today, I received the latest issue of Pegasus, the alumni magazine of the University of Central Florida, and in the "Alumni Authors" section, there’s a little blurb about Wastelands:

Sarah Jackson of The Fix did an interview with me recently which is now available for your reading pleasure. Here’s a snippet:

How do you imagine you would deal with being a survivor in a post-apocalyptic wasteland?

I took one of those online tests once that gauged how well you’d do in such a situation, and I fared rather poorly, which I think was a pretty accurate assessment of my chances. I object to its analysis that I had zero nature skills, however. I mean, I’m a total city boy, and much prefer to stay inside most of the time, but I’m not a moron. That said, there is an entirely good chance I’d get mauled by a wild animal if I were stuck on my own after an apocalypse.

The good news is that I know some people who probably would do rather well, and might be inclined to help me out. And I have read a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction, after all, so surely I’ll think of something when the mutants come looking for me. 

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