A tightly themed, well executed collection: Wastelands captures our apocalypse fears and fantasies equally well and sometimes even simultaneously.

Adams wisely chooses Stephen King's "The End of the Whole Mess" as an opener and moves into all manner of exciting territory from there. Wastelands is the expected mix of strong (and some average) short stories; most of them have a high re-read score and there is an good mix of diverse ideas and themes that keep within the central focus.

THAT SAID: if you are considering this one, read the introduction before you make the purchase. This isn't about zombie plagues or alien invasions or black holes ripping through our space-time continuum. This is about somewhat more plausible apocalypses. Even when they're totally unexplained.

Most of these stories I enjoyed as much as I expected (e.g., "Speech Sounds") and some less so (e.g., "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth") and some more so (e.g., "Salvage"). I won't enumerate the themes you expect in an apocalypse-themed collection; they're all here and they're all in full force. I will remark on the following, however:

* I was a bit amused by how many of these shorts featured nomads;
** and more so by how often those nomads were of the carny folk variety.
* The stories seem to be pretty "current" in their bio-engineered plagues and their genetic fall-out and their post-Peak Oil crises and 9/11-kneejerks; the last star in my review would have been earned by but one thorough and explicit treatment of WW3-ish nuclear winter.
* Remember: you brought this on yourself.

Rated Individually:
• "The End of the Whole Mess" (Stephen King) ★★★★★
• "Salvage" (Orson Scott Card) ★★★
• "The People of Sand and Slag" (Paolo Bacigalupi) ★★★
• "Bread and Bombs" (M. Rickert) ★★★
• "How We Got In Town and Out Again" (Jonathan Lethem) ★★★★
• "Dark, Dark Were the Tunnels" (George R. R. Martin) ★★★★
• "Waiting for the Zephyr" (Tobias S. Buckell) ★★★
• "Never Despair" (Jack McDevitt) ★★★★
• "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth" (Cory Doctorow) ★★★
• "The Last of the O-Forms" (James Van Pelt) ★★★
• "Still Life with Apocalypse" (Richard Kadrey) ★★★★
• "Artie's Angels" (Catherine Wells) ★★★★
• "Judgment Passed" (Jerry Oltion) ★★★
• "Mute" (Gene Wolfe) ★★★★½
• "Inertia" (Nancy Kress) ★★★
• "And the Deep Blue Sea" (Elizabeth Bear) ★★★
• "Speech Sounds" (Octavia Butler) ★★★★
• "Killers" (Carol Emshwiller) ★★★★
• "Ginny Sweethips' Flying Circus" (Neal Barrett Jr.) ★★★
• "The End of the World as We Know It" (Dale Bailey) ★★★★★
• "A Song Before Sunset" (David Grigg) ★★★
• "Episode Seven: Last Stand Against the Pack in the Kingdom of the Purple Flowers" (John Langan) ★★★★