I originally picked this up thinking it was going to be about zombies, but it was clearly stated in the beginning that that was not the case and I wasn't disappointed at all. I'm glad I ordered this collection when I saw it online because it definitely restored my interest in short stories. I haven't had the best experience with them in the past, but this collection was great because the authors managed to capture my attention then carried me along with their well written words and their fascinating ideas about the apocalypse without any effort on my part in trying to enjoy them.

Starting off with Stephen King was a great idea because that really put me in the mood to read and I was able to enjoy the anthology from the get go. The rest of the stories were great, too; I can't say I loved all of them, but there wasn't anything that stuck out like a sore thumb in regards to bad writing or plot. It was intriguing to see what each author envisioned the end of the world to be like, and the details about them showed me how fascinating their minds are in regards to exploring different ideas.

There was often one little thing in each story that would define them, and that was the best part: seeing one well explored possibility of the end of the world through a well written point of view. The few examples of this that come to mind are: when speech and literacy were taken away from people, leaving them dependant on gestures to communicate; where a "savage" mutation of humans evolved into communicating telepathically; where beings as we know them, unblemished in DNA, are waning out and being dominated by hybrids in one story, and in another are considered inferior to their easily adaptable mutated replacements. The sheer volume of different things that each author was able to bring to this anthology was amazing - there was no lack of imagination here.

This anthology is definitely worth reading for people interested in apocalyptic stories - even if short stories are not their thing. Here, there wasn't the usual "I don't understand what happened here" that I usually get when I read convoluted short stories - just stuff to think about and explore. This was definitely a good read and I would absolutely come back to this anthology again one day to experience the same wonders again.