Beyond Armageddon: Twenty-One Sermons to the Dead by Walter M. Miller Jr.

Beyond Armageddon: Twenty-One Sermons to the Dead Reviews

• 
  Terence

  Of course, "Lot" and "A Boy and His Dog" are the two best stories in this collection but of interest too is Miller's forward.
• 
  Schnaucl

  This is one of the better anthologies I've read. Months later more than a few stories stories remain distinct in my mind. The opening story was especially good.
  
  Without looking at the original publication date it's easy to see that many of the stories were written at the height of the Cold War. The political climate has changed but the stories remain powerful. Still, it would be interesting to see what these same authors would do with today's climate where terrorists groups, not nation states, are perceived as the threat that might bring Armageddon.
• 
  Gail Jackson

  Good collection of older pre and post apocalyptic stories from masters of the genre.
• 
  David Mills

  Favorite Quote = “It took a long time before I stopped hearing her calling ‘do you know what love is?’ Sure I know. A boy loves his dog.”
• 
  Karl

  Not the strongest collection of short stories I have read, a couple of great ones, but the majority were forgettable
• 
  BadReetReviews

  P. 257 of "There Will Come Soft Rains," Ray Bradbury 4 🌟
  
  There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
  And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
  
  And frogs in the pools singing at night,
  And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;
  
  Robins will wear their feathery fire
  Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
  
  And not one will know of the war, not one
  Will care at last when it is done.
  
  Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
  If mankind perished utterly;
  
  And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
  Would scarcely know that we were gone.
  
  Sara Teasdale, 1918
  
  P. 278 Eastward Ho, William Tenn 5 🌟
  
  Palefaces are treated the same way they treated Indians, by the Indian tribes that are now the rulers of the United States. Lol
  
  P. 295 The Feast of Saint Janis, Michael Swanwyck, 4 🌟
  
  The shithole 3rd-world country that the United States is, now, and in this story, needs an icon to get the rabble roused enough to make as many babies as possible, in the hopes that a few of them won't have mutations, and will make it out of the delivery room. Americans only live to ~42, so every year a new Janis Joplin Is engineered to rouse up the peasants.
  
  P. 374 My Life in the Jungle, Jim Aiken, 4 🌟
  
  A metaphor for human overpopulation and the destruction of our planet.
• 
  Hez

  There were only a couple of stories in this collection that appealed to me: By the Waters of Babylon (1937) / short fiction by Stephen Vincent Benét (variant of The Place of the Gods) [as by Stephen V. Benet]; and to a lesser extent Salvador (1984) / short story by Lucius Shepard; and A Boy and His Dog [Vic and Blood • 2] (1969) / novella by Harlan Ellison. I found the rest somewhat pretentious and boring and I probably should have known because I found the editor's novel the same. I think post-apocalyptic fiction is better the closer it goes to the line with schlock - without stepping over of course. My vision of the genre is a wide-open wasteland and most of these stories were far too interior and talky.
• 
  Albert_Camus_lives

  LoT
  
  FlAslight by spinrAd
  
  Eastward Ho, William Tenn 5 🌟
  
  Palefaces are treated the same way they treated Indians, by the Indian tribes that are now the rulers of the United States. Lol
  
  The Feast of Saint Janis, Michael Swanwyck, 4 🌟
  
  The shithole 3rd-world country that the United States is, now, and in this story, needs an icon to get the rabble roused enough to make as many babies as possible,
  
  My Life in the Jungle, Jim Aiken, 4 🌟
  
  A metaphor for human overpopulation and the destruction of our planet.
• 
  P.S. Winn

  What would life be like after the worst destructions happen? This is a great collection of what if and what now?
• 
  Matte Resist

  This is a collection of mostly post armageddon stories, most of which are obviously cold war era. I almost put the book down during the first story because it seemed more like the story of a bad acid trip than post apocalyptic story. After that one, things improved. The stories tend to be all over the place, which is good and bad. A couple don't really seem to fit the theme at all, most notably the first and last stories. I didn't find a LOT here that was particularly memorable but there was some imagery in a couple of the stories that sticks out in my mind. I'm a sucker for post-apocalypse/armageddon stories, so I enjoyed the read for that... but i doubt I'll ever read it again.
• 
  Carly Kirk

  I'm a big fan of dystopian, apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic, etc types of stories & I really enjoy a good short story written about anything, but there weren't many in here that grabbed me and made me think and the ones that did were mostly ones that I'd already read in other anthologies. The others just seemed like filler or I just didn't enjoy whatever the author was trying to convey or maybe I just didn't understand... like "My Life in the Jungle."
  
  Other reviewers have done a good job of briefly describing the 21 stories, so I'm not going to do so...
• 
  Michael

  An absolutely amazing anthology of post-apocalyptic, dystopian, post-nuclear war stories! Walter M Miller Jr wrote one of the best post-apocalyptic books I have ever read (A Canticle For Leibowitz) and in this anthology, working with Martin Greenberg, he compiles an impressive list of stories that are of a similar topic. Anyone who is a fan of post-apocalyptic and dystopian fiction should read this book!
• 
  Joseph Saborio

  A great compilation of Apocalyptic literature, and edited by Walter Miller, author of A Canticle For Leibowitz, one of my faves. He starts each story and the collection with witty commentary, fun to read by itself. The collection includes A Boy and His Dog, fun to finally read it, I've seen the movie twice, and didn't know it was originally a story until getting my hands on this.
• 
  Nurture Waratah

  Some of these stories are a little boring, others quite entertaining. One story in particular (The Big Flash by Norman Spinrad) I found quite creepy, though I'm not entirely certain why. If you read this book, I recommend skipping the Forewarning. It is long and dull and adds little to the reading experience.
• 
  NumberLord

  An anthology of tales of life before, during, or after doomsday. Among the more notable stories:
  Salvador, by Lucius Shepard
  Lot, by Ward Moore
  Day at the Beach, by Carol Emshwiller
  The Wheel, by John Wyndham
  Game Preserve, by Rog Phillips
  To the Chicago Abyss, by Ray Bradbury
  Eastward Ho!, by William Tenn
  A Boy and His Dog, by Harlan Ellison
  
• 
  Ann M

  Short stories of the end of the world by well-known scifi authors, Clarke, Ellison, Bradbury, Zelazny, et al. Some decent ones, but more a reference, if you can imagine needing one like this. It has the classics in the genre, but many seem pretty corny now.
• 
  Michelle Morrell

  Heavy and depressing, I guess I don't like nuclear-specific post-apocalyptic fiction*. Who would have known?
  
  *Except for Swan Song, which was more mythical and good v evil than pure nuclear Armageddon.
• 
  Marcie Shearl

  For "End of the world" class. The book is very disturbing. I have only read several of the stories in there, but so far they are weird!!!!
• 
  Rob

  looks like a great companion volume to J.J. Adams'
  Wastelands
• 
  Sheila

  A collection of short stories all of the post apocalyptic genre. Some good, some fair.
• 
  Sue Davis

  The stories are traditional cold war post-apocalypse---not that great. The best is the classic "A Boy and His Dog" available in many other collections.
• 
  Kat Spurlock

  liked it interesting collection