John Adams - Wastelands 2

Countdown (Knopf, 2040) told the story of a young man named Franklin Proudman who had decided to repatriate to North America. Proudman lands and finds life a lot different than he expected. Much of the book is a rambling series of anecdotes around the hopeless efforts of Proudman to build a life. He eventually dies from starvation, the ground still too damaged to produce crops.

Lost in North America (Knopf, 2045) is Prince’s only foray into the science fiction genre. [25]The novel tells the story of the Winkler family, who hide in a fallout shelter in Rapid City, South Dakota. Despite Rapid City being ground zero for the Meyer Impact, the family survives and exit the shelter a year later to rebuild their lives. When it becomes clear that there is no food or wildlife, the family begins a journey, foraging for food across North America. The book has clear allusions to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road , but the emptiness of the landscape provides for a uniquely Princean view. The book generated significant positive critical press. [26][27]

Prince’s final novel, Crater (Knopf, 2056), was released the year before his death. The book continued his exploration of the dark aspects of repatriation. [28]The novel follows a scientist, William Ho, and his assistant Wendy Singh, as they attempt to descend to the bottom of the Meyer Crater. Like Prince’s other novels, Crater is rife with introspection. As Ho and his assistant get closer to the bottom, they realize they are in love. It is when they have reached ground zero of the Meyer Impact when the two realize they have found their future together. The novel’s ending is ambiguous, as the two are attempting to climb out of the crater but are uncertain if they will ever escape. While thematically similar to his earlier novels, Crater employs a denser prose style, with long paragraphs that often include a stream-of-consciousness technique. Despite its ambiguity and often dark scenes, the novel was marked by some as a return to the optimism of “Coming Home.” Crater was a bestseller and re-established Prince as a popular figure in post-Impact literature. [29][30]

Prince was romantically connected to several celebrities during his life, including actresses Renee Diaz [ citation needed ]and Janet Skillings. [31]None of these relationships lasted more than a few weeks, however. In 2050, unofficial Prince biographer Susan Nillson announced that she had uncovered proof that Prince had left a girlfriend and child behind in North America. The document, a digitized copy of a Texas State birth certificate backed up on a European server, showed that Prince fathered a child named Samuel to a mother named Wendy Reynolds. Prince never acknowledged Nillson’s allegations, although most contemporary historians consider the claim accurate. [32]

Excerpt from Julian Prince’s final interview ( Paris Live! , 2056)

Aliette Rameau:You’ve achieved so much, Monsieur Prince. Do you have any regrets?

[Pause]

Rameau:Monsieur Prince?

Julian Prince:I’m sorry. Your question is a bit overwhelming. My life is full of regrets.

Rameau:Is there anything specific you could share with us?

Prince:No. [Takes drink of water] I’m sorry. Could we change the subject, please?

Prince died on August 20, 2057 in Capetown, South Africa, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He left no suicide note. Having died without any heirs, Prince bequeathed his literary estate and assets to The 300 Million Ghosts Foundation, which was founded to record, research, and archive the stories of those who died during the Meyer Impact. [33][34]

Prince’s legacy continues to define and influence artists to this day. While Impact Nihilism has fallen out of fashion, Prince’s stark images and deep themes can be seen in everything from the paintings of Ellen Winslow to the music of the Bluefins. His use of introspection and stream-of-consciousness has influenced writers as diverse as Joe Lguyen and Isabel Shoeford. [ citation needed ]

The play “Coming Home” debuted on the anniversary of Prince’s death in 2058 at the Globe Theater in London. Adapted by Nobel-winning playwright Andrew Hillsborough, the play was an unabashedly optimistic look at a world that survived an extinction event and came away smiling. Hillsborough noted on BBC, “Oh, I’m sure old Prince would have hated it. But the words are all his. Somewhere along the way he changed. Just because he decided that facing the abyss meant that we were all doomed to fall in, doesn’t mean we have to agree with him.” [35]

Epitaph on Julian Prince’s gravestone

“Finally home.”

Many thanks to the following:

My Publisher/Editor: Steve Saffel, for acquiring and editing the book, and to the rest of the team that worked on the book at Titan Books.

My Agents (past and present): Joe Monti (former) and Seth Fishman (present) for being awesome and supportive.

My Mentor: Gordon Van Gelder, for being a mentor and a friend.

My Colleague: Ellen Datlow for revealing the mysteries of anthologizing.

My Family: my amazing wife, Christie; my mom, Marianne, and my sister, Becky, for all their love and support.

Author/Contract Wranglers: Marie Florio, Ty Franck, Patricia Rogers, Laura Bradford, Kathleen Bellamy, Gavin Grant, and Duvall Osteen.

Second Opinion Corps: Robyn Lupo, Caleb Jordan Schulz, Andrew Liptak, Benjamin Blattberg, Kristin Centorcelli, Lashawn Wanak, Lisa Rogers, Louise Kane, Paul DesCombaz, Robert Barton Bland, Stephanie M. Loree, Theresa Glover, and Patrick Stephens for providing feedback on the stories during the editorial process.

Intern: Extra special thanks to my former intern, Amber Barkley, who not only provided feedback on stories, but also helped out a lot with other behind-the-scenes stuff on this anthology.

My Writers: Everyone who appears in this anthology.

My Readers (last but not least): Everyone who bought this book, or any of my other anthologies, and who make doing books like this possible.

Ann Aguirreis a New York Times, USA Today , and Publishers Weekly bestselling author with a degree in English Literature; before she began writing full-time, she was a clown, a clerk, a voice actress, and a savior of stray kittens, not necessarily in that order. She grew up in a yellow house across from a cornfield, but now she lives in sunny Mexico with her husband, children, and various pets. She likes books, emo music, and action movies. She writes all kinds of genre fiction for adults and teens.

Megan Arkenberglives and writes in California. Her work has appeared in Lightspeed, Asimov’s, Strange Horizons , Ellen Datlow’s The Best Horror of the Year , and the inaugural issue of the horror magazine Aghast , among other places. She procrastinates by editing the fantasy e-zine Mirror Dance .

Paolo Bacigalupiis the bestselling author of the novels The Windup Girl, Ship Breaker, The Drowned Cities, Zombie Baseball Beatdown , and the collection Pump Six and Other Stories . He is a winner of the Michael L. Printz, Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Compton Crook, and John W. Campbell Memorial awards, and was a National Book Award finalist. A new novel for young adults, The Doubt Factory , came out in 2014, and a new science fiction novel, The Water Knife , is due out in May 2015.

Christopher Barzakis the author of the Crawford Fantasy Award winning novel, One for Sorrow , which has been made into the recently released Sundance feature film Jamie Marks is Dead . His second novel, The Love We Share Without Knowing , was a finalist for the Nebula and Tiptree Awards. He is also the author of two collections: Birds and Birthdays , a collection of surrealist fantasy stories, and Before and Afterlives , a collection of supernatural fantasies, which won the 2013 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Collection. He grew up in rural Ohio, has lived in a southern California beach town, the capital of Michigan, and has taught English outside of Tokyo, Japan, where he lived for two years. His next novel, Wonders of the Invisible World , will be published by Knopf in Fall 2015. Currently he teaches fiction writing in the Northeast Ohio MFA program at Youngstown State University.