Book Review: The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King's The Stand Edited by Christopher Golden and Brian Keene

 

The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King's The Stand: Edited by Christopher Golden and Brian Keene

779 pages, Hardcover
Published August 2025 by Gallery Books

I have a complicated relationship with The Stand, and don’t get me wrong, I have read it more than once. I watched the mini-series live, night by night, as it premiered. That said, I don’t love it as much as many of the authors in this book. I personally think Salem’s Lot, The Shining, and the Dead Zone are all masterpieces, but The Stand was a book I liked but thought suffered from a few major flaws. If I am also honest, I prefer Swan Song by Robert McCammon, a novel uncomfortably close to The Stand, to the point I think its 800 pages are as much of a tribute to The Stand as this one.

I don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum. The funny thing as much as didn’t personally feel connected to The Stand the way Keene and Golden did from the moment this was announced, I was excited to read it. I also knew this was a big deal for Brian, who I respect and root for. The love drips off every page. I liked a few stories more than others but overall I thought the whole thing was readable, in someways it is more enjoyable than the OG novel because many stories are from writers I know and respect and I am rooting for those stories/

 I won’t be breaking down every story, and to be honest, I returned it to the library, as I didn’t want anyone else to have to wait. With close to 800 pages I liked a few stories more than others. I was surprised to love stories by authors I am not fans of and in a couple cases not moved by authors I generally love.  

My two absolute favorites were Tim Lebbon’s “Grace” and   “Lockdown” by Bev Vincent. 

Lebbon’s story might seem obvious as a favorite of mine that involves the space shuttle and takes place in orbit. It is not just the high concept but the execution of the story. Many of the besr stories gave us a point of view we didn’t get from King’s novel. What happens to the shuttle with no grounds crew? Heartbreaking little tale.

Lockdown by Bev Vincent felt the most like a lost chapter from the novel, while at the same time making subtle commentary on the events of the last few years. It shouldn’t be a surprise that a noted scholar of King would capture his voice the best. In my opinion.

Some other highlights for me:

“Wrong Fucking Place, Wrong Fucking Time” by C. Robert Cargill – Great characters and setting, a vivid piece that felt alive.

“The Africa Painted Dog” by Catriona Ward – One of the most delightfully out there weird tales that managed to experiment but also fit in just enough.  

“Make Your Own Way” by Alma Katsu – Emotionally effective story.

“The Mosque at the End of the World by Usman T. Malik – of the stories that took place out of the U.S. I thought this one felt like it should’ve been it’s own novel.

 

Bright Light City by Meg Gardiner – I was surprised by this one.

 

Till Human Voices Wake Us, and We Drown by Poppy Z. Brite – The Brite stories of the 90s are super important, and this just felt great to read.

The Boat Man by Tananarive Due & Steven Barnes – Vivid story, set in a corner of the world that I enjoyed. The keys, the boats, all interesting stuff.

Abagail's Gethsermane by Wayne Brady & Maurice Broaddus – Glad this team will be writing books together going forward. I am amazed that King agreed to let anyone tell Abigail’s backstory but if you were going to two beloved artists like Brady and Broaddus. Hell yeah.

The whole book is a must-read for fans of The Stand. I personally would suggest buying a copy and reading a few stories at a time. Savoring the experience is one benefit, but also there is a little bit of repetitive themes that can’t be helped. Every author is going to want to play with the dreams of Boulder and Vegas.

The most important thing to me was this washed some of the bad taste of CBS TV, which got every single thing wrong in the storytelling.  Keene and Golden have done amazing work here. This is an anthology for the ages. Even if it was not personally made for me. It is a towering achievement. Congratulations to all involved.

 

Book Review: The Silver Revolver: A Western Crime Thriller by John Shirley

 The Silver Revolver: A Western Crime Thriller by John Shirley

 356 pages, Paperback
Published October 11, 2025 by Rough Edges Press

 

Of living writers, no one has taken up more space on my shelves than John Shirley. With a career that defies genre, Shirley has written masterpieces in science fiction, horror, and westerns.  He has written media tie-ins that punch way above their weight class, and yet he is not done surprising us, his constant readership. Not every release is a masterpiece, no author can claim that, but what Shirley does is bring a sense of justice that matches his skills as a storyteller.  Perhaps his greatest magic trick is to make very single effort meaningful and fun.

When I finished The Silver Revolver I posted my first thoughts …An editor with a past breaks bad after his son dies from an overdose, and he survives a mass shooting on the same day. Finding the person responsible for his son’s death leads Slim and the reader into the criminal underworld. Action and quick-witted dialogue. Shirley brings his storytelling chops and sense to the West Coast crime epic.

From the back cover:

“A grieving father, a brutal overdose, a silver revolver-and nothing left to lose.

Slim Purdoux was once just another ex-con trying to go straight. After doing time in Texas for drugs, he landed a miracle job as a book editor in San Francisco. But fate had other plans. When his only son dies of a fentanyl overdose-and Slim is mistakenly caught up in a mass shooting. The weight of grief, rage, and injustice drives him to a dangerous edge.

Now hunted by cops and haunted by loss, Slim returns to the only thing he was ever good at: shooting fast and shooting straight. Armed with a custom silver revolver and a lifetime of regret, he plunges into the violent heart of the American underworld to settle the score with the cartel that killed his son.

What follows is a gritty modern western wrapped in a blood-soaked crime thriller, where vengeance is a drug stronger than anything on the streets-and justice is a bullet away.

Will Slim survive the war he starts? Or will the truth about his past destroy him before he even gets close?

The Silver Revolver is a feverish, unflinching dive into the darkest corners of vigilante justice, addiction, and the price of revenge.”

A Breaking Bad comparison is a pretty solid one. Silm is a great character, unlike Walt, he has a past he has buried. He has a respectable job and is co-parenting his son.  The novel opens with two powerful and depressing chapters. The death of a child, numbing and horrible happens just before Slim is witness to an extreme act of violence. These chapters are unsettling in the right way. 

 Shirley’s stories are often centered on fathers who are in a struggle to do the right thing by their children. The pain that Slim feels over his failure as a father is deep and powerful part of the novel. 

“That he was born into drugs and died in drugs. Because I had gotten Meredith pregnant with him in college, when we’d both been doing some MDMA. X. Stoned, she’d been yielding and intellectually open and full of possibilities while her bitterness slept. She got pregnant in a waking drug dream. Frankie died in a torturous mix of MDMA and fentanyl.”

Slim is numb when he walks into another crisis. A mass shooting at his work, and his reaction to it is driven entirely by the hopelessness he feels. His actions might seem out of control, but the events he just lived through are enough to drive anyone mad. Justice, revenge, the line is thin for Slim.

Once he starts to investigate the underworld, we meet a series of characters who give Shirley a canvas to explore. A strength of the novel is minor characters are well-drawn. 

I loved some of the quick and witty dialogue; there are plenty of scenes like this…

“If you checked up—”

“I talked to the investigating detective.”

“Then you know they didn’t think I was a suspect for more than like ten minutes. The shooter confessed.”

“I did get that, yeah. But...you kill those two in Reno?”

“Just to watch them die?”

“Not funny.”

Okay, she knew when I was referencing a Johnny Cash song. She was even cooler than I’d thought.

“Which two in Reno?” I asked.

“There were more than two?”

“No, I mean—hold on now, what am I being accused of?”

I could've used a little used just a bit more of this back and forth.  But the novel also had one of the most descriptive and effective similes ever. 

“Now I felt like a cigarette butt hissing out in a urinal.”

The Silver Revolver is a fun read, although there are moments that challenge the reader. This is pure storytelling. Shirley has threatened that this might be the last novel, as good as it is I don want Shirley the novelist to go out this way. I want another Shirley SF novel. Some really, really, really, Really weird, like I know only he can.

Book review: Your Utopia by Bora Chung

 

 

Your Utopia by Bora Chung 

256 pages, Paperback

Published January, 2024 by Algonquin Books

 

This was a book that was first put on my radar when a respected co-worker handed me this book. I respect her opinion, but I admit my TBR was so nuts I didn't make it a priority. IT was inching closer when Brian Evenson, as a guest on my podcast, suggested it. So that pushed me to read it on the train back from SFAM in LA.

Speaking of Evenson, Bora Chung is an author from Korea who reminds me of Brian, Dennis Etchison, or Han Song, all authors whose strength is short fiction. Like Evenson, Chung has not been forced into the genre ghetto despite all the stories in this collection being SF or, as Richard Matheson would have said, off-beat.

Every story was delightfully weird, the prose was very tight, so it had me wondering about the translation and how much I was missing when it traveled from its original language. The storytelling is wonderful. Some of the best stuff I have read this year. I keep hearing that Cursed Bunny is better, that the stories are more original.

Since it appears to have the mainstream respect, I must point out that it is laughable to deny this book's SF nature. It was nominated for the PKD award for good reason. The story The End of the Voyage, is second, and it is straight up on a spaceship. It is good SF too. I mean, some authors build their stories on fear of isolation, or the struggles of living in various economies, deep-rooted personal issues…Bora Chung seems to be exploring our evolving relationship with technology, what is more Science fiction than that?

 “I was standing on the rubble of a fallen world, looking around me. The only warm thing was the sunlight. The concrete debris I was sitting on was hot to the touch because of it but that was all.

As far as the eye could see, there was only shattered concrete, twisted steel bars, broken bricks, and cracked asphalt. There wasn't so much as a tree or a blade of grass, much less a living animal. The sky was clear and the clouds looked peaceful, but the sun poured down its light on the landscape that was nothing less than desolate.

Should I go back to the spaceship?”

Come on, marketing homies, it is OK to admit this author who has broken planets and massive space ships is a science fiction writer. I have no idea if Chung is team Leguin (proud to be a SF writer) or Atwood (refused the distinction), but I feel like her stories so embrace the setting, why not? I mean the first story “The Center for Immortality Research,” is a story about technology that helps people live forever and an anniversary party.  Seed is a story about human plant hybrids.

Back to End of Voyage…

“I was not a part of either side. Because I already knew there was no point in debate period from the moment the events on the bridge began, I was informing earth of our situation, as per captain's orders. Map of expected anyone on earth to present us with suitable alternative but as soon as I could convey the exact nature of what was going on in the spaceship, the control towers on earth stopped communicating with us. I tried every three minutes to reestablish links, but to no avail.”

The dynamic of the story is built on this lack of communication. The void of space, the waste of the planets, the island of isolation, the ship has become…powerful stuff. This is more surrealist than hard SF. It has more it common with James Reich’s Skinship or River Solomon’s generation ship than Clarke or Asimov but it is still SF. I read a few reviews who thought this book was one note compared to her last collection, Cursed Bunny. Some of the readers who thought these stories were one-note are probably the Lit readers who lack imagination for SF settings.  Just saying.

That’s OK because stories like Maria, Gratia Plena has got the weird for them. : “In my dream, I am a planet. A small, unmanned spacecraft comes up to me, certainly me. Whenever it moves its tiny bright lights sparkle. In that vast bleakness that is the black of space, the spacecraft twinkles its little lights and stays by my side. I am a happy planet.

But a few days after our first encounter the spacecraft begins to move away and they showed after it.

“But why?”

The spacecraft does not reply blinking its tiny lights that I love so much it goes further and further away.”

I love the idea of this and found this meditative and powerful. Coming before the title story that explored a planet that humans have left, leaving behind technological artifacts. The machines that can think and tell stories discover something powerful.

“Ever since humans left this planet, it's been only machines like 314 and me. The humans dismantled the generator and took it with them. The machines that needed charging lost power 1 by 1, only those with renewable energy sources like me and survive. Not that my solar cells will last forever, either. This planet was always on the cold side, and it's getting colder the days when it doesn't snow or fog are becoming increasingly rare. Whenever the wind blows my auto body is rocked so hard that I feel like I'm gonna flip over.”

I do, however, discover “utopia” in the database. It is the name of the first fully automated factory constructed by the 1st settlement on this planet. The factory produced all sorts of equipment needed to develop human life on the planet, including construction tools and medical apparatus.

Utopia.

Humans had thought they could build a paradise on this merciless planet.”

That is not the only story from the technological point of view. A Song for Sleep is a powerful little tale about a smart elevator that is watching a resident and ask, “-Is a “disease' similar to a 'malfunction”? The all-knowing nest firms. Next line in a general sense, yes.”

Surveillance is a major theme here. This story of a smart elevator trying to determine if one of the residents in the building is sick. This is a new twist on the theme. Maybe Cursed Bunny is more impressive, but this is my FIRST Bora Chung and it won’t be the last. I would love t interview her, she went to grad school in my hometown, and she is a hell of an author.  Your Utopia will likely be on my best of the year list.