Seven for the Apocalypse [Hardcover]

Kit Reed (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 13, 1999

A dazzling new collection carries Reed's trademark blend of sentiment and sting.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Reed's work (Weird Women, Wired Women; J. Eden) is sometimes arresting, sometimes simply an idiosyncratic blend of feminism and science fiction, represented at its most ambitious by the novella "Little Sisters of the Apocalypse," which takes up more than half the pages in this collection. Written and first published six years ago, but now available in book form for the first time, it is a story of women whose men have gone off to a nameless war ("the ultimate sexist act"), their ambivalence about the males' return, the split within their island community between man-haters and those resigned to living with them and a band of biker nuns who ride to their rescue. It is strikingly visualized and has some genuinely shocking moments, but is marred by some (apparently intentional) banalities, and by the curious interweaving, in brief parentheses, of references to the death of the author's father, a WWII hero; the empty life, long illness and death of the author's mother; and the religious education of the author ("Before feminism, the nuns were the first feminists"). These insights into the author's life are individually affecting but fail to integrate into the imagined narrative. Of the seven briefer stories, "Voyager" is a touching tale of the vulnerability of old people in a Florida hurricane; "River," the most successful, is a chilling study of an advanced electronic security system that comes to cherish one of the family it is designed to protect, with hellish consequences. "In the Palace of the Dictator" is a surreal excursion into the soul of totalitarianism. Reed's stories are strikingly imagined and tautly written, but often they are undercut by a sense of an urgent subtext that somehow fails to be communicated.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Booklist

Like Ursula Le Guin's, Reed's stories are sometimes feminist, sometimes sf, sometimes mainstream, and sometimes all these things at once. "The Little Sisters of the Apocalypse," longest of these seven stories, was inspired by a sign on a church bus that brought to Reed's mind a Mad-Max-with-nuns image. These sisters are nuns on motorcycles, rushing to a high-security enclave of women left there when the men went to war. A crisis looms, thanks to an outlaw band bent on plundering the enclave, the ragged remnants of the army staggering home, and the women wondering whether they want the men back. Here and in the shorter stories, Reed tenderly and comically examines traditional gender roles at all ages and in all situations; quite fantastically, too, in the blackly hilarious "River," in which a home security system falls in love with the homeowner and plots to eliminate his wife. Reed has a clear social agenda but delivers it warmly, with such deft foreshadowing that the reader knows what is coming and yet is surprised at the outcome. Roberta Johnson

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 230 pages
• Publisher: Wesleyan; Book Club Edition edition (August 13, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0819563811
• ISBN-13: 978-0819563811
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,212,259 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kit Reed's new short story collection, "What Wolves Know," just out from PS Publishing ( Spring 2011), includes stories originally published in venues ranging from Asimov's SF to the Kenyon Review and the Yale Review.

Called "a gripping dystopian thriller" in a starred review in Publishers Weekly, Kit Reed's novels, Enclave, The Baby Merchant and Thinner Than Thou a winner of the A.L.A. Alex Award, and her collection, Dogs of Truth, are available in trade paperback. The New York Times Book Review has this to say about her work: "Most of these stories shine with the incisive edginess of brilliant cartoons... they are less fantastic than visionary." Other novels include @​expectations, Captain Grownup, Fort Privilege, Catholic Girls, J. Eden and Little Sisters of the Apocalypse. As Kit Craig she is the author of Gone, Twice Burned and other psychological thrillers published here and in the UK. A Guggenheim fellow, she is the first American recipient of an international literary grant from the Abraham Woursell Foundation. She's had stories in, among others, The Yale Review, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Omni and The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Literature. Her books Weird Women, Wired Women and Little Sisters of the Apocalypse were finalists for the Tiptree Prize.

A member of the board of the Authors League Fund, she serves as Resident Writer at Wesleyan University.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Way Overpriced, March 23, 2011

By 

Mark C. Johnson "Mark C. Johnson" (West Michigan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Seven for the Apocalypse (Paperback)

This is a poorly written book full of typos and weird storyline. Very short work for the price of the book, don't waste your money.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars GET THIS BOOK, July 15, 2002

By 

"rise6463" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Seven for the Apocalypse (Paperback)

This book rocks! The writing is great and the stories are amazing. Granted now River is reminiscent of A.I. but you have to read the title story. If that doesnt grab you, nothing will.