Enter at Your Own Risk: The End is the Beginning
Edited by Dr. Alex Scully
Firbolg Publishing
April 2014
Reviewed by Elaine Pascale
In the simpler time that was 2002, Stephen Patranek, editor-in-chief of Discover magazine, gave a Ted Talk on “The 10 Ways the World Could End.” Number 10: We lose the will to survive. Citing suicide rates and mental illness, Patranek paints a scenario wherein the human race basically dies of ennui.
Flash forward to 2015 and the anthology Enter at Your Own Risk: The End is the Beginning seems to share that sensibility. The characters of the stories are resigned about either their own demise or the death of our planet. The themes are culled from contemporary fears: environmental destruction; evolution gone wild; chemical spills; big, bad government—all of the key players of paranoia-induced insomnia.
Edited by Alex Scully, Enter at Your Own Risk is a lengthy, dense tome that mixes mostly new stories with offerings from the likes of Poe, Lovecraft, Mary Shelley, Hawthorne, etc. The classics are carefully selected so that they feel right at home in this contemporary anthology. In fact, all of the stories blend together seamlessly, showcasing Scully’s skill as an editor.
There is a common thread amongst the stories, most of which begin in medias res. Beneath the chaos, the paranoia, the desperation, there is an atmosphere of isolation. Despite stories containing several characters, there is a pervading loneliness. This is not as depressing as it sounds. In fact, I found many of the stories to be invigorating.
Some standouts: “Harvest” by Norman Patridge, is a surreal and magical way to kick off the anthology. Die Booth’s “Sphere Music,” and Gregory L. Norris’ “Every Seven Years, Give or Take,” handle that eerie concept of being attacked by vague and strange “others” in interesting and unique ways. I especially appreciate Booth’s take on tinnitus—a scary outcome for an annoying affliction. “There is No Wind That Always Blows” by Julianne Snow found me biting my lip, trying to read my way through the tension. The overarching bleakness of the titular wind is reminiscent of Kobo Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes, and the characters reliance on rope says much about the human condition. Michael Meeske’s “Feelers” sets survivor’s guilt on a lovely backdrop (Nantucket)—what a wonderful, yet horrible place to meet “the end.”
Even for rabid doomsday preppers, Enter at Your Own Risk is not for one sitting. There are some stories that offer much welcomed dark humor: “The Dreaded Hobblobs: A Heavy-Handed Fable for Short-Sighted Times” by Gary Braunbeck;” Nothing but Skin and Bones” by B.E. Scully; and “Her Living Corals” by Kenneth W. Cain, but overall it is a challenging book in terms of its quantity and depth of material. Enter at Your Own Risk is a high quality dystopian/apocalyptic anthology that would be more appropriate for the literary minded, as opposed to the “slasher” set.
