“The Great Game at the End of the World”
After
Eds. Ellen Datlow, Terri Windling
October 12, 2012

Reviews

“‘The Great Game at the End of the World’ by Matthew Kressel is the most touching tale, which opens like something out of a Douglas Adams novel in a baseball game that ESPN would froth over. Aliens and monsters fielding the diamond should be the true scare here, but as with many of the tales within After, something much darker lurks below the surface. Yet, fright is not the emotion struck hardest here. Truly affecting.” — Cemetery Dance

“Probably the weirdest story in the book– Charlie Jane Anders for io9.com

“Well-crafted…Matthew Kressel presents a comically sad game of baseball in a devastated world where strange, alien creatures lurk” — Publishers Weekly

“A story about the need to find meaning somehow, when everything seems meaningless…The scenario is interestingly dire– Lois Tilton, Locus

“Matthew Kressel’s ‘The Great Game at the End of the World” is a fun mash-up of the American pastime with a twisted future filled with ‘Creepies’ and ‘Barbies and Kens.’” — Gwenda Bond, Locus

“[Post-apocalyptic fiction] the right way…This story actually comes closest to the fundamental, theological definition of the word; the revelation of God.” —Hellnotes

A mesmerizing story that investigates the bonds of family, religious belief, and existence in the face of nihilistic entropy.” — FantasyLiterature.com

“Most WTF inducing…It’s like vampire baseball on acid.” — Andrew Bird at A Reader of Fictions

“Matthew Kressel’s ‘The Great Game at the End of the World’ is bizarre, almost surreal. Framed around a nightmarish baseball game, a young man and his sister experience the before and after of an apocalypse which transforms the world and turns ordinary people into unthinking drones. It’s about acceptance and redemption…or maybe just about that last home run” — Michael M. Jones,Tor.com