Love in the Ruins

"In times of such huge confusion, the little things go on. During the 'Ten Days that Shook the World' the cafés and theaters of Moscow and Petrograd stayed open, people fell in love, sued each other, died, shed sweat and tears; and some of the tears were tears of laughter." Theodore Sturgeon, "The Hurkle is a Happy Beast"

Many stories have been written already about the approaching end of industrial civilization: about the great tragedies and the small triumphs, about struggles spread out across landscapes and struggles just as bitter within individual hearts, about the people who survive and the ones who don't. One theme that's been unfairly neglected in deindustrial fiction is love. As iconic SF author Theodore Sturgeon noted, the little things go on-and among those little things are human relationships, blossoming in the most unlikely settings. This anthology includes ten stories and three poems about love in the deindustrial future, by turns ethereal and earthy, traumatic and tender-but all of them ending with a promise of happily ever after...