Notes

Agnieszka Hałas - Jest nad zatoką dąb zielony
* BrainUploading: A prototype technology known as immortalisation is being slowly introduced, allowing to continue existence as , with so far few thousands of early adapters. The world, or at least Russian Federation, still didn't fully figure how to deal with it legally, given the person in question is both technically dead and very much alive.
* DramaticIrony: For all the futuristic tech and advances in medicine, Alex will never reach the age of seven. Even if he didn't have a particularly awful glioblastoma, as a child, he would still be disqualified from a BrainUploading on principle. The whole issue is even invoked during one of arguments Vera and Dieter have in private.
* DuringTheWar: Sergei part of the story is set in February '42, during the siege of Leningrad. [[spoiler: He freezes to death]].
* GogglesDoSomethingUnusual: During her BrainUploading procedure, grandma Ludmila asked for editing her memories of the siege of Leningrad, both for the museum dedicated of that subject and as a gift for her granddaughter, Vera, who is obsessed with tracing any information about her great-grandfather, Sergei. Both variants are uploaded on a set of VR googles, but since they are based on real-life memories, they strike with the full intensity of living and feeling everything Ludmila experienced as a child.
* HolographicTerminal: A common feature, which makes it particularly painful for Alex, as they give him guaranteed epileptic seizures. In fact, they are generally deemed bad for children, making audiobooks the favourite future entertainment for children.
* Hypocrite: Ludmila is bashing Germans for ''obviously'' [[AllGermansAreNazis being nazis forever and ever]], while being already being a VirtualGhost uploaded on Bayer's server, using their experimental [[BrainUploading digitalisation technology]].
* LongevityTreatment: And it's even state-refunded for septogenerians, allowing them to shed off few decades back. The goal, however, isn't fully noble - most of rejuvenated people stay in the workforce and there is no need to pay them pension.
* NextSundayAD: The story is set somewhere in the mid-to-late 2030s, while written in 2018. Most of the cutting edge technology is just the extrapolation of what we have nowadays, sans the BrainUploading - which by itself is still in its infancy and prototype testing.
* NotWhatItLooksLike: Very early on, it looks like a confrontation of February '42 spend in the hell of besieged Leningrad and the cozy atmosphere of Heidenberg... except the "German" part of plot is set on NextSundayAD, almost a century later.
* OutlivingOnesOffspring[=/=]DeathOfAChild: Alex has inoperable and barely treatable glioblastoma. He's ''five'' when diagnosed, and even the future medicine is helpless for treating it. Vera and Dieter do their very best to stay calm and make rest of his life as painless as possible.
* ScrewPolitenessImASenior: Grandma Ludmila is still angry about the plight she suffered from German hands during the [=WW2=] and regularly goes on angry tangents how AllGermansAreNazis, century later.
* [[SharedDream Shared]] DyingDream: Maybe. Maybe not. [[spoiler: In the end,
* SelfMadeWoman: Vera is a Russian immigrant that worked her ass off as a cleaning lady to afford living and studying in Germany, but in the present, she's a successful programmer with comfortable, afluent life.
* {{Workaholic}}: Dieter finds solance from Alex' sickness in overworking.
* WholePlotReference: To the titular poem by [[Creator/AlexanderPushkin Pushkin]].

Anna Nieznaj - Ognisty warkocz
* AbsurdlyYouthfulMother: Justified, as the mother of the narrator spend God knows how much time in space, putting into equation both TimeDilation and SleeperShip. When she finally reach Earth, her own daughter, who was in pre-school when she left, is an elderly lady. And if nothing bad happened to Earth in the meantime, the narrator would be looooong dead, but she was a HumanPopsicle for quite a while, too.
* AfterTheEnd: The Earth ecosystem got almost entirely annihilated by a [[ColonyDrop swarm of asteroids]] and the story is set unspecified time in the future, with survivors stored on a [[SleeperShip space]] [[TheArc ark]] recolonising the Earth
* ApocalypseHow: An almost textbook example of 3B planetary-scale extinction event caused by an asteroid bombardment. By the time Earth is being recolonised, there are no mammals bigger than rodents.
* TheArk: Space variant, with a small armada of {{Sleeper Ship}}s launched away from Earth to wait out its destruction by the asteroids and then the resulting ice age
* BoldExplorer: The Scouts, going on a space-exploring mission mere mere months before it was revealed there is a whole swarm of asteroids heading toward Earth.
* ChinaTakesOverTheWorld: Or at least the specific colony established by the lander of the main character. Notably, if the general's name isn't just a case of AsLongAsItSoundsForeign, that means the ''Repubic'' of China, [[UsefulNotes/{{Taiwan}} the one with the white sun on the flag]].
* ColonyDrop: An entire swarm of asteroids hit Earth, obliterating all life on the surface, or at the very least vast majority of it.
* ContrivedCoincidence: Out of all the Scouts, the main character mother is the SoleSurvivor, just so they can meet together.
* TheCynic: The narrator is a ''deeply'' cynical elderly woman, who has almost nothing beyond disdain toward fellow humans and their insistance to fight for survival against all odds, finding it all amusing and not much different from bunch of apes doing the same millenia ago.
* EarthThatWas: Played with. Earth is still around and in the process of recolonization by the lucky few that managed to escape, but as the result of being hit by a whole bunch of asteroids, not even the continents and oceans have the same shape, and much of the biosphere is changed, too. The story is set in an unspecified time since the original impact event, so it might as well happend ''millions'' of years later, with further, normal alternations happening to Earth's surface in the meantime. For all intended purpose, it's a space frontier story, just set on a once again virgin Earth.
* TheElitesJumpShip: ZigZagged. All the brightest, most useful and most qualified are picked for the limited room on board of the [[TheArk space ark]], but rest of the Earth's population reads this as the rich and politicians saving their own skins (which wasn't even true), trying to storm the launch sites and then even ''shoot down'' the ships on the orbit.
* TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt: Earth was struck by a swarm of asteroids. The result is near-total extinction of life on the surface, redrawing the maps of continents and oceans and whittling down humanity to the few thousands that were packed into TheArc.
* FlingALightIntoTheFuture: Done ''thrice''
** First is the Scout program, which selected the best and boldest to send them into a centuries-long space exploration, that would find usable planets for human colonisation.
** Then there is the [[Space Arc]], packed with as many humans as it can hold, because there is just no way to save the Earth itself from colliding with a whole bunch of asteroids.
** [[spoiler: In the end, they launch an automated probe into space, to continue exploration and data collection for future generations, just in case of things going to shit on Earth once again]]
* FutureFoodIsArtificial: Protein bars are all in vogue, but it's hard to tell if they are the main source of nutrient, or just treated as MRE during the mission both women embark on.
* GeniusBruiser: The mother was picked as "the best of the best" in ''all'' possible fields, so she has easy time [[spoiler: fighting her way through the guards around the launch site]].
* HereWeGoAgain: The narrator makes a comparison between hominids leaving the jungles of central Africa to slowly spread and fight their way to the top of the food chain to the humanity taking first steps of recolonising Earth after an impact event.
* HumansAreBastards: Constantly invoked by the main character, but it seems to be that she's a deeply cynical person herself, rather than people being as bad as she portrays them. Still, even ignoring UnreliableNarrator, humanity, when faced with inpending doom, descended into [[ApocalypseAnarchy complete and utter chaos]], going for a pointless slaughter, rather than simply accepting their doom.
* {{Nepotism}}: The main character thinks the only reason she was picked for the short list of people packed into TheArc was due to her mother being a famous space explorer and thankfully, her father being a well-known medical researcher. It's impossible to tell if that's true, because she's a highly UnreliableNarrator.
* NoNameGiven: The only person with a name is general Liu Shuang.
* RagnarokProofing: It doesn't matter if it's a century or million of years after the impact event - no technology would last as long. The fact the story implies it's at the very least few millenia after the asteroids hit definitely puts all the equipment under this trope. Ironically, [[spoiler: the most proofed ship, the one used by the Scouts, has a failure ''when entering Earth's orbit'', killing everyone but two astronauts on board - and one of them is left cripple anyway]].
* ShoutOut:
** To ''Literature/ReturnFromTheStars'' - the mother of the main character is gender-flipped Hal, [[ChallengeSeeker an uneasy spirit]] that constantly seeks new frontiers and just returned from centuries-long space mission, finding herself on a completely different Earth than the one she left.
** Also to ''Film/{{Interstellar}}'', with the uneasy relationship between an astronaut parent and left behind daughter, with apocalyptic backdrop.
** And the ultimate fate of survivors is a parallel of that from ''VideoGame/SidMeiersAlphaCentauri'', except they are recolonising Earth, rather than being on an alien planet - but things changed so much, they might as well be somewhere else.
* SleeperStarship: Originally, those were intended for long-range space exploration of just fledging program... until humanity found out there is a bunch of asteroids heading right toward Earth, repurposing the small fleet into TheArc for as many people as they can cram into it.
interstellar for the poor; powrót do gwiazd for the poor
* SleptThroughTheApocalypse: Vast majority of the survivors were already in cryo-sleep when Earth was destroyed. The main character was among the "lucky" few that were awake during the event, which he scoffs off as a "great tale to tell" to the young.
* TallPoppySyndrome: The people left on Earth did the classic bucket of crabs, attempting to simply shoot down TheArc out of pure spite for being left behind to die.
* TimeDilation: The Scouts return decades after TheArc landed, but [[spoiler: the survivors are still in their prime]].
* UnreliableNarrator: The narrator is a cynical, elderly lady. Just about every information we get are through her jaded filters, but it's made clear she's notoriously wrong about things, along with near non-stop projections of her own believes and issues on others.
* UsedFuture: The main character [[UnreliableNarrator insists]] this is where things just ''must'' go into eventually, but other than her own outlook on the subject, absolutely nothing suggest it. In fact, RagnarokProofing is in full force.

* alternative character interpretation
** o. from "dear mr. m." was either oblivious to what he is and how he's sicing him on her own sister... or did so in a cold-blood, hating her sister for being happy with her life
** Is Lilijas a PragmaticHero or a callous monster, tempting Noah into evil? The ambiguity of her ultimate demand is fully intentional and is never brought up in follow-up stories with the two characters.
* broken base:
** Jawor, both the story itself and its placement as the first one in the anthology. People either complain about it being a generic stranger things ripoff or fawn how awesome it is because of that. And epending on their stance on the above, they either see it unfit to be the "face" of the whole anthology or consider it a decent choice.
** Speaking of which: there is absolutely no consensus which story should be the opening one.
** there seem to be no middle ground when it comes to "zielona zemsta" - people either are madly in love, or find it just puzzingly average. the big take is if one was already fan of the characters from it (since it's part of a much bigger series) or just a casual reader who stumbled on it; this is particularly visible in reviews that ''trash'' the entire anthology... but praise jadowska's story
** similarly, "tylko nie w głowę" is either seen as distasteful and cliche, or a badly needed humour the anthology severely lacks
* HilariousInHindsight: The narrator of ognisty warkocz wonders who was the first person who spot the asteroids heading toward the Eart, what they felt and what sort of decisions were made afterwards. She also mentions the resulting anarchy of the final days of Earth. Which all is the plot of ''Film/DontLookUp'', playing the whole thing as a nihilistic BlackComedy, just in tune of the cynism of the narrator.
* narm: ognisty warkocz really tries to be insightful and profound, but all its pompous metaphores and comparisons are just hilariously over-the-top and in the same time the story itself is very choppy and hard to follow with its episodic nature, making it all unintentionally hilarious, rather than deep.
* fridge brilliance: "z góry nie patrzą" is a meaningful title, because without satellites, nobody can see the sea activity from above
* RewatchBonus: At first glance, it seems that the looters from ''Tylko nie w głowę!'' are bunch of petty, StupidCrooks. [[spoiler: Except after TheReveal you realise they were stealing all the high tech and expensive stuff, because it's a case of a CosyCatastrophe and those things ''still'' retain their value, while food and other survival stuff is accessible with ease]].
* SoOkayItsAverage: The anthology is all over the place when it comes to quality of the stories and the base can't decide which ones are the good and whic are the bad ones. What people do, however agree upon, is that when taken as the whole, it's pretty average, for any highlight will be instantly balanced out by a failure of other story.
* tearjerker: the middle part of ''Bezduch'' is easily the most gut-wrenching part of the whole anthology, going though DeadOfAChild, depressed, suicidal and eventually dead wife, her soul ''refusing'' to return to life, being more happy in the afterlife... up to the point where marek is willing to ''sell his soul to the devil'', simply ceasing to exist in case of death, just to bring his wife back.
* what do you mean its political: it was made as a promotional tool, but heavily using the image of a "dirty dozen"-like female collective, obviously making everyone and their dog assume it's going to be girl power or even straw feminism


out of order: if read all by itself, "bezduch" has COMPLETELY different meaning and tone. it's using characters from ''[[Literature/SzamankaOdUmarlakow Mirror Demon]]'' and your sympathes toward characters might be completely changed depending if you are familiar with the 2nd book of the trilogy