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After the Apocalypse
The apocalypse was yesterday. These stories are today.
Following up on her first collection, Story Prize finalist Maureen F. McHugh explores the catastrophes, small and large, of twenty-first century life—and what follows after. What happens after the bird flu pandemic? Are our computers smarter than we are? What does the global economy mean for two young girls in China? Are we really who we say we are? And how will we survive the coming zombie apocalypse?
Following up on her first collection, Story Prize finalist Maureen F. McHugh explores the catastrophes, small and large, of twenty-first century life—and what follows after. What happens after the bird flu pandemic? Are our computers smarter than we are? What does the global economy mean for two young girls in China? Are we really who we say we are? And how will we survive the coming zombie apocalypse?
188 pages, Paperback
First published October 24, 2011
70 people are currently reading
6079 people want to read
About the author
Maureen F. McHugh
119 books283 followersMaureen F. McHugh (born 1959) is a science fiction and fantasy writer.
Her first published story appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine in 1989. Since then, she has written four novels and over twenty short stories. Her first novel, China Mountain Zhang (1992), was nominated for both the Hugo and the Nebula Award, and won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award. In 1996 she won a Hugo Award for her short story "The Lincoln Train" (1995). McHugh's short story collection Mothers and Other Monsters was shortlisted as a finalist for the Story Prize in December, 2005.
Maureen is currently a partner at No Mimes Media, an Alternate Reality Game company which she co-founded with Steve Peters and Behnam Karbassi in March 2009. Prior to founding No Mimes, Maureen worked for 42 Entertainment, where she was a Writer and/or Managing Editor for numerous Alternate Reality Game projects, including Year Zero and I Love Bees.
Her first published story appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine in 1989. Since then, she has written four novels and over twenty short stories. Her first novel, China Mountain Zhang (1992), was nominated for both the Hugo and the Nebula Award, and won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award. In 1996 she won a Hugo Award for her short story "The Lincoln Train" (1995). McHugh's short story collection Mothers and Other Monsters was shortlisted as a finalist for the Story Prize in December, 2005.
Maureen is currently a partner at No Mimes Media, an Alternate Reality Game company which she co-founded with Steve Peters and Behnam Karbassi in March 2009. Prior to founding No Mimes, Maureen worked for 42 Entertainment, where she was a Writer and/or Managing Editor for numerous Alternate Reality Game projects, including Year Zero and I Love Bees.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 388 reviews
May 10, 2020
when this came into the store, i thought "huzzah" because i already own two of her other books that looked really good. of course, i have not read them. this is the way i operate - i buy books and i squirrel them away until it feels right to read them, frequently owning several books by a single author who looks good to me, without having anything upon which to base that impression.it is a very peculiar kind of madness. but then mike reynolds reviewed this book,and he specifically recommended it to me. and so i read it. four months later. for me, this is a pretty good turnaround.
and he was right - this is an excellent, and consistent, collection. she has an ability that she shares with authors like barry unsworth or richard powers or (i am told) stewart o'nan, to write gracefully in a number of different styles and with a number of different foci. she is able to geek out in the kingdom of the blind and still write a perfect tough little sad piece of working-poor-struggling-to-transcend-circumstances in honeymoon, which was my clear favorite.
there is so much to admire here. so much to break your heart against.useless things is, among other things, a bitterly learned lesson about where to draw the line between being a good person and being a victim. and it is a perfection. the effect of centrifugal forces...i genuinely don't know where to start with discussing that one. i could write a thirty page paper on that story and only scratch the surface of its contribution to american literature.
after the apocalypse and the naturalist have less pure emotional appeal for me, but are so psychologically fascinating, they make my conscience itch. these characters are so refreshing. they are emotionally unmoored - clinically detached and determined to survive in a way that makes you root for them while never wanting to come across them in real life. it is all about the bottom line, here, and that line is survival, no matter what needs to be done to achieve it. amazingly complex characters for a short story.
and that's what angers me so much. short stories! why are you so short? these characters - i would love to see them in a variety of circumstances! i could read multiple novels set in the worlds she has presented here. size matters! and i want more!
so, to recap: five perfect stories in a nine-story collection. you definitely need to read this.
come to my blog!
and he was right - this is an excellent, and consistent, collection. she has an ability that she shares with authors like barry unsworth or richard powers or (i am told) stewart o'nan, to write gracefully in a number of different styles and with a number of different foci. she is able to geek out in the kingdom of the blind and still write a perfect tough little sad piece of working-poor-struggling-to-transcend-circumstances in honeymoon, which was my clear favorite.
there is so much to admire here. so much to break your heart against.useless things is, among other things, a bitterly learned lesson about where to draw the line between being a good person and being a victim. and it is a perfection. the effect of centrifugal forces...i genuinely don't know where to start with discussing that one. i could write a thirty page paper on that story and only scratch the surface of its contribution to american literature.
after the apocalypse and the naturalist have less pure emotional appeal for me, but are so psychologically fascinating, they make my conscience itch. these characters are so refreshing. they are emotionally unmoored - clinically detached and determined to survive in a way that makes you root for them while never wanting to come across them in real life. it is all about the bottom line, here, and that line is survival, no matter what needs to be done to achieve it. amazingly complex characters for a short story.
and that's what angers me so much. short stories! why are you so short? these characters - i would love to see them in a variety of circumstances! i could read multiple novels set in the worlds she has presented here. size matters! and i want more!
so, to recap: five perfect stories in a nine-story collection. you definitely need to read this.
come to my blog!
August 14, 2018
Spaghetti code that made no sense. BHP DMS made a Microsoft operating system look elegant and streamlined, but it could do some amazingly complex stuff.
Great characters, good stories, not a feel-good vibe in the lot. I usually finished each one wanting to know more.
January 20, 2016
Posted at Shelf Inflicted
I’m not sure why I haven’t read more of Maureen McHugh’s stories. She has a subtle, quiet style and writes with a graceful economy of language that is powerful but not overwhelming. There is no filler here, no unnecessary words or overly descriptive scenes. What these haunting stories have in common is their exploration of various ways in which the world could fall apart and how humanity copes. I loved these wonderfully character-driven stories and am thrilled I was able to find this at the library.
This collection definitely has more hits than misses.
The very first story, The Naturalist, is not your typical prison or zombie story. The humans were definitely scarier.
Special Economics takes place in a China ravaged by bird flu. Young Jieling is desperate for money and takes a job in a biotech company that sounds perfect until she discovers the reasons why people can never quit.
Useless Things is about a dollmaker who lives in a southwest severely affected by drought. She is alone in her house, protected by several large dogs.
The dolls creep me out, almost as much as clowns do, but the real strength of this story is the arid atmosphere, the loneliness, and the sense of danger.
In The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large, dirty bombs explode in Baltimore and a young boy remembers nothing about his family.
The Kingdom of the Blind is an intriguing story about two programmers who work in a medical facility and discover that they can’t outsmart their computer system. Too much tech talk and too many acronyms kept me from truly enjoying this one.
Going to France went over my head, just like the people who were flying.
If I could pick out one favorite from this collection, Honeymoon would be it. A wedding that never happened, the start of a new life, and a need to save money for a trip to Cancun. This is a taut and disturbing story that made me miss my bus stop.
A young girl’s mom is dying of Avian Prion Disease (APD) in The Effect of Centrifugal Forces. This chilling story makes me never want to eat chicken again.
After the Apocalypse is the perfect conclusion to this collection. A mother and daughter do their best to survive in spite of homelessness, unemployment and a constant threat of danger.
I typically take short breaks between short stories, but I found myself immersed and had difficulty putting the book down.
Highly recommended to those who like thoughtful short fiction that feels intensely real.
I’m not sure why I haven’t read more of Maureen McHugh’s stories. She has a subtle, quiet style and writes with a graceful economy of language that is powerful but not overwhelming. There is no filler here, no unnecessary words or overly descriptive scenes. What these haunting stories have in common is their exploration of various ways in which the world could fall apart and how humanity copes. I loved these wonderfully character-driven stories and am thrilled I was able to find this at the library.
This collection definitely has more hits than misses.
The very first story, The Naturalist, is not your typical prison or zombie story. The humans were definitely scarier.
Special Economics takes place in a China ravaged by bird flu. Young Jieling is desperate for money and takes a job in a biotech company that sounds perfect until she discovers the reasons why people can never quit.
Useless Things is about a dollmaker who lives in a southwest severely affected by drought. She is alone in her house, protected by several large dogs.
“I make reborns. Dolls that look like newborn infants. The point is to make them look almost, but not quite, real. People prefer them a little cuter, a little more perfect than the real thing. I like them best when there is something a little strange, a little off about them.”
The dolls creep me out, almost as much as clowns do, but the real strength of this story is the arid atmosphere, the loneliness, and the sense of danger.
In The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large, dirty bombs explode in Baltimore and a young boy remembers nothing about his family.
The Kingdom of the Blind is an intriguing story about two programmers who work in a medical facility and discover that they can’t outsmart their computer system. Too much tech talk and too many acronyms kept me from truly enjoying this one.
Going to France went over my head, just like the people who were flying.
If I could pick out one favorite from this collection, Honeymoon would be it. A wedding that never happened, the start of a new life, and a need to save money for a trip to Cancun. This is a taut and disturbing story that made me miss my bus stop.
A young girl’s mom is dying of Avian Prion Disease (APD) in The Effect of Centrifugal Forces. This chilling story makes me never want to eat chicken again.
After the Apocalypse is the perfect conclusion to this collection. A mother and daughter do their best to survive in spite of homelessness, unemployment and a constant threat of danger.
I typically take short breaks between short stories, but I found myself immersed and had difficulty putting the book down.
Highly recommended to those who like thoughtful short fiction that feels intensely real.
March 18, 2017
McHugh is a fabulous writer. In just a few spare words, she creates a story, an alternate world, and multi-dimensional characters that evoke an emotional response. She has a marvelous skill at developing a story and organically taking it in an unexpected direction, all without employing typical surprise endings.
The Naturalist: After the zombie apocalypse, zombies are largely eradicated from the cities, but remain at prison encampments. One of the prisoners starts wondering about zombies. To the reader, it becomes apparent humans remain the real problem. I enjoyed it a great deal, despite strong overtones of horror.
Special Economics: A story about a young woman seeking work in the big city in a post-revolution, post bird-flu China. A complex, layered story about living in the moment, social categorization, families, and resourcefulness. One of my favorite stories. "Why hadn't she noticed that in the restaurant? Maybe because when you are afraid, you notice things. When your father is dying of the plague, you notice the way the covers on your mother's chairs need to be washed. You wonder if you will have to do it, or if you will die before you have to do chores."
Useless Things: A solitary doll-maker, good-hearted person inadvertently becomes a way-station on the migrant trail and realizes her risk. Nicely captures the feeling of solitude, but I was so distracted by the dildos that I had trouble finding the larger message.
The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large: A reporter covers the story of a boy who emerged in another town after disappearing on a school trip. Two dirty bombs exploded in the city, and in the chaos, the boy disappeared. An interesting twist on the theme of amnesia lifestyle, so popular in the forty-something chick-lit genre.
The Kingdom of the Blind: two computer specialists speculate on whether or not their program running a multi-hospital system is demonstrating awareness. Interesting intellectual discussion on definitions of 'aware' contrasting with their own humanity.
Going to France: The narrator experiences a sudden, fierce urge to travel to France after delivering a boat of flying people out into the middle of the ocean. Interesting lack of detail regarding the flying people that contrasts with the concrete, miniscule details of the airport. I found it interesting for the emotion stemming from the airport experience.
Honeymoon: A small-town girl and her small-town boyfriend on the eve of their marriage, when she suddenly realizes what she is doing. Establishing financial independence means volunteering as a medical test subject to earn money. Did not end where I expected. I thought the characters were amazingly well developed, even the slight few in the test environment.
The Effect of Centrifugal Forces: The daughter of a woman with Avian Prion Disease (the bird equivalent of mad-cow disease, apparently) deals with family dynamics and changes in her mother. Moving, yet the one that I had the most trouble reading and enjoying due to continuity issues. It felt largely like it could have used one more thorough editing, with a little more thought to the short story form.
After the Apocalypse: A woman and her young teenage daughter head north to Canada hoping for security after the world falls apart. A typical apocalypse set-up, but done with unusual emotional tone and reaction. "Especially not Canada, which she is deeply but silently certain is only a rumor. Not the country, she doesn't think it doesn't exist, but the camp. It is a mirage. A shimmer on the horizon. Something to go toward but which isn't really there."
A four an a half star collection? Why not the final push to five? Because although McHugh writes in a seamless, spare manner, I would love just a little more hope, a little more sunshine in the apocalypse, and just a little more from editing and enjoyment.
The Naturalist: After the zombie apocalypse, zombies are largely eradicated from the cities, but remain at prison encampments. One of the prisoners starts wondering about zombies. To the reader, it becomes apparent humans remain the real problem. I enjoyed it a great deal, despite strong overtones of horror.
Special Economics: A story about a young woman seeking work in the big city in a post-revolution, post bird-flu China. A complex, layered story about living in the moment, social categorization, families, and resourcefulness. One of my favorite stories. "Why hadn't she noticed that in the restaurant? Maybe because when you are afraid, you notice things. When your father is dying of the plague, you notice the way the covers on your mother's chairs need to be washed. You wonder if you will have to do it, or if you will die before you have to do chores."
Useless Things: A solitary doll-maker, good-hearted person inadvertently becomes a way-station on the migrant trail and realizes her risk. Nicely captures the feeling of solitude, but I was so distracted by the dildos that I had trouble finding the larger message.
The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large: A reporter covers the story of a boy who emerged in another town after disappearing on a school trip. Two dirty bombs exploded in the city, and in the chaos, the boy disappeared. An interesting twist on the theme of amnesia lifestyle, so popular in the forty-something chick-lit genre.
The Kingdom of the Blind: two computer specialists speculate on whether or not their program running a multi-hospital system is demonstrating awareness. Interesting intellectual discussion on definitions of 'aware' contrasting with their own humanity.
Going to France: The narrator experiences a sudden, fierce urge to travel to France after delivering a boat of flying people out into the middle of the ocean. Interesting lack of detail regarding the flying people that contrasts with the concrete, miniscule details of the airport. I found it interesting for the emotion stemming from the airport experience.
Honeymoon: A small-town girl and her small-town boyfriend on the eve of their marriage, when she suddenly realizes what she is doing. Establishing financial independence means volunteering as a medical test subject to earn money. Did not end where I expected. I thought the characters were amazingly well developed, even the slight few in the test environment.
The Effect of Centrifugal Forces: The daughter of a woman with Avian Prion Disease (the bird equivalent of mad-cow disease, apparently) deals with family dynamics and changes in her mother. Moving, yet the one that I had the most trouble reading and enjoying due to continuity issues. It felt largely like it could have used one more thorough editing, with a little more thought to the short story form.
After the Apocalypse: A woman and her young teenage daughter head north to Canada hoping for security after the world falls apart. A typical apocalypse set-up, but done with unusual emotional tone and reaction. "Especially not Canada, which she is deeply but silently certain is only a rumor. Not the country, she doesn't think it doesn't exist, but the camp. It is a mirage. A shimmer on the horizon. Something to go toward but which isn't really there."
A four an a half star collection? Why not the final push to five? Because although McHugh writes in a seamless, spare manner, I would love just a little more hope, a little more sunshine in the apocalypse, and just a little more from editing and enjoyment.
March 1, 2012
Maureen McHugh has a knack—and I say 'knack' because it's even more elusive and intuitive than a talent—for investing each of her short stories with an immediately recognizable humanity, even when trafficking in genre tropes or the wantonly fantastical. In the premiere story 'The Naturalist,' the trappings of a traditional zombie story are elevated by an eminently human protagonist named Cahill whose thoughts and concerns aren't those of a caricatured horror movie hero—caught in a dumbshow of hide-and-kill—but those of a naturalistic everyman. Cahill's cunning and practicality are matched by his moral ambiguity. He doesn't correspond either to the prevailing notions of heroism or villainy. He's a muddy character. And it's precisely this psychological muddiness which engages the reader and allows the story to transcend the rote of zombie survivalism tales. McHugh's precise and truthful rendering of what it means to be alive at the beginning of the twenty-first century similarly enlivens all of these stories with an unmistakable sympathy. All of our fears and failings are registered here, along with our doggedness and hope.
I suppose the unifying theme of the book is 'apocalypse' in a very broad, metaphorical sense. Only a few of the stories allude to a literal global cataclysm. Some of the apocalypses are only personal, but devastating in their own proportionate ways. Themes include economic collapse, artificial intelligence, pandemics, dirty bombs, and amnesia. The highlights are 'The Naturalist,' 'Useless Things,' and 'Kingdom of the Blind.' McHugh's only misstep here is the (thankfully) very short story 'Going to France'—a ditzy oddity about flying people. Or something. It's a conspicuous dud among the other eight very accomplished stories included here.
I suppose I ought to thank Gottlieb for badgering me into reading this with his typical spittle-flying hyperbole, but I just can't bring myself to. He said it was the best book of last year. He's probably right, but don't tell him.
I suppose the unifying theme of the book is 'apocalypse' in a very broad, metaphorical sense. Only a few of the stories allude to a literal global cataclysm. Some of the apocalypses are only personal, but devastating in their own proportionate ways. Themes include economic collapse, artificial intelligence, pandemics, dirty bombs, and amnesia. The highlights are 'The Naturalist,' 'Useless Things,' and 'Kingdom of the Blind.' McHugh's only misstep here is the (thankfully) very short story 'Going to France'—a ditzy oddity about flying people. Or something. It's a conspicuous dud among the other eight very accomplished stories included here.
I suppose I ought to thank Gottlieb for badgering me into reading this with his typical spittle-flying hyperbole, but I just can't bring myself to. He said it was the best book of last year. He's probably right, but don't tell him.
January 19, 2013
Despairing about the proliferation of the generally repetitive short story collection? Fear and tremble not, for After the Apocalypse is here to save the day.
Maureen F. McHugh’s collection continually conjured up the word "solid" and not in a patronizing way that one might use that word to politely describe an artistic effort that follows all the rules yet fails to captivate one’s attention or stimulate any of the other nerves in want of stimulation from art—but in the sense that it was taken in as a dose of fresh air in comparison to cripplingly overworked prose and/or gimmickry-qua-formal-innovation that functions as a blanket to cover the hollowed out innards of "the story."
As much as I really do love innovative, acrobatic prose—replete with highly varied word choice and a striving for originality at the level of the sentence and the overall tonal vision—I also find myself able to see the value in the simple sentence (when put to good narrative use, of course). This calls to mind something I read recently as part of George Saunders' preface to the latest edition of his debut collection CivilWarLand In Bad Decline:
This book also functions as a shock-to-the-system antidote to the naval-gazing narcissistic focus upon the singular character (often a poorly veiled stand-in for the writer) that is abundant in fiction and not merely in coming-of-age novels et al, but also in "innovative" short story collections. I recently posted a thought about this on a highly trafficked social networking site, which hyperbolically sums up this long-simmering feeling about the need for less singularly focused art:
After the Apocalypse is a heaven-sent answer to this desire for artists to portray a wider spectrum of humanity.
—Violent sociopathic criminals struggle against the elements and each other in a cliché-free and grittily realistic zombie narrative.
—Chinese biotech factory workers dance on street corners to Sri Lankan hip hop and battle their corporate master’s cycle of tyrannical debt.
—A woman’s internet business branches out from making infant dolls for bereaved parents into more lucrative adult-only goods, while dealing with the struggle between being kind to strangers down on their luck and having to be more suspicious and reserved towards said strangers out of rational self-preservation.
—A journalist seeks answers about a boy who’s undergone a radical identity shift after a terrorist act has torn his community and family asunder.
—Computer programmers delve into the possibilities of Artificial Intelligence (and the nature of consciousness) while prodding a virtual medical database during their routine graveyard shifts.
—People contemplate abandoning America...
—A McDonald’s employee asserts herself, undergoes the risks of being a guinea pig for medical research, and takes herself on a honeymoon.
—Mad Cow Disease unfolds within an unconventional family unit.
—Society collapses and people react in a multitude of ways—gratitude returns but also morphs into base selfishness. Silver linings are birthed and snuffed out unevenly.
A common theme throughout all of this is a fear of economic and social upheaval. It's currently pretty apt for US fiction to be concerned with such menacing vibrations. McHugh displays a wide reach of knowledge about many subjects and shows a real talent for sculpting vivid characters out of the clay of the wide-angled view as well. The visions are often breathtakingly bleak but there's room to exhale and reflect in the space between fact and fiction, which is a truly vital service for fiction writers to provide.
Maureen F. McHugh’s collection continually conjured up the word "solid" and not in a patronizing way that one might use that word to politely describe an artistic effort that follows all the rules yet fails to captivate one’s attention or stimulate any of the other nerves in want of stimulation from art—but in the sense that it was taken in as a dose of fresh air in comparison to cripplingly overworked prose and/or gimmickry-qua-formal-innovation that functions as a blanket to cover the hollowed out innards of "the story."
As much as I really do love innovative, acrobatic prose—replete with highly varied word choice and a striving for originality at the level of the sentence and the overall tonal vision—I also find myself able to see the value in the simple sentence (when put to good narrative use, of course). This calls to mind something I read recently as part of George Saunders' preface to the latest edition of his debut collection CivilWarLand In Bad Decline:
In grad school I had grown suspicious of conventional literary beauty, wary of what I thought of as, for example, the literary triple descriptor: "Todd sat at the black table, the ebony plane, the dark-hued bearer of various glasses and plates, whose white, disk-shaped, saucer-like presences mocking his futility, his impotence, his inability to act."
Christ, I had come to feel, just say it: "Todd sat at the table."
This book also functions as a shock-to-the-system antidote to the naval-gazing narcissistic focus upon the singular character (often a poorly veiled stand-in for the writer) that is abundant in fiction and not merely in coming-of-age novels et al, but also in "innovative" short story collections. I recently posted a thought about this on a highly trafficked social networking site, which hyperbolically sums up this long-simmering feeling about the need for less singularly focused art:
There is no protagonist in real life. It's an ensemble cast of an immensity beyond practical quantification. Scatter the illusion of the central "I" and open up the floodgates. I'd like art to reflect this more often. Films starring no one. Novels with more POVs than pages.
After the Apocalypse is a heaven-sent answer to this desire for artists to portray a wider spectrum of humanity.
—Violent sociopathic criminals struggle against the elements and each other in a cliché-free and grittily realistic zombie narrative.
—Chinese biotech factory workers dance on street corners to Sri Lankan hip hop and battle their corporate master’s cycle of tyrannical debt.
—A woman’s internet business branches out from making infant dolls for bereaved parents into more lucrative adult-only goods, while dealing with the struggle between being kind to strangers down on their luck and having to be more suspicious and reserved towards said strangers out of rational self-preservation.
—A journalist seeks answers about a boy who’s undergone a radical identity shift after a terrorist act has torn his community and family asunder.
—Computer programmers delve into the possibilities of Artificial Intelligence (and the nature of consciousness) while prodding a virtual medical database during their routine graveyard shifts.
—People contemplate abandoning America...
—A McDonald’s employee asserts herself, undergoes the risks of being a guinea pig for medical research, and takes herself on a honeymoon.
—Mad Cow Disease unfolds within an unconventional family unit.
—Society collapses and people react in a multitude of ways—gratitude returns but also morphs into base selfishness. Silver linings are birthed and snuffed out unevenly.
A common theme throughout all of this is a fear of economic and social upheaval. It's currently pretty apt for US fiction to be concerned with such menacing vibrations. McHugh displays a wide reach of knowledge about many subjects and shows a real talent for sculpting vivid characters out of the clay of the wide-angled view as well. The visions are often breathtakingly bleak but there's room to exhale and reflect in the space between fact and fiction, which is a truly vital service for fiction writers to provide.
July 30, 2012
This is an excellent collection, without an ounce of filler. The stories are all loosely post-apocalyptic, but each is defined by a different type of cataclysmic event: a zombie apocalypse, a couple of different viruses, etc. I always appreciate the chance to choose between cataclysms. Is it odd to feel safer after reading a book like this because some cataclysms are clearly preferable to others? In any case, while the settings are themed, what really sells the collection is the excellent character building. These are idea pieces on one level, but they work as stories because of the characters through which we view each situation. These are haunting, memorable stories. I'll even forgive the author for making me read about zombies. I hate zombies.
July 10, 2019
Nachdem die Apokalypse erkannt und veranschaulicht hat, wie würdig und ernst, wie wichtig, tragisch und lustig unser weltliches, häusliches und gewöhnliches Leben ist und bleibt. Es bietet sowohl wichtige Überlebensstunden als auch wichtige Lektionen für das Verfassen von Science-Fiction-Texten.
January 6, 2012
UGH, MAUREEN MCHUGH, I LOVE YOU.
Maureen McHugh hasn't published anything since Mothers and Other Monsters in 2005 and hasn't published a novel since Nekropolis in 2001 and for a while it seemed like she has abandoned fiction entirely to write online alternate reality games, and so when I saw that she had published a new collection of short stories I kind of lost my shit with excitement. I don't understand why Maureen McHugh doesn't get more acclaim. Like, I respect Ursula K. Leguin's work, and I recognize that she did a lot of groundbreaking things in genre, but some of her stuff is starting to suffer from feeling dated (The Left Hand of Darkness I am looking at you) and I don't understand why Maureen McHugh has not inherited the mantle.
"The Naturalist" – Between this story and Zone One, I may have to re-think my stance on hating the zombie invasion of the apocalyptic genre. One thing I enjoyed about this collection of stories is that they aren't completely disparate (it's not a mix of religious cult steampunk stories and stories that take place in space), and they aren't interrelated in a cutesy way but they feel very thematically unified in small ways that could almost be coincidental. "The Naturalist" might be a sequel to "Honeymoon" (a story later in the collection), but it might not. You don't get banged over the head with it.
"Special Economics" – I've said before, I enjoy Cory Doctorow's young adult novels because I can imagine how much I WOULD have enjoyed them if I had read them when I was twelve. "Special Economics" takes the "teenagers fight the power in the face of economic apocalypse" trope and makes For the Win look like it was written by a twelve-year-old.
But I also feel a little guilty about enjoying this story. I've been trying to slog through The Fat Years since November (more on that if I can eventually finish it). The Fat Years is about near-future China after a Western economic collapse, and it was written by a Chinese journalist, and it was banned in China and I read about it a couple years ago and have been waiting for it to get translated into English and ended up buying an import copy from the UK because I didn't want to wait another year for it to come out in the states and it's … not good. The writing is flat and dry and the characters are unengaging and there are long, didactic passages that don't even pretend to be in character point-of-view. "Special Economics" is also set in China under circumstances of economic dystopia, and it felt so much more alive and poignant: there's a particular moment where one of the teenage girl characters parrots back an old Cultural Revolution motto that was more effective than, like, two hundred pages of The Fat Years.
So I feel like kind of an asshole for enjoying a story set in China written by a Western white woman (albeit one who has lived in China and does seem to know her stuff) and being bored by a book set in China and written by a Chinese author. I think I enjoy the former and am bored by the latter because Chan Koonchung is not a very skilled author of fiction (I think he's primarily a journalist), but I wonder if I am self-inserting too much of a Western perspective.
"Useless Things" – Another great small example of thematic unity: there's a part in "Useless Things" where the protagonist notes and describes the "ordinary" appearance of the refugees she encounters, and the protagonist of the titular story later in the book has the same reaction, they both have the same moment of being surprised that people who are so desperate that they're trying to walk all the way to Canada are just wearing, like, t-shirts. The protagonist of this story also reminded me a lot of Martine the Martian homesteader from China Mountain Zhang.
"The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large" – While I was writing this review, I Googled China Mountain Zhang because I couldn't remember Martine's name. I ended up finding it in a book review that talked a lot about how remarkable it is that McHugh placed each of the characters in that book in such unextraordinary circumstances. This is a great example of her ability to do that. What happens in this story is strange and extraordinary, but the journalistic framing device is working on one level to disarm the reader of any mystified attitude they might have about amnesia and the story itself is working on another level to put its main character in the most banal of circumstances.
"The Kingdom of the Blind" – I want to photocopy this story and lend it to my female friends who work in the tech industry.
"Going to France" – Eh, this one didn't really work for me. I liked where it was going, but it felt like half a story. And I think the story knew that it felt like half a story and it didn't care.
"Honeymoon" – Similar to "The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large." Was this all part of something larger? Did it lead to a zombie apocalypse and a Cleveland Zombie Preserve penal colony? You don't know, you just know that she eventually went to Mexico.
"The Effect of Centrifugal Forces" – This story is sneaky because it's engaging but just barely futuristic. Basically the mother is dying of a slight variation on a strain of mad cow disease. That's the only thing that fits it into the collection. The thematic harmony (children in disconnect from their parents, people who commit very banal but possibly also sociopathic acts) with the other stories make the other narratives feel that much more immediate by comparison.
"After the Apocalypse" – I tried to make these stories last as long as I could (I managed to stretch the book over three days), and I just read this one this morning so have had less time to think about it. I think it's an interesting end note because, like I said before, one of McHugh's major themes in all of her books is writing about the unextraordinary circumstances of normal people in extraordinary situations. This story begins like it's going to be a departure: these are the unextraordinary people who are living through an extraordinary time whose journey must be leading up toward an extraordinary event. It must be, right? But it turns out that the story is much more about Jane wanting (and having always wanted, since long before the world ended) to create extraordinary circumstances for herself, and how that doesn't really change and doesn't get any more possible after the apocalypse.
Maureen McHugh hasn't published anything since Mothers and Other Monsters in 2005 and hasn't published a novel since Nekropolis in 2001 and for a while it seemed like she has abandoned fiction entirely to write online alternate reality games, and so when I saw that she had published a new collection of short stories I kind of lost my shit with excitement. I don't understand why Maureen McHugh doesn't get more acclaim. Like, I respect Ursula K. Leguin's work, and I recognize that she did a lot of groundbreaking things in genre, but some of her stuff is starting to suffer from feeling dated (The Left Hand of Darkness I am looking at you) and I don't understand why Maureen McHugh has not inherited the mantle.
"The Naturalist" – Between this story and Zone One, I may have to re-think my stance on hating the zombie invasion of the apocalyptic genre. One thing I enjoyed about this collection of stories is that they aren't completely disparate (it's not a mix of religious cult steampunk stories and stories that take place in space), and they aren't interrelated in a cutesy way but they feel very thematically unified in small ways that could almost be coincidental. "The Naturalist" might be a sequel to "Honeymoon" (a story later in the collection), but it might not. You don't get banged over the head with it.
"Special Economics" – I've said before, I enjoy Cory Doctorow's young adult novels because I can imagine how much I WOULD have enjoyed them if I had read them when I was twelve. "Special Economics" takes the "teenagers fight the power in the face of economic apocalypse" trope and makes For the Win look like it was written by a twelve-year-old.
But I also feel a little guilty about enjoying this story. I've been trying to slog through The Fat Years since November (more on that if I can eventually finish it). The Fat Years is about near-future China after a Western economic collapse, and it was written by a Chinese journalist, and it was banned in China and I read about it a couple years ago and have been waiting for it to get translated into English and ended up buying an import copy from the UK because I didn't want to wait another year for it to come out in the states and it's … not good. The writing is flat and dry and the characters are unengaging and there are long, didactic passages that don't even pretend to be in character point-of-view. "Special Economics" is also set in China under circumstances of economic dystopia, and it felt so much more alive and poignant: there's a particular moment where one of the teenage girl characters parrots back an old Cultural Revolution motto that was more effective than, like, two hundred pages of The Fat Years.
So I feel like kind of an asshole for enjoying a story set in China written by a Western white woman (albeit one who has lived in China and does seem to know her stuff) and being bored by a book set in China and written by a Chinese author. I think I enjoy the former and am bored by the latter because Chan Koonchung is not a very skilled author of fiction (I think he's primarily a journalist), but I wonder if I am self-inserting too much of a Western perspective.
"Useless Things" – Another great small example of thematic unity: there's a part in "Useless Things" where the protagonist notes and describes the "ordinary" appearance of the refugees she encounters, and the protagonist of the titular story later in the book has the same reaction, they both have the same moment of being surprised that people who are so desperate that they're trying to walk all the way to Canada are just wearing, like, t-shirts. The protagonist of this story also reminded me a lot of Martine the Martian homesteader from China Mountain Zhang.
"The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large" – While I was writing this review, I Googled China Mountain Zhang because I couldn't remember Martine's name. I ended up finding it in a book review that talked a lot about how remarkable it is that McHugh placed each of the characters in that book in such unextraordinary circumstances. This is a great example of her ability to do that. What happens in this story is strange and extraordinary, but the journalistic framing device is working on one level to disarm the reader of any mystified attitude they might have about amnesia and the story itself is working on another level to put its main character in the most banal of circumstances.
"The Kingdom of the Blind" – I want to photocopy this story and lend it to my female friends who work in the tech industry.
"Going to France" – Eh, this one didn't really work for me. I liked where it was going, but it felt like half a story. And I think the story knew that it felt like half a story and it didn't care.
"Honeymoon" – Similar to "The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large." Was this all part of something larger? Did it lead to a zombie apocalypse and a Cleveland Zombie Preserve penal colony? You don't know, you just know that she eventually went to Mexico.
"The Effect of Centrifugal Forces" – This story is sneaky because it's engaging but just barely futuristic. Basically the mother is dying of a slight variation on a strain of mad cow disease. That's the only thing that fits it into the collection. The thematic harmony (children in disconnect from their parents, people who commit very banal but possibly also sociopathic acts) with the other stories make the other narratives feel that much more immediate by comparison.
"After the Apocalypse" – I tried to make these stories last as long as I could (I managed to stretch the book over three days), and I just read this one this morning so have had less time to think about it. I think it's an interesting end note because, like I said before, one of McHugh's major themes in all of her books is writing about the unextraordinary circumstances of normal people in extraordinary situations. This story begins like it's going to be a departure: these are the unextraordinary people who are living through an extraordinary time whose journey must be leading up toward an extraordinary event. It must be, right? But it turns out that the story is much more about Jane wanting (and having always wanted, since long before the world ended) to create extraordinary circumstances for herself, and how that doesn't really change and doesn't get any more possible after the apocalypse.
September 16, 2021
This stories were all well written, and was a pretty strong collection.
The Naturalist: 4 stars
It's the zombie apocalypse, and the main character is one of several men in an enclosed city with other convicts, and zombies. The main character begins watching the zombies, and experimenting with what might attract them and what might keep them at bay. I felt like I’d read more stories in this world.
Special Economics: 4.5 stars
After a worldwide bird flu and billions of deaths, we follow Jjjjjjjjj as she lands both a job with a factory making batteries, and a growing pile of debt as the factory owners charge their workers for everything, from food, to uniforms, to accommodations, and trapping their workforce in massive debt, which they try futilely to pay off.
My absolutely favourite story in this collection. I desperately wanted more story when I came to the end.
Useless Things: 4 stars.
A really interesting story about a custom dollmaker whose life is changed after a migrant (she's known as a way station for people travelling through the area) purportedly breaks into her place.
The Lost Boy: A Reporter At Large: 4 stars.
A young man suffering from memory loss is reunited with his family. He had gotten separated from them for some years after a school trip that had to be cut short.
I liked the wistful feel of this story.
The Kingdom of the Blind: 4 stars.
Has a program controlling the services (e.g., lights, etc.) in some hospitals become sentient?
Interesting discussion between two of the characters on what constitutes awareness.
Going to France: 3.5 stars.
The main character helps some people, who can fly, get to the coast so they can meet up with other flyers.
This felt like it was a little short, or missing something to me.
Honeymoon: 4 stars.
A young woman doesn’t get her honeymoon, and realizes her now husband is a dolt. She decides to make money after the disappointment by volunteering for drug trials.
The main character felt really well drawn.
The Effect of Centrifugal Forces: 3.5 stars.
A daughter deals with her mothers, one of whom is ailing from Avian Prion Disease. A story with a fair bit of anger, though I had a little trouble following this.
After the Apocalypse: 4 stars.
This one was good! A mother and daughter are walking from Texas, northwards, in the hope of finding some place safe. The mother is getting frustrated with her daughter, and the girl’s inability to deal with the fear, and privation of the road.
The atmosphere was great, and I liked the slightly horrifying ending.
The Naturalist: 4 stars
It's the zombie apocalypse, and the main character is one of several men in an enclosed city with other convicts, and zombies. The main character begins watching the zombies, and experimenting with what might attract them and what might keep them at bay. I felt like I’d read more stories in this world.
Special Economics: 4.5 stars
After a worldwide bird flu and billions of deaths, we follow Jjjjjjjjj as she lands both a job with a factory making batteries, and a growing pile of debt as the factory owners charge their workers for everything, from food, to uniforms, to accommodations, and trapping their workforce in massive debt, which they try futilely to pay off.
My absolutely favourite story in this collection. I desperately wanted more story when I came to the end.
Useless Things: 4 stars.
A really interesting story about a custom dollmaker whose life is changed after a migrant (she's known as a way station for people travelling through the area) purportedly breaks into her place.
The Lost Boy: A Reporter At Large: 4 stars.
A young man suffering from memory loss is reunited with his family. He had gotten separated from them for some years after a school trip that had to be cut short.
I liked the wistful feel of this story.
The Kingdom of the Blind: 4 stars.
Has a program controlling the services (e.g., lights, etc.) in some hospitals become sentient?
Interesting discussion between two of the characters on what constitutes awareness.
Going to France: 3.5 stars.
The main character helps some people, who can fly, get to the coast so they can meet up with other flyers.
This felt like it was a little short, or missing something to me.
Honeymoon: 4 stars.
A young woman doesn’t get her honeymoon, and realizes her now husband is a dolt. She decides to make money after the disappointment by volunteering for drug trials.
The main character felt really well drawn.
The Effect of Centrifugal Forces: 3.5 stars.
A daughter deals with her mothers, one of whom is ailing from Avian Prion Disease. A story with a fair bit of anger, though I had a little trouble following this.
After the Apocalypse: 4 stars.
This one was good! A mother and daughter are walking from Texas, northwards, in the hope of finding some place safe. The mother is getting frustrated with her daughter, and the girl’s inability to deal with the fear, and privation of the road.
The atmosphere was great, and I liked the slightly horrifying ending.
May 6, 2021
This is McHugh's second short story collection, gathering six stories that first appeared from 2007-2010 and adding three that are published for the first time. McHugh is a very skilled writer, and these stories are excellently crafted pieces, very literary in feel and execution, the kind of things that your high school English teachers made you write essays about to interpret. The first and last stories are the most traditional science-fictional works, The Naturalist being a post-zombie-apocalypse tale and the titular After the Apocalypse being a very grim look of what a woman does to survive in a world that's... just stopped working. They're both like condensed novels that take the familiar tropes and go in unexpected but logical directions. Most of the stories have a speculative aspect, but it's always secondary to the characterization, and most of them have a sense of haunted, dark desperation to one extent or another. I'm not sure what Going to France was about, and The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large may have been a bit over my head, too. Honeymoon and Useless Things were depressing stories, about people coping the best they can, Special Economics looks at the company store concept of indentured employment, Kingdom of the Blind examines A.I. in an unexpected light, and The Effect of Centrifugal Forces is another grim one centering on a girl who has no way to control the events bearing down on her. They're all extremely well written, thought provoking and surprising, but I would have liked the inclusion of a couple of lighter works, perhaps from earlier in her career, for more of a balance. The cover is pretty boring, a big orange ball with a "v" on it to represent a clock.
September 10, 2012
I normally don’t read short stories. I feel that the characters just don’t have enough time to develop in a short story compared to a full length novel. But this weekend, as I was reading A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin, I had a sudden urge to read something that doesn’t have to be 1000 pages long. I had to read around 50-100 pages just for Tyrion Lannister to appear again (Jon, Arya and Theon Greyjoy are also cool though).
Anyway, so as I said earlier, reading something short really appealed to me, which of course has never happened to me before as I am more often than not bound to pick up a fat book to read rather than a shorter one. But, yesterday on a whim I picked up After the Apocalypse by Maureen F. McHugh. I already have her other book China Mountain Zhang but somehow I have never gotten around reading it. So I have had no prior encounter with her writing. And I think that was a good thing because I enjoyed these stories more as I gradually discovered an exceptional author for myself.
The book contains 9 short stories of which last three have never been published before.
The Naturalist
Being a post apocalyptic genre fan, zombies have always been my guilty pleasure. Whenever I am stuck (you can say having a reader’s block, sort of), I read zombie fiction. They are just vile abomination of nature (?) which you can eradicate without being conscience-smitten.
But in this story McHugh presents a different look on zombies.
There has been a zombie outbreak and government has established a penal colony for criminals in a zombie infested area. Cahill is one of the convicts. I really liked how the character of Cahill unfolds in the story. His obsession with the zombie is creepy to say the least. And somehow at the end, it makes you wonder whether he was on the right path all along. This is one of the best stories in the collection.
Special Economics
This short story is set in China after the bird flu has wiped out a quarter of billion people. The story rotates around two Chinese girls Jieling and Baiyue who want to have a decent life in the aftermath of the pandemic. But all is not what it seems at the company they work. The work force is scarce and in high demand after the population decimation due to the plague, so no company wants their employees to leave. This story enraged me as the story resonates with today’s real world although not on the same scale (It might be worse in some places, for all we know).
Useless Things
This story is told in first person by an old lady who lives in New Mexico, USA after the economic meltdown who makes lifelike dolls for her customers working from home.
The Lost Boy: A Reporter At Large
This story deals with a boy who is suffering from amnesia. The backdrop is Baltimore where the chaos created due to the explosion of two dirty bombs separates the boy from his family.
The Kingdom Of The Blind
This is a very good written story which poses the dilemma for one’s actions against an AI system which might have become aware of itself.
Going To France
This is the shortest story of the lot in which some people can somehow fly and all of them wanted to go to France.
Honeymoon
A story of a girl who breaks up with her husband right after their wedding and then starts participating in the drug trials in the hospitals. I liked this one.
The Effect Of Centrifugal Forces
Avian Prion Disease, or APD is a transmissible and an animal-based illness that crossed from cows to humans, due to which most of the people were going to die gradually. The characters were really confusing and I didn’t know half the time who was who.
After The Apocalypse
The titular story is the last one printed but in my opinion, the best. The story revolves around a mother (Jane) and daughter (Franny) who wants to make it to the refugee camp for homeless outside of Toronto after the economy tanked. This story’s end is bound to shake anyone to their cores. I think this one is going to haunt me for some time to come.
Now as this book has kindled my curiosity for short stories, I might go ahead and read Dangerous Visions, Pump Six and Other Stories and Wastelands which are staring at me from my book shelf for quite some time now (or the equivalent of staring that books generally do when ignored undeservedly).
But all in all, this is a book you won’t regret spending time with.
4 stars
Anyway, so as I said earlier, reading something short really appealed to me, which of course has never happened to me before as I am more often than not bound to pick up a fat book to read rather than a shorter one. But, yesterday on a whim I picked up After the Apocalypse by Maureen F. McHugh. I already have her other book China Mountain Zhang but somehow I have never gotten around reading it. So I have had no prior encounter with her writing. And I think that was a good thing because I enjoyed these stories more as I gradually discovered an exceptional author for myself.
The book contains 9 short stories of which last three have never been published before.
The Naturalist
Being a post apocalyptic genre fan, zombies have always been my guilty pleasure. Whenever I am stuck (you can say having a reader’s block, sort of), I read zombie fiction. They are just vile abomination of nature (?) which you can eradicate without being conscience-smitten.
But in this story McHugh presents a different look on zombies.
There has been a zombie outbreak and government has established a penal colony for criminals in a zombie infested area. Cahill is one of the convicts. I really liked how the character of Cahill unfolds in the story. His obsession with the zombie is creepy to say the least. And somehow at the end, it makes you wonder whether he was on the right path all along. This is one of the best stories in the collection.
Special Economics
This short story is set in China after the bird flu has wiped out a quarter of billion people. The story rotates around two Chinese girls Jieling and Baiyue who want to have a decent life in the aftermath of the pandemic. But all is not what it seems at the company they work. The work force is scarce and in high demand after the population decimation due to the plague, so no company wants their employees to leave. This story enraged me as the story resonates with today’s real world although not on the same scale (It might be worse in some places, for all we know).
Useless Things
This story is told in first person by an old lady who lives in New Mexico, USA after the economic meltdown who makes lifelike dolls for her customers working from home.
The Lost Boy: A Reporter At Large
This story deals with a boy who is suffering from amnesia. The backdrop is Baltimore where the chaos created due to the explosion of two dirty bombs separates the boy from his family.
The Kingdom Of The Blind
This is a very good written story which poses the dilemma for one’s actions against an AI system which might have become aware of itself.
Going To France
This is the shortest story of the lot in which some people can somehow fly and all of them wanted to go to France.
Honeymoon
A story of a girl who breaks up with her husband right after their wedding and then starts participating in the drug trials in the hospitals. I liked this one.
The Effect Of Centrifugal Forces
Avian Prion Disease, or APD is a transmissible and an animal-based illness that crossed from cows to humans, due to which most of the people were going to die gradually. The characters were really confusing and I didn’t know half the time who was who.
After The Apocalypse
The titular story is the last one printed but in my opinion, the best. The story revolves around a mother (Jane) and daughter (Franny) who wants to make it to the refugee camp for homeless outside of Toronto after the economy tanked. This story’s end is bound to shake anyone to their cores. I think this one is going to haunt me for some time to come.
Now as this book has kindled my curiosity for short stories, I might go ahead and read Dangerous Visions, Pump Six and Other Stories and Wastelands which are staring at me from my book shelf for quite some time now (or the equivalent of staring that books generally do when ignored undeservedly).
But all in all, this is a book you won’t regret spending time with.
4 stars
May 1, 2020
Didn't love this as much as the rest I've read of her so far, but all the stories were good. They just didn't grab me emotionally as much.
The best one to me was the last one, "After the Apocalypse", because I like my dystopian stories to make me uneasy and kick my in the butt.
The best one to me was the last one, "After the Apocalypse", because I like my dystopian stories to make me uneasy and kick my in the butt.
September 1, 2016
This should more accurately be shelved as speculative fiction. Much of it didn't have anything to do with science nor were many of the stories post apocalyptic on anything save a personal or small scale. Some were just economic bumps. She's good at setting a mood & characters, but seemed to lack a point too often.
Table of Contents:
The Naturalist was a true tale of horror with zombies. Very well done even though that subject wore out for me years ago. 4 stars
Special Economics was OK. Didn't seem terribly post apocalyptic or anything else besides a look at China's possible work practices. Not compelling on any level, though. 2 stars
Useless Things had a really stupid gun bit (If you won't load a gun, don't get one, idiot.) but it underlined hard times & the loss of security. Point made fairly well. 3 stars
The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large is about amnesia. Since this is fiction & I have no idea how accurate it is, it's pointless. 1 star
The Kingdom of the Blind is about AI & was pretty well done, but she took a long time getting there. I wish there'd been a bit more on what 'aware' means. 3 stars
Going to France seemed to be trying for a point & had some interesting things going on, but if it got around to it, I missed it. 2 stars
Honeymoon was another that seemed to be going in one direction & then lost me at the end so seemed pointless. It could have gone on easily, so I don't know what she was thinking. 1 star
The Effect of Centrifugal Forces was just sad & somewhat ruined by changing the point of view. There wasn't any need & it would have been much stronger without that. Unfortunately, it's a story that I've heard too often & can be read in the news most any day. I avoid the news. 2 stars
After the Apocalypse is the title story & is darn good following a woman after something has collapsed the US. We're never told what exactly happened, but she & her daughter are now on the road. Survival is a bitch. 4 stars
Overall, I won't recommend this, but it's not bad. When she could find a point & stick to it, the stories were quite good. She has the skill, just not the direction sometimes. I'd be really interested in reading a collaboration between her & some harder (more action) author. She can certainly set a mood & draw a character.
Table of Contents:
The Naturalist was a true tale of horror with zombies. Very well done even though that subject wore out for me years ago. 4 stars
Special Economics was OK. Didn't seem terribly post apocalyptic or anything else besides a look at China's possible work practices. Not compelling on any level, though. 2 stars
Useless Things had a really stupid gun bit (If you won't load a gun, don't get one, idiot.) but it underlined hard times & the loss of security. Point made fairly well. 3 stars
The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large is about amnesia. Since this is fiction & I have no idea how accurate it is, it's pointless. 1 star
The Kingdom of the Blind is about AI & was pretty well done, but she took a long time getting there. I wish there'd been a bit more on what 'aware' means. 3 stars
Going to France seemed to be trying for a point & had some interesting things going on, but if it got around to it, I missed it. 2 stars
Honeymoon was another that seemed to be going in one direction & then lost me at the end so seemed pointless. It could have gone on easily, so I don't know what she was thinking. 1 star
The Effect of Centrifugal Forces was just sad & somewhat ruined by changing the point of view. There wasn't any need & it would have been much stronger without that. Unfortunately, it's a story that I've heard too often & can be read in the news most any day. I avoid the news. 2 stars
After the Apocalypse is the title story & is darn good following a woman after something has collapsed the US. We're never told what exactly happened, but she & her daughter are now on the road. Survival is a bitch. 4 stars
Overall, I won't recommend this, but it's not bad. When she could find a point & stick to it, the stories were quite good. She has the skill, just not the direction sometimes. I'd be really interested in reading a collaboration between her & some harder (more action) author. She can certainly set a mood & draw a character.
February 23, 2012
I first read the title story in The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 6, and that's when I knew I had to read more. Then McHugh's After the Apocalpyse was one of the nominees on the Philip K. Dick Award list, which gave me another excuse.
As in most short story compilations, a few of these didn't do it for me, but I like her perspective of these post-apocalyptic stories. The naturalist view of zombies, drug testing in a new millennium, and the ethics of survival... plus people who can fly, with no explanation. "Going to Paris" was probably my favorite, but "After the Apocalypse" will probably prove most memorable.
As in most short story compilations, a few of these didn't do it for me, but I like her perspective of these post-apocalyptic stories. The naturalist view of zombies, drug testing in a new millennium, and the ethics of survival... plus people who can fly, with no explanation. "Going to Paris" was probably my favorite, but "After the Apocalypse" will probably prove most memorable.
October 29, 2022
VERDICT: 2.9 stars for me, rounded to 3. GR aggregate rating is ~3.6 stars, so most readers enjoyed it a bit more than I did.
February 5, 2016
I have a love/hate relationship with short stories.
I love how much originality it requires to write a really good short story. Character development, scene development, all of it has to take place so quickly, and just when you get comfortable, the story is over. That is also why I hate short stories. Sometimes, the sign of a good short story is that I would drop everything to read a novel that took place inside the story. That is exactly what happens in After the Apocalypse - I wanted more than the stories gave me.
Each story was rife with promise. Any one of them could have been the pitch for novels, and I would have read all of them. It is frustrating that they are only in short story format, but that's all we're given, so we might as well enjoy what we can. Each story was incredibly vivid by the end, every character and setting clearly defined.
I went into it thinking that every story would be about an apocalypse of some sort, and that was the wrong way to look at it. It's just what the title made me think. Even so, the stories still have traces of strange futures, or some sort of apocalyptic feature. For example, in one story, the one feature is bird flu. In another, it's zombies. There may not be a nuclear bomb going off in every story, but the account of a woman surviving on her farm through an economic downturn is applicable not only to the near future, but also today.
Of the collection, my favorite stories were the first and last - which were both straight up apocalypse stories. The first, "The Naturalist," was an intriguing take on zombies. I am SO curious about the zombies in that little universe now. I really wish I could have a novel set there, it was so interesting! The last, "After the Apocalypse," is horrifying in a completely personal way. Very little of the horror is because of the apocalypse, but what happens AFTER.
And that is what this entire book is about. Not just what happens after the apocalypse, but what we do after we're done reading.
I love how much originality it requires to write a really good short story. Character development, scene development, all of it has to take place so quickly, and just when you get comfortable, the story is over. That is also why I hate short stories. Sometimes, the sign of a good short story is that I would drop everything to read a novel that took place inside the story. That is exactly what happens in After the Apocalypse - I wanted more than the stories gave me.
Each story was rife with promise. Any one of them could have been the pitch for novels, and I would have read all of them. It is frustrating that they are only in short story format, but that's all we're given, so we might as well enjoy what we can. Each story was incredibly vivid by the end, every character and setting clearly defined.
I went into it thinking that every story would be about an apocalypse of some sort, and that was the wrong way to look at it. It's just what the title made me think. Even so, the stories still have traces of strange futures, or some sort of apocalyptic feature. For example, in one story, the one feature is bird flu. In another, it's zombies. There may not be a nuclear bomb going off in every story, but the account of a woman surviving on her farm through an economic downturn is applicable not only to the near future, but also today.
Of the collection, my favorite stories were the first and last - which were both straight up apocalypse stories. The first, "The Naturalist," was an intriguing take on zombies. I am SO curious about the zombies in that little universe now. I really wish I could have a novel set there, it was so interesting! The last, "After the Apocalypse," is horrifying in a completely personal way. Very little of the horror is because of the apocalypse, but what happens AFTER.
And that is what this entire book is about. Not just what happens after the apocalypse, but what we do after we're done reading.
June 8, 2019
1.5/5
You can take these 1.5 rounded up to two stars as the average score of the nine stories, with 'The Kingdom of the Blind' getting a solid 4.5 stars, a couple others getting threes, and the rest a mix of ones and twos. A reiteration of the usual excuse of my not being a fan of short stories goes here, along with the acknowledgement that I'm simply too sensitive to prose to be able to excuse a poor show of it if the narrative(s) don't excel in other respects. Otherwise, I'm just rather sick of the whole fetishizing of post-apocalyptica in the media; if you're wondering, then, why I went ahead and picked up a book that literally has part of the genre in its title, it's not abnormal to pin a hope of redemption of personally maligned subject on a work that's managed to survive the long years sitting on one's shelves. Unfortunately, I spent the majority of this already extremely short work increasingly bored, and the only real time I felt the menace of a plausible future of absolute destruction was in the aforementioned story with its HAL 9000 incipience, which may just have been a side effect of my Silicon Valley location. Ah well. At least this wasn't especially difficult to get through, which, to be honest, didn't help it in my estimation either.
Had I known that McHugh was the author of 'China Mountain Zhang', I may have gone as far as to put this book in time out, or even off my shelves entirely. Despite the success of Strange Fruit in winning me over, I still avoid the large majority of narratives involving white authors trapezing over non white people lands, and the short story 'Special Economics' involving China and bird flu and (surprise surprise) collectivizing dystopias stood out like a awkwardly toned sore thumb as much as that one collectivizing dystopia stood out in 'Cloud Atlas', although I didn't have the words to describe my poor reception of such way back when I read the latter. The first story, 'The Naturalist', had an admittedly interesting conceit, but it marked the beginning of a weird reoccurring obsession with black people that, ultimately, made the feeling of wading through some white suburban conception of the apocalypse even stronger. The main character of the titular last story even has a midlife crisis because she's no longer on the side of the imperialism that usually renders other countries apocalyptic sites, which could've still been interesting if the narrative hadn't taken it so seriously. All in all, lack of international awareness makes for some pretty shoddy storytelling, and considering how late in the Internet game these short stories were published, there's very little excuse for it.
It's a shame how poorly this one work went, as Small Beer Press has published a number of works I'm very much looking forward to such Kalpa Imperial and A Stranger in Olondria, among others, and it always does well to support indie presses, especially what with B&N being bought out by a hedge fund of all things. I suppose I'll simply have to be better about browsing the Fantasy/Sci-Fi sections, as I usually only look for a few names and forget that quite a few of the works I'm looking for are easily shoved under one or another of those genre categories. I get that the average rating for this is not so great, but in terms of the number of much liked, praise filled reviews for this: I don't get it. I wouldn't have spent so much time commenting on the headache inducing solipsism of most of these stories if all of them had been as uniquely trepidation-inducing as the aforementioned TKotB, so I guess for a lot of the audience, their version of the end of all days looks very different from my own. Eh. Ultimately, water under the bridge, and a very short bridge this was. Onto the next choice in my rather haphazard quest to read works that aren't likely to be useful for future reading challenges.
You can take these 1.5 rounded up to two stars as the average score of the nine stories, with 'The Kingdom of the Blind' getting a solid 4.5 stars, a couple others getting threes, and the rest a mix of ones and twos. A reiteration of the usual excuse of my not being a fan of short stories goes here, along with the acknowledgement that I'm simply too sensitive to prose to be able to excuse a poor show of it if the narrative(s) don't excel in other respects. Otherwise, I'm just rather sick of the whole fetishizing of post-apocalyptica in the media; if you're wondering, then, why I went ahead and picked up a book that literally has part of the genre in its title, it's not abnormal to pin a hope of redemption of personally maligned subject on a work that's managed to survive the long years sitting on one's shelves. Unfortunately, I spent the majority of this already extremely short work increasingly bored, and the only real time I felt the menace of a plausible future of absolute destruction was in the aforementioned story with its HAL 9000 incipience, which may just have been a side effect of my Silicon Valley location. Ah well. At least this wasn't especially difficult to get through, which, to be honest, didn't help it in my estimation either.
Had I known that McHugh was the author of 'China Mountain Zhang', I may have gone as far as to put this book in time out, or even off my shelves entirely. Despite the success of Strange Fruit in winning me over, I still avoid the large majority of narratives involving white authors trapezing over non white people lands, and the short story 'Special Economics' involving China and bird flu and (surprise surprise) collectivizing dystopias stood out like a awkwardly toned sore thumb as much as that one collectivizing dystopia stood out in 'Cloud Atlas', although I didn't have the words to describe my poor reception of such way back when I read the latter. The first story, 'The Naturalist', had an admittedly interesting conceit, but it marked the beginning of a weird reoccurring obsession with black people that, ultimately, made the feeling of wading through some white suburban conception of the apocalypse even stronger. The main character of the titular last story even has a midlife crisis because she's no longer on the side of the imperialism that usually renders other countries apocalyptic sites, which could've still been interesting if the narrative hadn't taken it so seriously. All in all, lack of international awareness makes for some pretty shoddy storytelling, and considering how late in the Internet game these short stories were published, there's very little excuse for it.
It's a shame how poorly this one work went, as Small Beer Press has published a number of works I'm very much looking forward to such Kalpa Imperial and A Stranger in Olondria, among others, and it always does well to support indie presses, especially what with B&N being bought out by a hedge fund of all things. I suppose I'll simply have to be better about browsing the Fantasy/Sci-Fi sections, as I usually only look for a few names and forget that quite a few of the works I'm looking for are easily shoved under one or another of those genre categories. I get that the average rating for this is not so great, but in terms of the number of much liked, praise filled reviews for this: I don't get it. I wouldn't have spent so much time commenting on the headache inducing solipsism of most of these stories if all of them had been as uniquely trepidation-inducing as the aforementioned TKotB, so I guess for a lot of the audience, their version of the end of all days looks very different from my own. Eh. Ultimately, water under the bridge, and a very short bridge this was. Onto the next choice in my rather haphazard quest to read works that aren't likely to be useful for future reading challenges.
March 13, 2019
I loved everything about this collection. Maureen McHugh delivers again.
This is a very different look at the post-apocalyptic story. We often read about the devastating apocalypse that we were ill equipped to handle and the strife that follows. This collection; however, was filled with stories following apocalyptic events that were not as immediately catastrophic, how daily life was changed because of them and how people are moving on with their lives. I loved the selection of locations globally, the cross section of society our MCs represented, and the general writing style of the author. I love how the different apocalyptic scenarios were presented and how some of them were not as obvious. These stories were beautiful, short, and impactful.
I strongly recommend to fans of sci-fi and apocalyptic stories.
This is a very different look at the post-apocalyptic story. We often read about the devastating apocalypse that we were ill equipped to handle and the strife that follows. This collection; however, was filled with stories following apocalyptic events that were not as immediately catastrophic, how daily life was changed because of them and how people are moving on with their lives. I loved the selection of locations globally, the cross section of society our MCs represented, and the general writing style of the author. I love how the different apocalyptic scenarios were presented and how some of them were not as obvious. These stories were beautiful, short, and impactful.
I strongly recommend to fans of sci-fi and apocalyptic stories.
January 18, 2012
The nine stories in After the Apocalypse focus, for the most part, on what happens next, once the worst has already happened. Whether disaster strikes in the form of zombies, computers run amok, bird flu, dirty bombs, or other types of contamination, life as we know it no longer exists. What the characters do next is what makes these stories interesting.
Particularly good were "The Naturalist", about a zombie preserve where condemned criminals are sent to serve their sentences; "Useless Things", about a dollmaker getting by while the world dries up around her; "The Lost Boy", whose main character has been in a fugue state for five years; and "Honeymoon", about a girl who just wants to have fun, scary medical experiments notwithstanding. For sheer quirkiness, though, I'd pick "Going to France" for its lovely absurdity.
On the downside, this collection seems to have been rather shoddily copy-edited. Typos abound: Acronyms have their letters reversed from one page to the next, character names are often misspelled (June/Jane, Franny/Fanny, etc), and on several occasions I had to stop and reread a sentence that was either mispunctuated or had a word missing.
Given that I typically don't care for short stories, I was more engaged by After the Apocalypse than I'd expected to be. Interesting stories, but the editing problems definitely were a distraction.
Particularly good were "The Naturalist", about a zombie preserve where condemned criminals are sent to serve their sentences; "Useless Things", about a dollmaker getting by while the world dries up around her; "The Lost Boy", whose main character has been in a fugue state for five years; and "Honeymoon", about a girl who just wants to have fun, scary medical experiments notwithstanding. For sheer quirkiness, though, I'd pick "Going to France" for its lovely absurdity.
On the downside, this collection seems to have been rather shoddily copy-edited. Typos abound: Acronyms have their letters reversed from one page to the next, character names are often misspelled (June/Jane, Franny/Fanny, etc), and on several occasions I had to stop and reread a sentence that was either mispunctuated or had a word missing.
Given that I typically don't care for short stories, I was more engaged by After the Apocalypse than I'd expected to be. Interesting stories, but the editing problems definitely were a distraction.
October 31, 2017
Highlights: The Naturalist (sociopathic survivalist placed in zombie-ridden city as alternative to prison in near future), Honeymoon (woman engages in medical studies to make ends meet and save up for a trip to Cancun, is nearly ruined by a Phase I drug trial gone terribly wrong), The Effects of Centrifugal Forces (Avian Prion Disease has and will decimated the meat-eating population, affecting billions...including one lesbian, her hoarding girlfriend, and angsty teenage daughter).
Some short stories can begin in media res successfully, without feeling lacking (Raymond Carver's come to mind). These did not.
Some short stories can begin in media res successfully, without feeling lacking (Raymond Carver's come to mind). These did not.
Read
July 15, 2013I like that in Maureen McHugh’s short stories, there’s frequently a child who seems very nice and parents who are like, ‘I just don’t think I’m any good with kids and this kid is not specifically interesting to me at all, perhaps I should abandon her to deal with the apocalypse herself and she’ll probably get along better than with me.’
And I don’t know – if your parents had that attitude towards you when you were a kid, maybe you’d want to be abandoned, even if it was the apocalypse?
And I don’t know – if your parents had that attitude towards you when you were a kid, maybe you’d want to be abandoned, even if it was the apocalypse?
May 7, 2017
The Naturalist - 4/5 stars
Special Economics - 4/5 stars
Useless Things - 3/5 stars
The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large - 3/5 stars
The Kingdom of the Blind - 3.5/5 stars
Going to France - 3/5 stars
Honeymoon - 4/5 stars
The Effect of Centrifugal Forces - 2/5 stars
After the Apocalypse - 4/5 stars
Special Economics - 4/5 stars
Useless Things - 3/5 stars
The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large - 3/5 stars
The Kingdom of the Blind - 3.5/5 stars
Going to France - 3/5 stars
Honeymoon - 4/5 stars
The Effect of Centrifugal Forces - 2/5 stars
After the Apocalypse - 4/5 stars
June 16, 2021
While I tend to prefer novels to short story collections, I enjoyed Maureen F. McHugh's novel China Mountain Zhang, which is essentially a collection of interconnected short stories, so I wanted to give one of McHugh's actual short story collections a try. These stories have led me to a better understanding of McHugh's strengths, namely her ability to write realistic characters and worlds without resorting to info dumping, but they also highlight that her stories can sometimes feel insubstantial and her writing alone is not enough to make her slice of life stories interesting outside of the sci-fi context. The best stories in this collection feel like the first chapters of books I'd like to read, while the worst feel like a half-hearted handful of pages about a half-baked concept. The nine individual stories in this collection are discussed below.
The Naturalist: This was a strange choice for the collection's first story. It starts out as by far the pulpiest thing in the collection (or of anything I've read by McHugh), reading like well-written Walking Dead fan fiction. However, by focusing in on its bizarre main character and his zombie experiments it becomes slightly better than normal pulp by the end.
Special Economics: Despite being the longest work in the collection, this story felt lacking in substance. The story boils down to the idea that company towns are bad and that China is riddled with corruption. Neither of these things are news to me, and the story does nothing of interest with these topics. Even in this thin of a story the characters struck me as realistic, but this is a case where, despite them being realistic, I didn't find them interesting.
Useless Things: I think this is my favorite story of the collection, it reads like the start of a longer story about the gradual descent of a normal person & society into the post apocalyptic wasteland setting you see in films and video games. The arc of the protagonist, from someone willing to help strangers (albeit in a reserved fashion) to someone that has hardened herself to strangers and has let her internal scales tip in favor of fear, is disheartening but all too realistic. It’s impressive world building and character building for such a short story, and I’d gladly read an expanded version of this work.
The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large: This short work has a different structure and presentation than the other stories in the collection, and I appreciated the variety, but the subject matter of a kid suffering from amnesia (or possibly not) in the wake of a terrorist attack didn’t engage me.
The Kingdom of the Blind: Like the story Useless Things, this felt like the opening of something longer and more substantial, though it’s not quite as satisfying on its own. It feels like it introduces some potentially interesting concepts but ends before exploring any of them, and by that I mean both concepts related to the AI that drives the plot of the story as well as concepts concerning the relationships of the characters. The Kingdom of the Blind is a good example of how McHugh can write a story about some event of huge import, but told in such a realistic way and on such a small scale that you can easily imagine it actually happening.
Going to France: This is my least favorite work in the collection. It isn’t even a fragment of a story; it’s a fragment of a concept for a story.
Honeymoon and The Effect of Centrifugal Forces: The last three stories of this collection are published here for the first time, and I’m not surprised that these two weren’t picked up elsewhere. McHugh is a good writer, especially in the sci-fi genre, but she’s not a good enough one to make these slice of life stories interesting to me. The characters are still realistic, but these works make no use of McHugh’s other chief strength of world building, so I found both underwhelming.
After the Apocalypse: In contrast to the prior two tales, this never before published story is a strong one, very similar to Useless Things in that it is a realistic depiction of how people would react to societal collapse. Instead of showing how a crumbling world turns a good person into someone hard-hearted and wary, this story shows how the end of things as we know them would allow a bad person (and by that I mean a realistically bad person, someone short-tempered who only cares about herself) to justify embracing her worst characteristics. The protagonist of Useless Things would be the character that shot anyone approaching her farm out of fear that they were a bandit. The main character of After the Apocalypse would be a bandit. It’s not quite as strong as Useless Things but still good. I wish that McHugh had used Useless Things and After the Apocalypse as the foundation for a novel, even if it ended up being a novel without a plot like China Mountain Zhang.
I liked three stories out of this collection, while the other six ranged from okay to “no thank you.” That’s not really a ratio I can recommend. Overall, the high points and the low points of the collection balance out, as is all too often the case for short story collections in my experience. 3/5.
P.S. A couple of these stories had typos that a decent proofreading should have caught. Not a big deal, but still annoying.
The Naturalist: This was a strange choice for the collection's first story. It starts out as by far the pulpiest thing in the collection (or of anything I've read by McHugh), reading like well-written Walking Dead fan fiction. However, by focusing in on its bizarre main character and his zombie experiments it becomes slightly better than normal pulp by the end.
Special Economics: Despite being the longest work in the collection, this story felt lacking in substance. The story boils down to the idea that company towns are bad and that China is riddled with corruption. Neither of these things are news to me, and the story does nothing of interest with these topics. Even in this thin of a story the characters struck me as realistic, but this is a case where, despite them being realistic, I didn't find them interesting.
Useless Things: I think this is my favorite story of the collection, it reads like the start of a longer story about the gradual descent of a normal person & society into the post apocalyptic wasteland setting you see in films and video games. The arc of the protagonist, from someone willing to help strangers (albeit in a reserved fashion) to someone that has hardened herself to strangers and has let her internal scales tip in favor of fear, is disheartening but all too realistic. It’s impressive world building and character building for such a short story, and I’d gladly read an expanded version of this work.
The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large: This short work has a different structure and presentation than the other stories in the collection, and I appreciated the variety, but the subject matter of a kid suffering from amnesia (or possibly not) in the wake of a terrorist attack didn’t engage me.
The Kingdom of the Blind: Like the story Useless Things, this felt like the opening of something longer and more substantial, though it’s not quite as satisfying on its own. It feels like it introduces some potentially interesting concepts but ends before exploring any of them, and by that I mean both concepts related to the AI that drives the plot of the story as well as concepts concerning the relationships of the characters. The Kingdom of the Blind is a good example of how McHugh can write a story about some event of huge import, but told in such a realistic way and on such a small scale that you can easily imagine it actually happening.
Going to France: This is my least favorite work in the collection. It isn’t even a fragment of a story; it’s a fragment of a concept for a story.
Honeymoon and The Effect of Centrifugal Forces: The last three stories of this collection are published here for the first time, and I’m not surprised that these two weren’t picked up elsewhere. McHugh is a good writer, especially in the sci-fi genre, but she’s not a good enough one to make these slice of life stories interesting to me. The characters are still realistic, but these works make no use of McHugh’s other chief strength of world building, so I found both underwhelming.
After the Apocalypse: In contrast to the prior two tales, this never before published story is a strong one, very similar to Useless Things in that it is a realistic depiction of how people would react to societal collapse. Instead of showing how a crumbling world turns a good person into someone hard-hearted and wary, this story shows how the end of things as we know them would allow a bad person (and by that I mean a realistically bad person, someone short-tempered who only cares about herself) to justify embracing her worst characteristics. The protagonist of Useless Things would be the character that shot anyone approaching her farm out of fear that they were a bandit. The main character of After the Apocalypse would be a bandit. It’s not quite as strong as Useless Things but still good. I wish that McHugh had used Useless Things and After the Apocalypse as the foundation for a novel, even if it ended up being a novel without a plot like China Mountain Zhang.
I liked three stories out of this collection, while the other six ranged from okay to “no thank you.” That’s not really a ratio I can recommend. Overall, the high points and the low points of the collection balance out, as is all too often the case for short story collections in my experience. 3/5.
P.S. A couple of these stories had typos that a decent proofreading should have caught. Not a big deal, but still annoying.
December 25, 2014
This falls exactly in between two of my strongest reading preferences:
apocalypse, yay! and short stories, boo!
and therefore it was a definite three-star book for me. So...there you go.
apocalypse, yay! and short stories, boo!
and therefore it was a definite three-star book for me. So...there you go.
January 27, 2018
Full disclosure: Maureen F. McHugh was one of my teachers at the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop in 1996. I still use the method she taught to critique stories. She showed us, among other things, how to use significant details to make settings feel realistic.
Beyond that, I heard her read aloud one of the stories in this collection, “The Kingdom of the Blind,” at a Wiscon science fiction convention, and I loved it. I enjoyed the chance to read that story again in this anthology. It tells how a program in a large computer system begins to play with the lights in the hospitals it controls, and how the programers working with it slowly understand that the program has become sentient. Their interaction skirts comedy, but they also feel terrified by what they witness.
Other stories:
“The Naturalist” is a truly creepy zombie story that suggests the zombies aren’t the biggest evil.
“Special Economics” has little speculative fiction to it; instead the story looks at how manufacturing practices in China affect factory workers, and how they fight back. The story creates a believable portrait of people we rarely think about.
“Useless Things” shows how the gig economy leads to poverty.
“The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large” examines the aftermath of dirty nuclear bomb attacks, and while most of the story is strong, I felt dissatisfied by its conclusion, which peters out more than it sums up.
“Going to France” is about people flying, and again I felt dissatisfied by its conclusion. The narrator abandons the problem rather than solves it.
“Honeymoon” is really about poverty and its horrible choices, although I thought its ending didn’t reflect the strength of its theme.
“The Effect of Centrifugal Forces” looks at how horrible illness breaks up a family, and it ends with a believable, logical disaster.
“After the Apocalypse” is just that: a woman and her child trying to survive after an apocalypse and to stay ahead of nihilism. It’s a good, gritty story, and we can see that they’re doomed.
Despite my quibbles, all the stories are worth reading. Each one focuses on individuals and makes them and their problems real and relevant. I was glad to spend some time with Maureen again, and I observed a few more ways to write well, too.
Beyond that, I heard her read aloud one of the stories in this collection, “The Kingdom of the Blind,” at a Wiscon science fiction convention, and I loved it. I enjoyed the chance to read that story again in this anthology. It tells how a program in a large computer system begins to play with the lights in the hospitals it controls, and how the programers working with it slowly understand that the program has become sentient. Their interaction skirts comedy, but they also feel terrified by what they witness.
Other stories:
“The Naturalist” is a truly creepy zombie story that suggests the zombies aren’t the biggest evil.
“Special Economics” has little speculative fiction to it; instead the story looks at how manufacturing practices in China affect factory workers, and how they fight back. The story creates a believable portrait of people we rarely think about.
“Useless Things” shows how the gig economy leads to poverty.
“The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large” examines the aftermath of dirty nuclear bomb attacks, and while most of the story is strong, I felt dissatisfied by its conclusion, which peters out more than it sums up.
“Going to France” is about people flying, and again I felt dissatisfied by its conclusion. The narrator abandons the problem rather than solves it.
“Honeymoon” is really about poverty and its horrible choices, although I thought its ending didn’t reflect the strength of its theme.
“The Effect of Centrifugal Forces” looks at how horrible illness breaks up a family, and it ends with a believable, logical disaster.
“After the Apocalypse” is just that: a woman and her child trying to survive after an apocalypse and to stay ahead of nihilism. It’s a good, gritty story, and we can see that they’re doomed.
Despite my quibbles, all the stories are worth reading. Each one focuses on individuals and makes them and their problems real and relevant. I was glad to spend some time with Maureen again, and I observed a few more ways to write well, too.
July 15, 2017
Brevity is the soul of wit... and the Achille's heel of most writers.
I don't read many short stories because I have found few authors who are able to write satisfying ones. This collection was a pleasant surprise. McHugh can successfully create a full world in 20 pages or less through character interaction, reaction, and attitudes - not the dreaded expository info drop. She tells tales set in very real (and omnious) potential futures.
I don't read many short stories because I have found few authors who are able to write satisfying ones. This collection was a pleasant surprise. McHugh can successfully create a full world in 20 pages or less through character interaction, reaction, and attitudes - not the dreaded expository info drop. She tells tales set in very real (and omnious) potential futures.
June 11, 2013
I held off on reading this collection, knowing that eventually it would undoubtedly be a selection for my post-apocalyptic book club. And it came up this month… now I’m back to having read all of McHugh’s published books.
"The Naturalist" – This was a second-read – it’s included in Strahan’s ‘Best SF&F of the year #5.’ As I said last time I read it: A good, nasty zombie story, with shades of 'Escape From New York.' You can read this for free, online: http://subterraneanpress.com/magazine...
"Special Economics" – The most upbeat/hopeful of the stories in this collection, and our book club pretty much agreed: it might’ve been a more powerful/believable story if it wasn’t. The setting itself is not actually fantastical in any way – it portrays the situation that many young women (like the protagonists) are caught in right now – economic ‘slavery’ implemented by tricking young workers into taking a factory job where the setup ensures that they will always be in debt – and you’re not allowed to quit if you’re in debt. Eye-opening, without didacticism.
"Useless Things" – Another re-read; this appeared in “Eclipse 3,” also edited by Strahan, hmm. A sad story, set in a post-apocalyptic (but all too realistic) American West, about the erosion of trust. A dollmaker is robbed by people she tried to help. Meanwhile, her (creepy!) dolls are used to defraud… Beautifully written; very depressing.
"The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large" – Not the strongest in the collection, in my opinion, although it does strongly illustrate one of McHugh’s themes: an apocalyptic event may have occurred (in this case, a dirty bomb), but that’s not the main story. The story is about people: how they interact (or fail to), and carry on with life. Here though, I wasn’t captured by the journalistic style, or the story of a boy who disappears in the midst of a disaster, and late reappears, pleading amnesia.
"The Kingdom of the Blind" - This one almost reminded me a a Ted Chiang story, but from a woman’s perspective. (Not surprising, since McHugh, like Chiang, works in software.) It’s a tech-y, conceptual story about the possibility of artificial intelligence and the nature of sentience – meshed with a young woman’s journey to gain her own self-awareness in a hostile environment. Available online: http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fic...
"Going to France" – My least favorite/least memorable selection in the book. It reads like a transcription of a dream – one of those dreams you wake up from, review to yourself, and go, “wow, that really doesn’t make any sense at all.”
"Honeymoon" – No sci-fi/post-apocalyptic elements here; unless you count a personal/emotional apocalypse. A young woman gets married, and promptly realizes that she’s been blinding herself to her new husband’s faults. She promptly ditches him, and saves up money for a girlfriends’ getaway to Cancun. Emotionally wrenching. The real strength of this story is in McHugh’s ability to make the reader feel real compassion and understanding for characters that one might be tempted to mock, or dismiss as ‘trailer trash.’
"The Effect of Centrifugal Forces" – The greater apocalypse is impending – a mad-cow-like disease, this time spread by chicken. But the emotional apocalypse is at hand, as a teenage girls tries to hang on and deal with the people in her life – her mother dying of this disease, her mother’s partner a hoarder, her father a hopeless junkie…
"After the Apocalypse" – In the classic format of the post-apocalyptic story, and mother and daughter on the road through the wasteland. Hard and nasty choices are made. It’s about strength, weakness, necessity, self-interest – the ties that bind; or fail to bind. As usual, McHugh looks unflinchingly at what people will do; discarding the pretty myths we might tell ourselves about ourselves along the way.
"The Naturalist" – This was a second-read – it’s included in Strahan’s ‘Best SF&F of the year #5.’ As I said last time I read it: A good, nasty zombie story, with shades of 'Escape From New York.' You can read this for free, online: http://subterraneanpress.com/magazine...
"Special Economics" – The most upbeat/hopeful of the stories in this collection, and our book club pretty much agreed: it might’ve been a more powerful/believable story if it wasn’t. The setting itself is not actually fantastical in any way – it portrays the situation that many young women (like the protagonists) are caught in right now – economic ‘slavery’ implemented by tricking young workers into taking a factory job where the setup ensures that they will always be in debt – and you’re not allowed to quit if you’re in debt. Eye-opening, without didacticism.
"Useless Things" – Another re-read; this appeared in “Eclipse 3,” also edited by Strahan, hmm. A sad story, set in a post-apocalyptic (but all too realistic) American West, about the erosion of trust. A dollmaker is robbed by people she tried to help. Meanwhile, her (creepy!) dolls are used to defraud… Beautifully written; very depressing.
"The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large" – Not the strongest in the collection, in my opinion, although it does strongly illustrate one of McHugh’s themes: an apocalyptic event may have occurred (in this case, a dirty bomb), but that’s not the main story. The story is about people: how they interact (or fail to), and carry on with life. Here though, I wasn’t captured by the journalistic style, or the story of a boy who disappears in the midst of a disaster, and late reappears, pleading amnesia.
"The Kingdom of the Blind" - This one almost reminded me a a Ted Chiang story, but from a woman’s perspective. (Not surprising, since McHugh, like Chiang, works in software.) It’s a tech-y, conceptual story about the possibility of artificial intelligence and the nature of sentience – meshed with a young woman’s journey to gain her own self-awareness in a hostile environment. Available online: http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fic...
"Going to France" – My least favorite/least memorable selection in the book. It reads like a transcription of a dream – one of those dreams you wake up from, review to yourself, and go, “wow, that really doesn’t make any sense at all.”
"Honeymoon" – No sci-fi/post-apocalyptic elements here; unless you count a personal/emotional apocalypse. A young woman gets married, and promptly realizes that she’s been blinding herself to her new husband’s faults. She promptly ditches him, and saves up money for a girlfriends’ getaway to Cancun. Emotionally wrenching. The real strength of this story is in McHugh’s ability to make the reader feel real compassion and understanding for characters that one might be tempted to mock, or dismiss as ‘trailer trash.’
"The Effect of Centrifugal Forces" – The greater apocalypse is impending – a mad-cow-like disease, this time spread by chicken. But the emotional apocalypse is at hand, as a teenage girls tries to hang on and deal with the people in her life – her mother dying of this disease, her mother’s partner a hoarder, her father a hopeless junkie…
"After the Apocalypse" – In the classic format of the post-apocalyptic story, and mother and daughter on the road through the wasteland. Hard and nasty choices are made. It’s about strength, weakness, necessity, self-interest – the ties that bind; or fail to bind. As usual, McHugh looks unflinchingly at what people will do; discarding the pretty myths we might tell ourselves about ourselves along the way.
April 9, 2014
There's nothing terribly interesting in this collection, to my mind. The writing isn't bad, but it's kind of bland. In some places, that felt intentional, but the tone was just too consistent. The first story was sort of interesting, the straightforward, dispassionate recounting of the "experiment", which made it that bit more horrifying because you know, it involved living people. But for the other stories, that didn't work as well, and it just wasn't particularly interesting -- these ideas have more or less been done before, I think.
May 16, 2014
dang. i just love maureen mchugh; her books always feel like they're written exactly for my demographic in a way that i almost never experience. this collection would be a good introduction to her stuff.
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